Crown Princess Margareta, ca. 1908 [1]

Margaret wore the piece during her time as Sweden’s crown princess, both as a tiara and as a dress ornament. You can see her wearing the Khedive on the bodice of her dress in the portrait shown at left above (where she wears the diamond tiara given to her by her parents as a diadem). The way that Margaret has positioned the piece in the portrait fits with its depiction in the illustrated guide to her wedding gifts (see below). When worn as a tiara, the piece is flipped so that the scroll elements are at the base.

Illustration of the tiara/ornament from Margaret of Connaught’s wedding gifts [3]

Ingrid of Denmark [5]

So far, the bridal wearers of the Khedive have been Queen Margrethe II of Denmark (see here); Princess Benedikte of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg (see here); Benedikte’s two daughters, Princess Alexandra (here) and Princess Nathalie (here); Queen Anne-Marie of Greece (see here); and her elder daughter, Princess Alexia (here). Anne-Marie’s younger daughter, Princess Theodora, will also be eligible to wear the tiara if she marries. After Ingrid’s death in 2000, she left the tiara to her younger daughter, Anne-Marie, the former queen of Greece. Anne-Marie has had alterations made to the base of the piece [6], so that it sits much higher now on the wearer’s head (you can clearly see these changes in wedding photos of Nathalie of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, the only bride to have worn it so far after it was altered).

It will be extremely interesting to see what happens to the Khedive tiara in the next generation. Will Anne-Marie leave it to one of her daughters, who are no longer princesses of a reigning monarchy? Will it be returned to the Danes, to preserve it officially as a wedding tiara for the next generation of royal brides? (That will include three Danish princesses — Isabella, Josephine, and Athena — as well as the granddaughters of Benedikte and Anne-Marie.) Cases like the Khedive, which has both historical and familial importance, make me wish that Ingrid had followed the example of Juliana of the Netherlands and set up a foundation for her jewelry. But for now, only time will tell [7].

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped version of photograph in the public domain; source here. (The Grand Ladies website suggests that the photograph may have been made to advertise Margaret to potential grooms, but if the photo really was taken in 1908, that’s not possible.)
2. Portrait of Crown Princess Margareta of Sweden by Axel Jungstedt, ca. 1909; source here.
3. Detail of the illustrated newspaper guide to Margaret’s wedding gifts; a full version of the image available here.
4. Here’s an image of Frederik and Ingrid on their wedding day in 1935. While neither Margaret nor Ingrid wore the Khedive as a bridal tiara, they both wore the same Irish lace veil that Margaret had been given as a wedding gift. All of Ingrid’s female descendants, plus Crown Princess Mary, have also worn the veil on their wedding days. In a bit of morbid trivia, the same veil covered Margaret of Connaught’s body in her coffin, though the veil was removed before the coffin was closed so that it could be given to Ingrid.
5. Cropped version of photograph available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
6. See the tiara’s new base here.
7. A version of this post originally appeared at A Tiara a Day in February 2013.

Time for another look at the jewel collection of Crown Princess Margareta of Sweden, who was born Margaret of Connaught. Today’s focus is on another of her less glittering pieces: her delicate gold cuff bracelet. What seems like an insignificant piece is actually one of the more important sentimental pieces of jewelry for Margaret’s Danish descendants.

Margaret and her sister, Patricia, wore identical gold cuff bracelets on their left arms; you can see Patricia’s bracelet on her left wrist in this W&D Downey picture postcard. To my knowledge, it’s never been made clear where Margaret and Patricia got their gold bracelets, but I would wager that the tokens were gifts from their parents, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught. In 1915, Margaret carried the tradition to the next generation when she gave her daughter, Princess Ingrid of Sweden, an identical gold bracelet as a fifth birthday present. You can see Margaret and Ingrid both wearing their gold bracelets on their left arms in the photograph above, which was taken not long before Margaret’s death in 1920. The photograph on the right, which shows Margaret wearing the bracelet on her left wrist, also shows her twisting the same strand of pearls that we discussed last week. Margaret’s bracelet was apparently big enough to slide up and down her arm, as it is shown both at her wrist and situated further up on her forearm.

Princess Ingrid was only ten when her mother died, so it should come as no surprise that she decided to carry on sentimental traditions, especially regarding jewelry, that had been begun by her late mother. That includes the gifting of identical gold bracelets to each of her daughters — Margrethe, Benedikte, and Anne-Marie of Denmark — on their fifth birthdays. A Billed-Bladet report notes that the child-sized bracelets are exchanged for a larger size later [4].

Margrethe, who is now Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, regularly wears her gold bracelet, even amid all of the splendid, sparkling jewels she sports for official functions. Like the women of previous generations, they wear the bracelet on their left wrists. You can spot it on Margrethe here, at a banquet during a South Korean state visit. It’s also visible in more than one of the queen’s official portraits [5], and you can see it here among her jewels for the annual New Year’s Court [6].

In this photo of the young Danish princesses, you can see Anne-Marie, the future queen of Greece, wearing her bracelet. Just like their big sister, Benedikte and Anne-Marie continue to wear their gold bracelets, although at one point, Anne-Marie’s broke and had to be repaired. Anne-Marie has stated that she was “deeply unhappy” when the bracelet broke, underscoring the sentimental importance of these simple pieces to the women of the family [4]. All three of the sisters regularly stack their gold cuff bracelet with other pieces (as Benedikte does here), so sometimes you have to look carefully to find it. Benedikte and Anne-Marie have passed on the tradition to their own daughters, Alexandra (here’s hers), Nathalie (and hers), Alexia (and hers), and Theodora (and hers!). Only direct female descendants participate in the tradition, so while you see Crown Princess Mary wearing pieces of Ingrid’s jewelry, you won’t see her (or Princess Marie, or any of the wives of the Greek princes) wearing one of these bracelets.

While Margrethe didn’t have any daughters, she was recently able to carry on the tradition by giving one of the bracelets to her granddaughter, Princess Isabella, on her fifth birthday in 2012. The young Danish princess has been photographed several times wearing her new gold bracelet — here’s a closeup of her bracelet taken during the christening of her cousin, Princess Athena. These childhood bracelets aren’t discarded when they’re traded for a larger size later on, and Billed-Bladet has speculated that the bracelet that little Isabella wears now is the very same one that Queen Margrethe received from Queen Ingrid in 1945.

Although for many years there were no young princesses in the Danish royal family, there are now two more little girls waiting to receive their bracelets. Isabella’s younger sister, Princess Josephine, will receive her bracelet exactly two years from today. (Happy third birthday, Josephine!) And their cousin, Princess Athena, will receive her bracelet a year later, in January 2017. Here’s hoping that this sweet tradition, begun with the Connaught princesses and continued for five generations, will be kept up for years to come!

4. Read the Billed-Bladet article (in Danish) here.

5. See the queen’s left arm in this portrait and this one.

6. The photo comes from a Hello! article about the bracelets; read here.