The next few weeks are going to bring us a true bounty of fabulous royal gala jewels, including an exciting first state banquet appearance from the future Queen of the Netherlands. This week, we learned that the visiting monarch, King Felipe VI of Spain, has given Princess Amalia a new decoration ahead of the banquet next Wednesday.
King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain will make a state visit to the Netherlands next week. Their hosts, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima, will give a state banquet in their honor at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. Three more Dutch royal ladies–the Princess of Orange, Princess Beatrix, and Princess Margriet–are also scheduled to attend.
The banquet will be Princess Amalia’s first official engagement during a state visit. Ahead of the trip, King Felipe has offered her a new Spanish royal decoration, making her a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. It’s Amalia’s first foreign decoration, and she will wear the order’s gold and yellow sash and golden star during the banquet on Wednesday evening. Founded in 1815 by King Ferdinand VII, the order was named in honor of Queen Isabella I of Castile. Notably, the order was also the first one presented to Amalia’s mother, Queen Maxima, when she began attending state functions as a member of the royal family.
Wednesday’s banquet will mark the first time that Princess Amalia takes part in an official state visit, but she has made a trio of high-profile royal tiara appearances over the last year and a half. In June 2022, she wore the Dutch Star Tiara in Oslo for a gala celebrating the 18th birthday of the future Queen of Norway, Princess Ingrid Alexandra.
Amalia accompanied her parents to the royal wedding of Crown Prince Hussein and Princess Rajwa of Jordan in Amman in June 2023. For the wedding reception, she wore the family’s Ruby Peacock Tiara. She also later wore the tiara a few weeks later for a reception after the wedding of Prince Ferdinand and Princess Marie of Schwarzenberg.
And in October, Amalia was a vision in royal blue at the gala celebrating the 18th birthday of Prince Christian, the future King of Denmark. For the dinner at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen, she wore the family’s Sapphire Necklace Tiara.
We expect that there will be at least five royal tiaras sparkling at the banquet in Amsterdam. I think it’s time to register our hopes for the different diadems we may be seeing. Lately, Queen Letizia has almost exclusively chosen Queen Ena’s Fleur-de-Lis Tiara for royal-royal state visits. So far, she’s worn it in Britain, Sweden, and Denmark, and also in Japan. I wouldn’t bet against it for the Dutch state visit. (Sadly, though we’ll be seeing Amalia, Princess Leonor is not scheduled to travel to the Netherlands with her parents.)
Queen Maxima has also often brought out one of the grandest tiaras in the Dutch royal collection, the Stuart Tiara, for these royal-royal state banquets. We’ve seen her wear it different settings for galas in Britain, Sweden, Luxembourg, and Belgium. She has also sometimes chosen a second grand tiara, the Dutch Sapphire Parure Tiara, for royal-royal state banquets, wearing it in Norway and Denmark.
Princess Beatrix usually chooses one of the smaller tiaras from the vaults these days, opting for jewels like the Antique Pearl Tiara (worn above for a state visit from the Republic of Cape Verde), the Dutch Star Tiara, or the Dutch Aquamarine Tiara. I’m just excited that we still get to see her nestle tiaras in that famous hairdo a full decade after her abdication!
Her sister, Princess Margriet, also generally chooses smaller diadems like the Aquamarine Tiara, the Emerald Tiara, or the Pearl Button Tiara, which was her wedding tiara.
And speaking of tiara predictions: there’s actually another royal-royal state visit happening next week, too! The Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Luxembourg will be making a visit to their cousins, the King and Queen of the Belgians, in Brussels. (The Hereditary Grand Duke and Hereditary Grand Duchess are pictured above with them during an earlier visit, but they’re not currently scheduled to make the trip.) We’ll see the four of them in gala attire for a state banquet at the Castle of Laeken on Tuesday evening. Which tiaras are you hoping to see for all of these glittering moments?
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