Caroline de Guitaut displays Queen Victoria’s Small Diamond Crown (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Tonight is the season finale of Victoria on PBS, and to celebrate, we’re looking at one of Victoria’s signature pieces of jewelry: her small diamond crown.

Queen Victoria’s Small Diamond Crown (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

The crown was made in 1870 by Garrard; that’s the firm’s signature “diamond and dot” pattern at the piece’s base. The crown is packed with more than 1100 diamonds — some of which were likely recycled from the chaine de corsage that originally accompanied the diamond fringe brooch — but it’s tiny, measuring about 10 centimeters in diameter. The crown can be made even smaller by removing the arches.

Queen Victoria wears the Small Diamond Crown, the Coronation Necklace and Earrings, and the Koh-i-Noor Diamond

Because of its size, the crown also extremely lightweight, so it’s no wonder that Victoria favored the piece. Caroline de Guitaut calls the crown “the most recognisable jewel of Queen Victoria’s middle and old age.” In 1870, Queen Victoria was nearly a decade into her mourning for Prince Albert — a period that lasted for the rest of her life. de Guitaut argues that the crown was made to satisfy “the need for a formal head ornament of colourless stones, suitable for mourning.” She notes that Victoria “found it impossible to wear her coloured jewels that were so associated with happier times” after Albert’s death. This is mostly true, but we know that Victoria did wear some of her colorful jewels, including the sapphire coronet and the crown opals, during her long widowhood.

Queen Victoria wears the Small Diamond Crown without its arches, pairing it with diamond and pearl jewelry

Victoria wore the small diamond crown for the first time at the State Opening of Parliament in 1871. It featured in some of the most important portrait images of the monarch during the latter years of her reign. She was photographed in the complete crown for her 1887 Golden Jubilee portrait; her 1897 Diamond Jubilee portrait (actually taken in 1893) featured her wearing the crown without the arches.

Queen Victoria’s Small Diamond Crown (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

When Victoria died in 1901, the crown was placed atop her coffin as it traveled from Osborne to London. Queen Alexandra received the piece after Victoria’s death, and she wore fairly frequently, often to the State Opening of Parliament. Since 1937, the tiny crown has lived in the Tower of London, where it is on display with the Crown Jewels.

One of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Bow Brooches (William Lovelace/Daily Express/Getty Images)

In 1858, Queen Victoria’s jewelry box went through a sudden and rather unexpected transformation. All of the jewels that had once belonged to her grandmother, Queen Charlotte, were awarded to her cousin, the King of Hanover, whose father had claimed them following the death of King William IV. She lost numerous pieces, including a set of diamond bow brooches. Today’s brooches are the trio that she had made to replace them.

One of the bow brooches (Warrick Page/Getty Images)

The three brooches are all made to resemble ribbon bows, and they vary slightly in size from largest to smallest. In 1901, Victoria designated the three brooches as “heirlooms of the crown,” meaning that they pass directly from monarch to monarch, to be worn by queens regnant or consort. When Victoria died, the brooches went to her son, King Edward VII, to be worn by his wife, Queen Alexandra.

Queen Alexandra wears the brooches on her skirt at her first state opening of parliament as queen consort (left) and at her coronation (right)

Alexandra usually wore the three brooches as a set, often cascading them down the front of her skirt, as she did at her first state opening of parliament as queen consort and at her coronation.

Queen Mary wears the brooches with pendants, including the Cullinan III Diamond

After the death of Edward VII in 1910, the brooches passed to King George V and Queen Mary. Each brooch features a tiny loop that allows it to be worn with a pendant, and both Alexandra and Mary used the brooches this way. Mary was even photographed wearing the large Cullinan III stone suspended from one of the bows.

Queen Elizabeth II wears the smallest of the bow brooches during her Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002 (NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images)

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth received the brooches in 1936, but they were never among Elizabeth’s most-worn pieces of royal jewelry. Unlike her predecessors, she usually only wore one bow at a time. Her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, received the brooches on her accession in 1952, and she’s been wearing them regularly for the past 65 years. Like her mother, she generally just wears one brooch at a time. The bows have become some of her favorite pieces, suitable for regular daytime appearances as well as more somber occasions. Notably, she chose one of the brooches for the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997.