Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World
 |
| The Greeks visit Britain (Photo: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) |
 |
| The Khedive of Egypt Tiara (Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images) |
Princess Margaret of Connaught had a number of tiaras at her disposal during her tenure as crown princess of Sweden, but none of the others are quite as romantic and sentimental as today’s piece: the Cartier tiara given to her as a wedding gift by the Khedive of Egypt.
 |
| Margaret of Connaught (Photo: Grand Ladies Site/Bain Collection) |
The Khedive tiara’s story begins even before the piece’s creation. Princess Margaret, the niece of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, was on a royal tour with her parents, who wanted to marry their daughters off to suitable royal spouses. They had their eye on the future king of Sweden, Gustaf VI Adolf, as a prospective partner for Margaret’s sister, Princess Patricia. They rendezvous-ed with Gustaf Adolf in Cairo, where he immediately fell in love — but with the wrong sister. It didn’t matter, in the end; Margaret was in love with him, too. Gustaf Adolf proposed to her during a dinner at the British consulate in Cairo, and the two were married at Windsor in 1905.
 |
| Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden and Margaret of Connaught (Photo: Grand Ladies Site) |
Because their love story was so tied to Cairo, it was important that the Khedive of Egypt — the governor of the country, which was ruled by the British at the time — give them a suitable wedding present. He commissioned Cartier to make this tiara for the occasion. The piece, which has alternately been described as a scroll tiara and as a tiara featuring marguerite motifs, bears considerable similarity to another piece made for the Egyptians at roughly the same time: Princess Shwikar’s tiara. That piece has never been firmly attributed to Cartier, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the same jeweler was behind both sparklers.
 |
| Crown Princess Margareta wears the piece as a tiara (left) and as a bodice ornament (right) |
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 Axel Jungstedt portrait shown at right above (she’s also wearing the Connaught Diamond Tiara in the image).
 |
| The tiara in Margaret’s wedding gift list |
The way that Margaret has positioned the piece in the portrait fits with its depiction in the illustrated guide to her wedding gifts above. In the illustration, the piece is pictured in bodice-ornament form. When worn as a tiara, it’s flipped so that the scroll elements are at the base.
 |
| Queen Ingrid wears the tiara (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) |
Unfortunately, Margaret had little time to experiment with her tiara collection. When she died in 1920, this tiara was one of the jewels that was inherited by her only daughter, Princess Ingrid. She brought the tiara with her to Denmark when she married Crown Prince Frederik (later Frederik IX) in 1935. Ingrid didn’t wear this piece on her wedding day, but it was through her influence that it has become the official wedding tiara for all of her female descendants in the years since.
 |
| Queen Anne-Marie wears the tiara on her wedding day (Photo: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) |
So far, the bridal wearers of the Khedive have been Queen Margrethe II of Denmark; Princess Benedikte; Benedikte’s two daughters, Alexandra and Nathalie of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg; Queen Anne-Marie; and her elder daughter, Princess Alexia. Anne-Marie’s younger daughter, Theodora, will also be eligible to wear the tiara if she decides to marry.
 |
| Princess Nathalie wears the tiara on her wedding day (Photo: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images) |
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, 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).
 |
| Anne-Marie wears the tiara (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images) |
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.
 |
| Queen Sophie’s Diamond Tiara (Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images) |
For royal jewel lovers, there are few things better than the sudden, surprise reappearance of a jewel that has been hidden away from public view for decades. One of the biggest of these surprises was the reemergence of one of the most impressive diadems belonging to the former royal family of Greece: the diamond tiara of Queen Sophie of the Hellenes.
 |
| Sophie of Greece wears the tiara (Photo: Grand Ladies Site) |
The first owner of this large, intricate diamond tiara was Queen Sophie, who was born Princess Sophie of Prussia. She was the daughter of Princess Vicky, the first child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; she was also the sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II. It’s never been revealed exactly how Sophie acquired the tiara, or who made the piece, but many have guessed that she received it from one of her many royal relatives (possibly her mother or her brother) as a wedding present. Sophie married Crown Prince Constantine, the future king of Greece, in 1889.
 |
| Sophie of Greece wears the tiara (Photo: Grand Ladies Site) |
Sophie wore the tiara as a crown princess and as a queen. The piece is an intriguing combination of modern and traditional styles. Many of the stones are large, rectangular diamonds. But those stones are nestled within more traditional floral designs, which are reminiscent of the ruby tiara owned by the Bernadottes and the sapphire tiara of Princess Elisabeth of Denmark.
 |
| Helen wears the tiara (Photo: The Royal Forums) |
Sophie’s daughter, Princess Helen (who married the crown prince of Romania and gave birth to the country’s last king), was also photographed in the tiara; the portrait was taken by Bassano in 1934, two years after Sophie’s death. In 1938, the tiara was given to Sophie’s daughter-in-law, Princess Friederike of Hanover, the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Brunswick.
Friederike wore the tiara on her wedding day (along with the small nuptial crown of Queen Charlotte of the United Kingdom, which had been won by the Hanoverians in a legal dispute with Queen Victoria). Friederike was the last Greek queen to wear the tiara in public.
 |
| Queen Ingrid of Denmark wears the tiara (Photo: screencap from video) |
Friederike did loan the piece once to another queen: Ingrid of Denmark (who also happened to be the mother of Friederike’s daughter-in-law, Anne-Marie). Ingrid borrowed the tiara during the centenary celebrations of the Greek royal family, an event that started with a state visit from Denmark. Here’s a video that shows Ingrid wearing the tiara; she appears at about the 4:40 mark. The image above is a (fuzzy) screencap from that video.
 |
| Queen Friederike wears the tiara (Photo: AFP/Getty Images) |
Queen Friederike wore the tiara regularly during her time as Greece’s queen; in the portrait above, she’s actually wearing two tiaras (that’s the family’s emerald parure tiara, in necklace form, around her neck). After the Greek monarchy was deposed, though, the tiara vanished from public view for nearly half a century. Friederike still owned the tiara when the family went into exile; although she gave other tiaras to her daughter-in-law, Queen Anne-Marie, she kept this one in her own collection. Most jewel lovers assumed that the tiara had been sold either during the final years of Friederike’s life or after her death in 1981. Even so, there were persistent rumors that the family still had the piece.
 |
| Marie-Chantal wears the tiara (Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images) |
Those rumors were substantiated in spectacular fashion in 2012, when Marie-Chantal, the wife of Crown Prince Pavlos, appeared in Queen Sophie’s tiara at a banquet in honor of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark’s ruby jubilee. The enormous tiara nearly overpowered the diminutive princess, but no matter — the fact that the Greeks still had the piece was the main story of the evening. Why it hadn’t been worn for so long — and why Queen Anne-Marie has never worn it — still remains a mystery.
 |
| Pavlos and Marie-Chantal (Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images) |
Some have speculated that Queen Friederike left the tiara directly to her grandson, Crown Prince Pavlos, just as Queen Ingrid of Denmark willed the ruby parure directly to Crown Prince Frederik. Others have wondered if the piece was inherited by someone else, possible Princess Irene, and was then subsequently acquired by the main branch of the family. Perhaps we’ll never know. All I know is that I am amazed that this piece is still in royal hands and grateful that we get to see it sparkle again after so much time!