King Charles and Queen Camilla embarked on a visit to Northern Ireland on Wednesday, and Camilla brought along a bejeweled tribute to her late mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II, for the start of the trip.
The King and Queen began their two-day Northern Ireland visit on Tuesday in Newtownabbey near Belfast.
They opened a new coronation garden, which features an elaborate gate with both of their names and a large crown.
Queen Camilla wore diplomatic green for her first engagement in Northern Ireland since the coronation.
She accessorized with several pieces of gold, diamond, and emerald jewelry.
She wore a pair of modern gold earrings from her jewelry box that have pavé-set diamond pendants.
She also added two necklaces: her rigid gold torc-style necklace, plus the familiar chain with two pendants (a disc with the initials of her grandchildren and a Kiki McDonough Apollo pendant).
But the jewelry star of the show was, without a doubt, the emerald and diamond brooch that Camilla pinned to her outfit.
Here’s a closer look at the brooch, which has a diamond-set Celtic knot design surrounding a cabochon emerald.
The brooch reportedly comes from the collection of Queen Mary. It matches the illustration and description of a jewel given to her as a wedding present by Emperor Nicholas II of Russia (then tsarevich) in 1893. In an article on the public display of Mary’s wedding gifts at the Imperial Institute in London that July, the Telegraph described the brooch as “a cabochon emerald and diamond knot.” Mary wears the brooch pinned at her throat in the portrait above, which dates to the 1890s. (The emerald shamrock brooch pinned at her waist ended up with the Kents and was most recently worn by Lady Gabriella Kingston at the coronation.)
It’s not known whether the knot brooch was inherited by Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 from Queen Mary or in 2002 from the Queen Mother, but it was definitely in her collection by the spring of 2014. That April, she wore the brooch for the Irish state banquet at Windsor Castle, pairing it with the Vladimir Tiara and jewels from the Delhi Durbar Parure, all of which are set with the Cambridge Emeralds. Queen Mary’s Celtic Knot Brooch was pinned to the Queen’s Garter sash for the dinner.
Elizabeth II also wore the brooch for an audience with the Secretary-General of the United Nations in Malta during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in November 2015.
One of her final appearances in the brooch took place in July 2022, when she officially bestowed the George Cross on the National Health Service.
Here’s one more look at Queen Camilla wearing the special brooch in Northern Ireland earlier today.
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