Archives for August 2016

Princess Marie wears Princess Dagmar’s Floral Tiara (Photo: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images)

Since she officially became an HRH in 2008, Princess Marie of Denmark has worn precisely two tiaras. While she debuted the silver and amethyst Flora Danica Tiara in 2014, today’s tiara, a diamond floral piece that has been in the family for several generations, is still the workhorse of her collection. From her wedding to the annual Danish New Year’s Courts to family celebrations, it’s been all floral all the time for Princess Marie.

The tiara’s first wearer was also a Danish princess: Princess Dagmar of Denmark, the daughter of King Frederik VIII. Dagmar’s siblings included King Christian X of Denmark, King Haakon VII of Norway, and Princess Ingeborg of Sweden — so you know she needed a tiara for all sorts of royal events. Where and how Dagmar received her tiara is unclear. We also don’t know who made it, although it seems quite possible that the tiara is a twentieth-century piece. But we do know that Dagmar wore it into her old age — she was photographed in the piece at a wedding shortly before her death.

Even though Dagmar and her husband had five children, she bequeathed her tiara to her nephew, King Frederik IX, who passed it along to his daughter, Queen Margrethe II. Maybe Dagmar knew there would be more use for a tiara in the main line of the royal family? Dagmar’s husband was a commoner, so all of their children were born commoners, too.

Princess Marie wears the tiara on her wedding day (Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

Queen Margrethe wore the tiara for years before handing it over to her new daughter-in-law. Marie wore the tiara for the first time at her wedding, and she’s worn it at almost every single tiara event she’s attended since.

Princess Marie wears the tiara (Photo: Schiller Graphics/Getty Images)

I think it’s telling that the court announced that Marie does not personally own the tiara; it’s just a permanent loan from the queen. Seems like perhaps Margrethe may have learned her lesson about tiaras and daughters-in-law after the Alexandrine Diamond Drop was divorced right out of the royal family? Whatever the case, the permanent-loan solution is a good one for a royal family that doesn’t have a family jewel foundation. (Psst, Margrethe: start a jewel foundation!)

The Alexandrine Diamond Drop Tiara (Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

One of the perks of being a royal princess is that you often receive your very first tiara on your eighteenth birthday. Some of them are dinky (like Crown Princess Victoria’s birthday tiara), some are modern (like Princess Märtha Louise of Norway’s birthday tiara), and some, like this one, are historic family pieces. On her eighteenth birthday, Margrethe II of Denmark’s parents gave her this diamond drop tiara, which originally belonged to her grandmother, Queen Alexandrine.

Queen Alexandrine of Denmark (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

I’ve read various pieces of information about the tiara’s provenance, none of which appear to be confirmed. Some have argued that the tiara was made for Alexandrine in 1912, the same year that she became queen. In his book on the Danish royal jewels, Bjarne Steen Jensen speculates that it was made earlier, at the end of the nineteenth century. He even posits that the tiara may have been Alexandrine’s eighteenth-birthday gift from her mother, Grand Duchess Anastasia, although he makes it clear that there’s no evidence backing up that theory.

Queen Alexandrine never posed for a portrait wearing the tiara, though Jensen notes that she did wear it at least once in public: at a gala performance at Covent Garden during a 1914 state visit to the United Kingdom. When Alexandrine died in 1952, the piece was inherited by her elder son, King Frederik IX; six years later, he passed it along to his daughter Margrethe as her eighteenth-birthday present.

Margrethe wore the tiara more frequently when she was younger — the delicate tiara, which features scads of teardrop-shaped diamonds suspended en tremblant, is small, and perhaps better suited for a princess than a regal queen. Jensen speculates that this is also the reason that Alexandrine rarely wore the tiara after she became queen and had access to the crown jewel collection.

Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

In 1995, the tiara changed hands once more. Margrethe gave it to her new daughter-in-law, Alexandra Manley, the bride of Prince Joachim. It was her bridal tiara, and in fact, for Alexandra’s entire ten-year tenure as a Danish princess, this was the only tiara she wore. Above, Alexandra wears the tiara during the 2004 wedding celebrations for Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary.

Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

When Alexandra and Joachim divorced, she retained the tiara, taking it out of the family for the first time in nearly a century. (Intriguingly, Margrethe did not give a tiara to Joachim’s second wife, Princess Marie — instead, she offered her Princess Dagmar’s Floral Tiara as a long-term loan. Maybe she learned a lesson the first time around?) Even so, Alexandra is still an integral part of Prince Joachim’s family, and she has attended white-tie events since the divorce wearing the tiara. Above, she wears the tiara during Queen Margrethe’s ruby jubilee in 2012.

But even though the tiara is not currently in royal hands, it seems like that we’ve not seen the last of it at the Danish royal court. Alexandra’s two sons, Nikolai and Felix, are both princes of Denmark, so it seems quite likely that the Diamond Drop will return to their extended branch of the royal family eventually. Perhaps one day we’ll see one of their wives in this sparkling, shivering tiara?