Tomorrow, Princess Theodora, daughter of the last King of Greece, will marry her American beau in a religious ceremony at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Athens. But the tiara that we expect she may wear comes from the other side of her royal heritage, linking together the British, Swedish, and Danish royal families. Today, let’s take a refreshed look at the Khedive of Egypt Tiara and the way that it unexpectedly became an heirloom bridal diadem for the daughters and granddaughters of a Danish queen.
Our tiara story begins today in Windsor, where Prince Gustaf Adolf, second in line to the Swedish throne, married Princess Margaret of Connaught, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and niece of King Edward VII. The glittering wedding, uniting two royal families, was held at St. George’s Chapel on June 15, 1905. The young couple met and fell in love during a whirlwind courtship in Egypt that winter. (It’s a great story, and you can read all about it here!) They returned to Europe for their wedding, marrying in England before heading off to begin a new life together in Scandinavia.
Perhaps because Margaret and Gustaf had fallen in love in Egypt and announced their royal engagement in Cairo, the Khedive of Egypt decided to give the bride a particularly magnificent wedding present. The Khedive was a viceroy, ruling on behalf of the Ottoman Empire, but by 1905 the British had occupied Egypt for more than two decades. Abbas II, who was the Khedive during this era, worked at least somewhat cooperatively in public with the British colonial government. It certainly would have behooved him to make a significant gesture to celebrate the marriage of a British princess who had become engaged in his homeland.
In a rare move, Abbas actually decided to attend the wedding in person, too. He arrived in London shortly before the event and traveled to Windsor by train with the bridal couple and their families. And he didn’t come empty handed. The Khedive presented Margaret with an unusual diamond ornament with an eye-catching scroll pattern. The jewel could be worn as a corsage ornament on a gown or placed on a frame to be worn as a tiara. Above, the jewel is depicted in a sketch of the wedding presents published in the Illustrated London News shortly after the ceremony.
Here’s a look at the jewel itself, worn in its tiara setting. The piece features sleek diamond scrolls intertwined by pleasant, twisting branches of laurel. Large diamonds are set in the center of each scroll element and along the top of the piece, where they’re bordered by more diamond-set laurels.
Princess Margaret wore the Khedive’s spectacular diamond present as both a tiara and as a corsage ornament. Above, she wears it in its tiara setting in a portrait taken shortly after she and Gustaf became Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Sweden. The couple had five children together, and Margaret was expecting their sixth when she became ill in 1920. After undergoing surgery to try to relieve mastoiditis, she passed away, as did her unborn child. The Crown Princess was only 38.
When Margaret died, her only daughter, Princess Ingrid of Sweden, was just ten years old. Understandably, her mother’s legacy loomed large in Ingrid’s heart and mind, and she particularly treasured the pieces of jewelry that she inherited from Margaret’s collection. Among these was the diamond scroll tiara that had been presented to Margaret by the Khedive to celebrate her wedding. Princess Ingrid wore the tiara at the royal court in Sweden as a young woman, and she took it to Denmark with her when she married the future King Frederik IX in 1935.
Though Ingrid inherited the use of other grand suites of jewelry as Crown Princess, and then Queen, of Denmark, she continued to wear the Khedive of Egypt Tiara for gala occasions throughout her long life. Particularly poignant was her decision to wear the tiara during the Danish state visit to Britain in May 1951. She wore the jewel, plus a diamond and pearl stomacher that she inherited from Queen Victoria of Sweden, for a dinner at the Danish Embassy in London. The tiara choice underscored Ingrid’s British royal heritage. Both she and King George VI, who escorts her in the photograph above, were great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria.
Queen Ingrid owned the tiara for almost a century, from 1920 until her passing in 2000. While she primarily wore it herself during those eight decades, she also occasionally loaned the jewel to other family members. In the spring of 1958, for a gala celebrating the 18th birthday of her daughter, Princess Margrethe, Queen Ingrid loaned the tiara to one of her nieces. Princess Margaretha of Sweden, the eldest daughter of Ingrid’s late brother, Prince Gustaf Adolf, wore her grandmother’s tiara for the occasion–an appropriate choice, given that both she and Princess Margrethe of Denmark were named for Margaret of Connaught.
Two years later, in December 1960, Queen Ingrid loaned the tiara to another Margaretha from the family tree. Princess Margaretha of Denmark (a Swedish-born princess who was a cousin of both Queen Ingrid and King Frederik) borrowed the tiara for the celebrations of the wedding of her nephew, King Baudouin of the Belgians, and Fabiola de Mora y Aragón in Brussels. Princess Margaretha is pictured wearing the tiara above during one of the pre-wedding galas.
In the years afterward, Queen Ingrid’s loans of the tiara became even more special. When her youngest daughter, Princess Anne-Marie, married King Constantine II of the Hellenes in Athens in September 1964, she borrowed the Khedive of Egypt Tiara to wear on her wedding day. The balanced, romantic scroll design of the tiara looks fabulous with a veil. And the veil worn by Anne-Marie with the tiara was very special, too: it was the same Irish lace veil that had been worn by Margaret of Connaught on her wedding day in Windsor in 1905.
Anne-Marie started a trend. In 1967, when the eldest of Ingrid’s three daughters, Crown Princess Margrethe, married Henri Laborde de Monpezat in Copenhagen, she also borrowed the Khedive of Egypt Tiara and the Connaught lace veil to wear with her wedding gown.
And when the third of the sisters, Princess Benedikte, was married to Prince Richard of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg a few months later in 1968, she decided to wear the tiara and veil that belonged to Margaret of Connaught, too.
The tradition started by the three Danish royal sisters has continued in the next generation of the family. Princess Benedikte and Queen Anne-Marie each have two daughters, and so far three of the four princesses has worn the Khedive tiara and the Connaught veil for their weddings, too. Queen Ingrid loaned both the tiara and the veil to Benedikte’s elder daughter, Princess Alexandra of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, for her wedding at Gråsten Palace in June 1998. (Alexandra has since remarried, and for that second wedding, she chose to wear a floral tiara from her new husband’s family collection instead.)
Queen Ingrid also loaned the Khedive tiara and the Connaught veil to Queen Anne-Marie’s elder daughter, Princess Alexia of Greece and Denmark, for her wedding to Carlos Morales Quintana in London in July 1999.
Princess Alexia’s wedding was one of the last big family events that Queen Ingrid was able to attend before her passing at the age of 90 in November 2000. After her death, the Khedive of Egypt Tiara was inherited by her youngest daughter, Queen Anne-Marie, who is now the guardian of both the jewel and the family tradition that goes with it. At some point after inheriting the tiara, she had the frame of the piece tweaked so that it sits a little bit higher up on her head. It makes sense that she wanted to adjust the tiara to fit with her own style, because she’s gotten a ton of use out of it in the last two decades. Anne-Marie has worn the tiara for lots of different royal celebrations, including weddings and jubilee festivities, since it arrived in her jewelry collection.
She has also loaned the tiara to other family members, too, just as Queen Ingrid did before her. When Princess Benedikte’s younger daughter, Princess Nathalie of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, was married in Germany in June 2011, she wore the Khedive tiara and the Connaught veil, just like her aunts, sister, and cousin before her. And in September 2022, Anne-Marie loaned the tiara to her own daughter, Princess Alexia, to wear during Queen Margrethe’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in Denmark.
Our most recent glimpse of the tiara took place just about a year ago, when Queen Anne-Marie wore it in Copenhagen for Crown Prince Christian’s birthday celebrations. I think there’s a very good chance that, right now, the tiara is sparkling in a safe place in Athens, ready to be placed, along with the Connaught veil, on the head of Anne-Marie’s younger daughter, Princess Theodora of Greece and Denmark, for her wedding tomorrow. I can’t wait to see if the tradition continues with yet another of Queen Ingrid’s descendants!
Speaking of tomorrow’s royal wedding: I’m planning on covering the jewels of the occasion here at The Court Jeweller tomorrow, so be sure to stop by to enjoy the sparkle with all of us!
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.