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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Queen Alia’s Cartier Tiara

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It’s hard to find a more collectively glamorous group of royal women than the ladies of the Jordanian royal family. Today’s tiara, the Cartier tiara that belonged to the late Queen Alia, has been worn by three of the country’s queens and princesses.

Alia and Hussein of Jordan at their wedding, 1972

Alia Baha Ad-Din Touqan was the third of the four wives of King Hussein of Jordan. (The first was Princess Dina; the second, Princess Muna, is the mother of the current king, Abdullah II; and the fourth is the American-born Queen Noor.) Alia was the daughter of a Jordanian diplomat and had lived and studied all over the world before marrying King Hussein in 1972.

Rania wears Queen Alia’s tiara, 1999

The diamond Cartier tiara that Alia wore was given to her by the king. It’s reminiscent of a fringe tiara, but really the design is quite abstract and very modern, more linear than floral. (The Jordanian royals seem to favor this kind of contemporary design; Queen Noor also has a tiara that is similar to this one.) The tiara is also intriguing in that it has an exceptionally tall base, requiring serious tiara hair.

Hussein and Alia of Jordan with President Ford, 1974

Just like her tiara, Alia was a rather modern Jordanian queen; she supported women’s suffrage and was a great supporter of children’s charities and the arts. Unfortunately, her tenure as queen consort was short. In 1977, she died in a helicopter crash in Amman. To celebrate the late queen’s life, the country’s international airport was named for Alia — in fact, it’s one of only a few international airports named for a woman.

Princess Haya of Jordan, Sheikha of Dubai ca. 2005

Alia’s only daughter, Princess Haya, inherited her mother’s tiara. (Here’s a portrait of her wearing the sparkler.) The Jordanian royal family doesn’t have a crown jewel collection, and all of their jewels are apparently personal property, generally handed down from mother to daughter rather than retained for the use of future queens.

Rania wears the tiara at a gala dinner in Madrid, 1999

However, this tiara has been worn several times by a subsequent queen consort. Haya, who is now married to the Sheikh of Dubai, loaned the tiara on various occasions to her sister-in-law, Queen Rania, shortly after she became queen. Rania even wore the tiara at her husband’s coronation in 1999, linking Alia’s heirloom tiara with the next generation of Jordanian royals. Rania’s jewel collection has since grown to include other sparklers, but the images from the coronation provide a lovely connection between the country’s past and its future.

Sunday Sparkler: The Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Turquoise Tiara

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When you hear of princess and princesses of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, one very famous member of the family, Prince Albert, may be the first who springs to mind. But although the consort of Queen Victoria may be the most recognized member of the family, there are members of the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha today in Bulgaria, in Belgium, in Sweden, and in their native Germany. Today, let’s have a look at the family’s heirloom turquoise and diamond tiara.

Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany

The current members of the German branch of the SCGs are descended from Albert and Victoria’s fourth son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. Leopold’s descendants ended up with the SCG dukedom that had belonged to Prince Albert’s brother, Ernst. Albert’s eldest son, Edward VII, renounced his rights to the title; his second son, the Duke of Edinburgh, inherited the title but then died without a surviving male heir; his third son, the Duke of Connaught, also renounced his rights; and Leopold died long before he could have inherited the title.

The Duchess of Albany with Alice and Charles Edward

Since Leopold couldn’t inherit himself, his son, Charles Edward, became the last duke in 1900. (As a German member of the extended royal family, he was deprived of his British titles after World War I, and that turned out to be an especially good move on the part of George V, because Charles Edward later became a Nazi.)

Victoria Adelheid wears her turquoises (source)

In 1905, the duke acquired a wife: Victoria Adelheid of Schleswig-Holstein. This turquoise and diamond button tiara originally belonged to her; it is a part of a parure that also included a necklace, a brooch, and a rather impressive pair of large, dangling earrings. Ursula has speculated that the set might have been one of Victoria Adelheid’s wedding gifts, perhaps a present from her parents or her new husband. The maker of the parure is apparently unknown.

Victoria Adelheid (far right) wears the tiara during Princess Sibylla’s wedding festivities (source)

At the end of World War I, the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha family lost their
dukedom. Their royal connections, however, were far from over, and they
managed to keep their jewels (not just the turquoises — they’ve also
held on to the lovely Albany diamond necklace). In 1932, Victoria Adelheid wore the turquoise set at the wedding of her daughter, Princess Sibylla, to Prince Gustaf Adolf, the heir to the Swedish throne. The current king of Sweden is the son of Princess Sibylla, and his close family links to the SCGs mean that they pop up from time to time at major royal events.

In 2010, the turquoise tiara showed up at the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden. The wearer was the American-born Hereditary Princess Kelly, the wife of Hereditary Prince Hubertus. Kelly also wore the tiara at the wedding of Princess Madeleine in 2013 (pictured above).

And Hubertus and Kelly also recently welcomed a member of the next generation of tiara-wearing SCG princesses: their daughter, Katharina, whose royal godparents included Crown Princess Victoria, Prince Konstantin of Bulgaria, Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria, Hereditary Prince Ernst August of Hanover, and Countess Katharina of Faber-Castell.

Saturday Sparkler: The Spencer Honeysuckle Tiara

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This week, lots of news organizations have published stories about the closing of the Diana: A Celebration exhibition, which has appeared in venues all over the world for the past several years. Now that the traveling exhibit is no longer traveling, the objects and items displayed are returning to their rightful owners. That includes two tiaras: the Spencer tiara worn by Diana on her wedding day in 1981, and the tiara that visitors encountered immediately on entering the Diana exhibit: the Spencer Honeysuckle Tiara.

The Honeysuckle is actually the older of the two major Spencer tiaras. It’s been in the family since the nineteenth century. Most seem to think that the first owner of the piece was Charlotte, the wife of John Poyntz Spencer, the 5th earl. If sources that say that Charlotte received it as a wedding gift are correct, that would mean that it has been in the Spencer collection since at least 1858.

The tiara has been remodeled several times over the decades, including shifting of the honeysuckle elements and the meander border that runs along the base of the piece. When Charlotte wore the piece, it was considerably lower, with the honeysuckles placed on the same level as the Greek key design. The original design is clear in John Chancellor’s portrait of Charlotte (pictured above; the original is now in the National Portrait Gallery). Here’s another illustration of an early version of the tiara that also shows the elements on a single level.

The tiara seems to be a bit taller on Cynthia Spencer, the wife of the 7th earl and grandmother of Princess Diana, who wore the Honeysuckle tiara to the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. Today, the tiara is considerably larger, with the honeysuckles placed completely atop the meander base. While Diana got lots of use out of the Spencer tiara, she was never actually photographed in her family’s other diadem. There’s a convincing photoshop job online featuring Diana “wearing” the tiara, but it’s a fake.

Now that the exhibit has come to an end, both the Spencer and the Honeysuckle are returning to their owner. If you only read articles like this one from the Telegraph, you might think that William and Harry will be making room in their safes for these sparklers. But the savvy readers of this blog will know that the owner of the Spencer tiaras is, appropriately, Earl Spencer (pictured above at the exhibition). Diana never owned either of them — not this tiara or the one she borrowed for years while she was Princess of Wales — and so her sons couldn’t have inherited them.

William and Harry will surely receive lots of their late mother’s possessions, but neither of the Spencer tiaras will be among them. Instead, the current Countess Spencer is the person much more likely to eventually be seen wearing the family’s diadems. I’d like to see the Honeysuckle in particular worn again; I saw the Diana exhibition a few years ago, and you would not believe how much it sparkles under the light. Maybe at the next coronation we’ll have a repeat of ’53 and see the Honeysuckle on Karen Spencer’s noble head?