Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World
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| Wikimedia Commons |
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| STEVE PARSONS/AFP/Getty Images |
Royal brides often wear tiaras set with diamonds and pearls for their wedding day, but some of the more adventurous royal ladies have chosen tiaras set with colorful stones. Today, we’ve got a look at royal brides who wore emeralds in their wedding tiaras.
When Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha married her first cousin, Grand Duke Ernst of Hesse and by Rhine, in 1894, she wore a tiara set with large emeralds for the festivities. The sparkler was a gift from her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and was part of a suite that also included a pearl and emerald necklace and an emerald bracelet. The marriage was not a success, ending in divorce in 1901, but Victoria Melita kept her wedding emeralds even as she embarked on a second set of nuptials with another of her first cousins, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia. (Read more about the tiara here!)
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| Wikimedia Commons |
For her 1951 wedding to the Shah of Iran, Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary wore an enormous Christian Dior gown and a Juliet cap encrusted with gems. For the reception that followed, she swapped out the cap for a modern parure of diamond and emerald jewels, including a tiara with a sunburst design. When she failed to provide the Shah with children, however, the marriage ended. Soraya left the country, but her emeralds stayed behind, where they were worn by other family members — including the Shah’s next wife, Farah. (More on the tiara over here!)
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| Andreas Rentz/Getty Images |
To provide her new daughter-in-law, Sofia Hellqvist, with a suitable wedding tiara, Queen Silvia of Sweden had one of her diamond and emerald necklaces reworked in Thailand. The result was a diamond palmette tiara with emerald toppers. Sofia wore the tiara with emeralds to marry Prince Carl Philip in 2015, but in later appearances, she revealed that the tiara could also be worn with pearls, or with no topper stones at all. Thrillingly, it was also doubly convertible, able to be worn in a more open halo setting. (More on the tiara here!)
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| Photograph © Stefan from Royal Travel and Events. Do not reproduce. |
This grand diamond and emerald sparkler has been with the Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg for generations, and in June 2017, it came out of the vaults for a family wedding. Sophie of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg chose the tiara, which features distinctive emerald cabochon drops, for her wedding to Constantine Fugger von Babenhausen, in Wertheim. (More on the tiara here!)
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| DANNY LAWSON/AFP/Getty Images |
The most famous emerald wedding tiara in recent royal memory is undoubtedly the grand Greville Emerald Kokoshnik, worn by Princess Eugenie of York for her 2018 wedding to Jack Brooksbank. The tiara hadn’t seen the light of day for decades; it was bequeathed to the Queen Mum by Mrs. Greville in the 1940s, but it hadn’t been worn in public by a royal until Eugenie emerged in the tiara in October. (Learn more about it over here!)
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| Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons |
In the 1950s and 1960s, it was hard to compete with the Pahlavi family in terms of sheer glitter power. This tiara was one of several that Farah Diba received when she married the last emperor of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in 1959.
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| Wikimedia Commons |
This tiara, named for the seven cabochon emeralds that are studded across the top of the piece, was made by Harry Winston in the same year that Farah became queen. The rest of the tiara is made of diamonds — nearly three hundred of them — in shades of pink, yellow, and white. One of the most unusual features of the piece is its base, which is curved, almost mimicking the wings of a bird. She posed for more than one photograph in the tiara, including the 1962 official portrait shown above. She often paired the piece with a necklace, bracelet, and ring set with rectangular, faceted emeralds.
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| Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons |
Farah often took the tiara with her for important state visits. In April 1962, she wore the tiara for a state banquet at the White House in Washington, D.C., during a state visit to the United States.
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| Kennedy Library Archives/Newsmakers |
Here’s a color photograph from the same evening. You’ll also spot another famous jewel, Jacqueline Kennedy’s Sunburst Brooch, in the image. (More about the brooch over here!)
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| German Federal Archives/Wikimedia Commons |
In May 1967, Farah brought the tiara with her on a state visit to West Germany, wearing it for a reception at Schloss Augustusburg in Brühl.
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| Wikimedia Commons |
Like most of the rest of the imperial jewels, this piece was left behind in Iran when the family left following the revolution of 1979. (The jewels were and are considered state property.) You can see it, along with many other pieces, in the country’s Treasury of National Jewels, located in the Central Bank in Tehran.