Traditionally, this colorful floral brooch is said to have been a gift to Princess Elizabeth from her parents on the birth of Prince Charles in 1948. (A find from one of our readers, though, shows that Elizabeth wore the brooch several years earlier.) Elizabeth wore the brooch, which is set with diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, in December 1948 for Charles’s first official photographs (pictured above). More than half a century later, she gave a quiet nod to history when she wore the same brooch at the christening of Charles’s first grandson, Prince George.

In 1950, Elizabeth’s father, King George VI, commissioned a new festoon necklace for her from Garrard. They made the necklace using a collection of 105 loose diamonds that he had inherited as heirlooms of the crown in 1936. As we’ll quickly see, the “heirlooms of the crown” are pieces of jewelry that are handed from monarch to monarch and worn by either the queen regnant or the queen consort. Above, the Queen wears the necklace in November 1964 for the RADA Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

In February 1952, King George VI suddenly died. Elizabeth was in Kenya on a royal tour when she became queen, and she had to quickly fly back to Britain. Once there, she had to adjust to myriad changes; her mother, now the Queen Mum, also had to pass along the jewels known as the “heirlooms of the crown”—although we’ll see later in this series that she didn’t actually surrender all of them. The grandest part of the “heirlooms” collection is undoubtedly the diamond and pearl diadem made in 1820 by Rundell, Bridge, and Rundell. It was made for the coronation of King George IV, but since then it has been worn exclusively by queens regnant and consort. Elizabeth donned it in public for the first time in November 1952 at her first State Opening of Parliament as monarch.

The second-oldest jewel that Elizabeth received in the “heirlooms” collection is this diamond brooch, made by Rundell, Bridge, and Co. in 1831 for Queen Adelaide, the wife of King William IV. Originally intended as a clasp for a pearl necklace, the piece has been worn as a brooch by every queen since. Beautiful, detailed photos of the brooch can be seen in Hugh Roberts’s The Queen’s Diamonds. Above, Elizabeth wears the brooch in October 2013.

This set of diamond and amethyst jewelry was originally owned by Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent. Leslie Field notes that the demi-parure is “the oldest set of jewellery in the royal collection.” Queen Victoria designated her mother’s amethysts as heirlooms of the crown. The set includes a necklace, a set of three brooches, a pair of hair combs, and a pair of earrings. Elizabeth sometimes wears one of the brooches, but she has only rarely worn the larger set in public.

The gorgeous diamond and sapphire feather brooch was one of the wedding gifts received by Princess Elizabeth in 1947, given to her by the firm that made it, Carrington. Rather than a deep royal blue, the sapphire is distinctly blue-violet in hue. Elizabeth has worn it regularly during the seven decades since she received it.

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The Nizam of Hyderabad gave Princess Elizabeth perhaps the best wedding gift of all: her choice of jewelry from Cartier. She selected a suite of diamond floral jewelry, including a tiara, which included floral elements that could be detached and worn as brooches, and an elaborate necklace. The Queen eventually had the tiara dismantled, but she still has the brooches and the necklace, which she has loaned recently to the Duchess of Cambridge.

This gold, diamond, and ruby brooch was Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gift from the Jewellers and Silversmiths of Great Britain in 1947. She’s been wearing it regularly for more than 70 years, with frequent appearances at church services, including one outing at the Royal Maundy service, and even one Christmas Broadcast in the early ’90s.

This classic diamond flower brooch features one of the rarest flawless pink diamonds in the world, given to Princess Elizabeth as a wedding present by a Canadian gemologist in 1947. Cartier finished the surrounding brooch during the coronation year of 1953, and Elizabeth has been wearing the spectacular piece regularly ever since. She’s selected it for important portraits, major diplomatic visits, and two of her children’s weddings. Above, she wears it during the Portuguese state visit in October 1955.

The grandest wedding gift that Princess Elizabeth received from her grandmother was this diamond, silver, and gold diadem. Made in 1893, it was a wedding gift to Queen Mary from a committee of British women (the “Girls of Great Britain and Ireland”). Mary had previously had the tiara and its bandeau base separated, and she gifted the two pieces separately to Elizabeth. (She later had them reunited.) The Queen has acquired numerous other tiaras during her ninety years, but this one has always remained a favorite, and today it’s easily her most-worn tiara.

These traditional Indian bangle bracelets were Queen Mary’s wedding gift from the Bombay Presidency in 1893. Made of diamonds set in gold and silver, they are described by Hugh Roberts as “traditional Indian ornaments, usually worn one on each wrist to signify matrimony.” Elizabeth wore them often in the years after her wedding, sometimes stacking them together on one wrist. She wore them this way in the photograph above, taken in 1956 during a ball in Stockholm.

This large, weighty bow brooch was made of diamonds, gold, and silver by Carrington in 1893. It was also one of Queen Mary’s wedding presents, a gift from the county of Dorset. The pieces is one of the largest of the diamond bow brooches in Elizabeth’s current collection, and she’s worn it regularly since her wedding. Above, she wears the brooch for the wedding of Lady Caroline Montagu-Douglas-Scott at Westminster Abbey in July 1951.

This intricate, romantic diamond stomacher can be divided into three, with the separate sections able to be worn as brooches. Queen Mary commissioned it in 1920, using diamonds sourced from two of her dismantled wedding presents (the Kapurthala Stomacher and the Swansea Crescent Brooch). Elizabeth has worn the entire piece on occasion (notably at a dinner party in 2002 to celebrate her Golden Jubilee), but she has more often worn parts of the piece separately as brooches. In the moving image above, from the 1947 display of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gifts, you’ll see the stomacher displayed beside several other pieces also featured in this post.