When Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent decided how to divvy up her jewels in her will, she followed an old-fashioned royal principle: give the jewels to your sons so that their wives can wear them. Where daughters are concerned, it’s their husbands’ families who are responsible, then, for bejeweling them. Because of this, our Magpie of the Month, Marina’s daughter Alexandra, doesn’t have many Kent heirloom jewels in her possession.

Instead, she has smaller collections of gems, probably acquired at some point during her marriage to Sir Angus Ogilvy. Today, we’re chatting about her diamond and emerald jewelry, a collection of various pieces that she wears at both day and evening events.

Alexandra has a few items of diamond and emerald jewelry with a geometric, almost Art Deco style. These include a pair of diamond and square-cut emerald studs, worn above at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2012.

She sometimes pairs the emerald earrings with a diamond and emerald butterfly brooch, as she did at the Royal Academy of Art in 2012…

…but sometimes she wears the earrings with a gorgeous diamond and emerald brooch, which I’d classify as one of the most stunning jewels in Alexandra’s collection.

She’s also worn the diamond and emerald brooch as a hat ornament. It coordinated perfectly with the green velvet hat she wore to the diamond wedding service for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in 2007.

Alexandra also has another large emerald in her collection. It forms the clasp of a pearl choker, similar to the pieces worn by many of her fellow royal ladies, including the Duchess of Cornwall and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. The emerald, which appears to be a cabochon, is surrounded by diamonds. Above, Alexandra wears the choker at Margaret Thatcher’s 80th birthday party in 2005.

The most high-profile outing for the emerald and pearl choker, however, was the dinner held the night before Prince William’s wedding in 2011. In the photograph above, she also appears to be wearing an emerald ring on her right hand.

Princess Alexandra, our Magpie of the Month, prefers to wear choker necklaces that sit close to the throat. You’ll see her most often wearing a pearl choker with a diamond-shaped clasp, but she does have other necklaces in her collection, including today’s piece.

The necklace is intricate and appears to be primarily set with diamonds, though good close-ups are elusive; from some angles, I think I can see pearls in the setting as well. (That is, of course, if it’s not costume jewelry — but Alexandra’s pieces mainly seem to be the real deal.) To my knowledge, this necklace hasn’t been discussed much, and I don’t know its provenance. However, I do know that photographs show Alexandra wearing it for at least the past twenty years. The image at the top of this post shows her wearing the necklace at a gala event in January 1995.

The choker has made appearances at some big family milestone events for the Windsors. She selected the necklace for the 70th birthday party for her brother, the Duke of Kent, in 2005, and a year later, she wore the same necklace to the Ritz for the Queen’s 80th birthday party. Choker necklaces aren’t always easy to wear, but on elegant Alexandra, this one’s a winner for me.