The Heirloom Royal Tiara Treasured by Sweden’s Princess Sibylla

Today marks the anniversary of the passing of a royal woman who never became a queen but still left an indelible mark on her family’s legacy. Princess Sibylla, the mother of the present King of Sweden, was an important part of keeping her family together after tragedy, moving forward through tradition wearing a treasured royal jewel: the Connaught Diamond Tiara.

In 1932, Princess Sibylla, the daughter of the last Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, married the man who was expected one day to become the King of Sweden. Prince Gustaf Adolf, known in his family as Edmund, was the eldest son of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf and his first wife, Princess Margaret of Connaught. Both Sibylla, 24, and Edmund, 26, were great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, making them second cousins.

Though they were related, Sibylla and Edmund didn’t know each other well until 1931, when she served as a bridesmaid in a family wedding with his sister, Princess Ingrid of Sweden. Ingrid introduced the couple, who announced their engagement about six months later. They were married in Coburg on October 20, 1932. Over the next decade they had four daughters, Princesses Margaretha, Birgitta, Désirée, and Christina, before the birth of their only son, Prince Carl Gustaf, in 1946.

After his mother, Crown Princess Margareta, died in 1920, Edmund had inherited several pieces of his mother’s jewelry, which were put in storage for the use of his future wife. On the eve of their wedding in 1932, Sibylla wore one of these pieces, the Swedish Aquamarine Kokoshnik, for the first time. Sibylla also received another important jewel previously worn by Margareta, the Cameo Tiara, as a wedding present. But another tiara from Margareta’s cache of jewels would ultimately become Sibylla’s favorite: the Connaught Diamond Tiara, which Margareta had received as a wedding gift from her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, in 1905. Margareta wears it as a tiara in the portrait above, but the classic jewel can also be removed from its frame and worn in a pair of different necklace settings.

Here’s a closer look at the Connaught in its tiara setting. The piece incorporates several design motifs that were particularly popular in the first years of the twentieth century, including flowers and ribbons. The Connaughts purchased the tiara from E. Wolff & Co. The company supplied numerous tiaras to the royal family during the reigns of King Edward VII and King George V, including famous jewels like the Lover’s Knot Tiara and the Fringe Tiara made for Queen Mary.

Princess Sibylla had plenty of opportunities to wear her tiaras soon after her royal wedding. As the second-ranking lady in the land, after Crown Princess Louise, she glittered at events like state banquets and Nobel Prize ceremonies right from the start. Above, during the Nobel Prize presentations in Stockholm in December 1935, she wears the Connaught Diamond Tiara with a sleek, fashionable ’30s evening gown. This ceremony was held a year after the birth of Edmund and Sibylla’s first child, Princess Margaretha.

More children were quickly added to the family. Princess Birgitta was born in January 1937, and Princess Désirée followed soon afterward in June 1938. By then, the world was on the brink of war. Sweden maintained its official policy of neutrality throughout the war, something that brought criticism from all corners. Sibylla’s family in Germany and Britain, however, were deeply enmeshed in the conflict. Just a few months after the birth of Edmund and Sibylla’s fourth daughter, Princess Christina, in 1943, Sibylla’s brother, Prince Hubertus of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, died when his plane was shot down over present-day Ukraine.

It was, in some ways, a portend of a greater tragedy to come. Edmund and Sibylla finally welcomed a long-awaited son, Prince Carl Gustaf, in April 1946. The baby was just nine months old when, in January 1947, 40-year-old Edmund was killed in an airplane crash in Denmark. He had been traveling back to Sweden after a hunting trip in the Netherlands. Crown Princess Louise was the person who had the unenviable task of telling Sibylla about her husband’s death.

Edmund’s death sent shock waves through the entire family and deeply affected his grandfather, King Gustaf V. The elderly monarch was now at the head of a rapidly shrinking royal family, with members lost both to death and marriage, as two of Edmund’s brothers had given up their royal status to marry commoners, and his sister, Princess Ingrid, had married the King of Denmark. Crown Princess Louise, Princess Sibylla, and Princess Ingeborg were the only senior royal women at court. For Sibylla, the roles of mother and princess offered her structure and purpose in the years that followed. She remained a central figure, wearing her gala jewels and gowns for events like the Nobel celebrations and the annual opening of parliament. In the court portrait above, she wears the traditional ensemble—a black and white gown with ermine trimmed robes and a lace veil—with the Connaught Tiara and her own suite of sapphires. The portrait was published often amid the press coverage of her husband’s passing.

Sibylla would wear the Connaught Tiara for numerous gala functions over the next two decades. The all-diamond tiara was easily paired with lots of different jewels from the royal vaults. Here, for the opening of the Riksdag in 1957, Sibylla wears the Connaught Tiara with the Bernadotte Emeralds.

And here, for a gala reception in 1961, she wears the diamond tiara with more diamond pieces, including a diamond rivière and the Vasa Earrings, as well as the grand brooch from the fabulous Russian Pink Topaz Suite.

And here, four years later, Sibylla wears the tiara with diamond jewels again for another gala event in 1965. She’s accompanied by her youngest daughter, Princess Christina, who wears the family’s Four Button Tiara.

Sibylla went for an all-diamond look again at the Nobels in 1967, wearing the Connaught Tiara for the banquet with additional diamond jewels, including the Karl Johan Earrings and the Swedish Diamond Lozenge Brooch. Princess Christina, also pictured here, wears the Four Button Tiara with Sibylla’s sapphires.

The death of Queen Louise in 1965 meant that Sibylla became the senior lady at court, and she sometimes wore jewels, like the Leuchtenberg Sapphires, that are usually reserved for the woman in that role. But she also continued to wear the Connaught Diamond Tiara faithfully. By this point, she was so associated with the jewel that the family simply called it “Princess Sibylla’s Tiara,” a practice that continues to this day. One of her last appearances in the tiara came in December 1971, when she wore it with more diamond jewels for the Nobel Prize ceremony.

Sibylla died of cancer in November 1972 at the age of 64. In this photograph, Sibylla sits between her father-in-law, King Gustaf VI Adolf, and her son, Crown Prince Carl Gustaf, emphasizing her role as a bridge between two generations of monarchs. Less than a year after her passing, in September 1973, the King died, making Edmund and Sibylla’s son King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. He has now been Sweden’s monarch for more than half a century.

Princess Sibylla sadly died before she had the chance to see her son’s accession to the throne and his marriage three years later. Carl Gustaf married Silvia Sommerlath, a German interpreter from Heidelberg, on June 19, 1976. On the night before the royal wedding, a gala concert was held in Stockholm in the couple’s honor. Silvia made her first appearance in a tiara at the concert, wearing Princess Sibylla’s beloved Connaught Diamond Tiara for the white-tie event.

In recent years, Princess Christina has revealed that she and her sisters encouraged Silvia to wear this specific tiara for the event. She stated in the documentary Kungliga Smycken in 2020 that they wanted Sibylla’s memory to be present on the day, and even more than that, they wanted Silvia to understand that they were excited to be welcoming her into the family. Having Silvia wear Sibylla’s tiara emphasized that she was stepping into a role that had belonged to the late princess, and that the family was happy to have her there.