The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Luxembourg’s Sparkling Bandeau Collection

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Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

The little grand duchy of Luxembourg has a tiara collection to rival most other royal families in Europe. Today we’re looking an interesting subsection of their sparklers: their collection of mid-century bandeaux.

Keystone Pictures USA/ZUMAPRESS/Alamy

We’ll start out journey through the bandeaux with a look at the family’s bandeau tiara set with oval amethysts. In the photo above, taken in 1977, Princess Marie-Astrid (sister of the present grand duke) wears the bandeau with a necklace featuring another oval-shaped amethyst as a pendant.

Cour grand-ducale

More recently, the current generation of the family has worn the bandeau with its coordinating earrings and full necklace. There’s some debate about which stones are set between the amethysts; many believe they are seed pearls, but the rather odd, square setting makes them seem like they might be other gems instead.

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Seed pearls are definitely a major part of another bandeau and its matching parure. Here, Hereditary Grand Duchess Stephanie wears the citrine and pearl suite at the wedding of Princess Madeleine of Sweden in 2013.

Cour grand-ducale

The citrine bandeau has become a favorite tiara of Stephanie’s, and it’s easy to see why: the color of the gems looks lovely with her hair. Most recently, she wore them for the Belgian state visit to Luxembourg in 2019.

Mark Renders/Getty Images

It’s rarer to spot this family bandeau out in the world. The piece is a convertible sapphire and diamond bracelet placed on a tiara frame and worn as a bandeau. Most recently, we saw it on Princess Margaretha (sister of the current grand duke) during a state visit to Belgium in 2007.

Cour grand-ducale

Here’s a view of the same jewel in its bracelet form. Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte wears it on her right wrist in this official portrait.

Christian Aschman/Cour grand-ducale

Here’s one of the newest bandeau-style tiaras in the royal vaults: the diamond and ruby bandeau that belongs to Princess Claire. She wears it here in an official portrait with the coordinating earrings and necklace from the suite, which interestingly are much more substantial than the tiara itself.

NICOLAS LAMBERT/AFP via Getty Images

My favorite tiara from the family’s bandeau collection has to be the aquamarine and diamond bandeau. The piece features large rectangular aquamarines interspersed with diamond-set lattice designs. Above, Princess Margaretha wears the bandeau for the dinner held the night before Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume’s wedding in October 2012.

Albert Nieboer/Royal Press Europe/DPA Picture Alliance/Alamy

More recently, Princess Alexandra sparkled in the aquamarine bandeau for the National Day gala in June 2018.

Which of the family’s bandeau-style tiara would you most like to wear?

Princess Margaret of Connaught’s Tiaras

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Princess Margaret of Connaught wears the Khedive of Egypt Tiara
This month marks the 100th anniversary of a tragic royal event: the death of Princess Margaret of Connaught. Margaret was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and the wife of the future King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden. In May 1920, she died following surgery at the age of 38. When he announced her death, Sweden’s prime minister declared that “the ray of sunshine at Stockholm Palace has gone out.” To remember Margaret’s too-brief life, today we’ve got a look at some of the remarkable tiaras she wore during her time as Crown Princess of Sweden.
Margaret, in court dress, wears the Connaught Diamond Tiara with the Boucheron Laurel Wreath Tiara as a necklace
Many of Margaret’s tiaras were wedding gifts. In this formal court portrait, she wears two of them: the Connaught Diamond Tiara and the Boucheron Laurel Wreath Tiara (as a necklace). She also wears her Irish lace wedding veil. Court portraits like these often confuse modern viewers, because the court dress of Swedish princesses at the time — especially the pairing of tiaras and veils — often resembles a wedding ensemble.
Gustaf Adolf and Margaret on their wedding day, 1905
For her actual wedding, held in Windsor in 1905, Margaret didn’t wear a tiara at all. She secured her Irish lace veil with flowers instead. This veil has become an important royal heirloom. After Margaret’s death in May 1920, it was used to drape her body in her coffin. Before her burial, it was removed and given to her daughter, the future Queen Ingrid of Denmark. Many of Ingrid’s descendants have worn the veil for their own weddings. In 2004, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark even loaned it to her daughter-in-law, Crown Princess Mary, to use on her wedding day.
The Connaught Diamond Tiara (SOREN ANDERSSON/AFP/Getty Images)
But back to the tiaras! The Connaught Diamond Tiara was Margaret’s wedding gift from her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught. The Connaughts bought the tiara in 1904 from E. Wolff and Co. The piece is endlessly convertible, able to be worn as a tiara or in two different necklace settings.
Margaret’s great-granddaughter, Princess Madeleine, wears the Connaught Diamond Tiara (SOREN ANDERSSON/AFP/Getty Images)
After Margaret’s death, the tiara was inherited by her eldest son, Prince Gustaf Adolf. It became the favorite tiara of his wife, Princess Sibylla, and the family still sentimentally associates the tiara with Sibylla. Today, it remains in the Swedish royal vaults, and you’ll often see it worn by Queen Silvia, Crown Princess Victoria, Princess Madeleine, and Princess Christina.
The Boucheron Laurel Wreath Tiara (JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images)
The necklace Margaret wore in that court portrait was the Boucheron Laurel Wreath Tiara taken off its frame and worn as a necklace. The sparkler was also one of Margaret’s wedding gifts, presented to her by her new husband’s grandmother, Queen Sofia of Sweden. When Margaret died, the necklace-tiara was inherited by her third son, Prince Bertil.
Margaret’s great-granddaughter, Crown Princess Victoria, wears the Laurel Wreath Tiara (JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images)
Prince Bertil’s wife, Princess Lilian, wore the tiara for decades. When she passed away in 2013, she bequeathed the tiara to her great-niece, Crown Princess Victoria, who has worn it often in the years since.
The King Edward VII Ruby Tiara (Albert Nieboer/DPA Picture Alliance Archive/Alamy)
Margaret was the niece of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom, so it makes sense that she received a particularly grand wedding gift from them. They presented her with the King Edward VII Ruby Tiara, made by E. Wolff and Co. for Garrard. The diamond and ruby tiara can be removed from its frame and worn as a necklace.
Queen Silvia, wife of Margaret’s grandson, King Carl XVI Gustaf, wears the ruby tiara (Ole Jensen/Getty Images)
The ruby tiara was inherited by Margaret’s second son, Prince Sigvard. The tiara traveled back and forth through the collections of different Swedish royals for years, but it’s now owned by the main branch of the family. Queen Silvia has begun wearing it more and more frequently in recent years.

Margaret’s great-granddaughter, Princess Madeleine, wears the aquamarine tiara (Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

Margaret also received the stunning Swedish Aquamarine Kokoshnik and its accompanying brooch as a wedding gift. The jewels were left to Prince Gustaf Adolf, and today they belong to Margaret’s granddaughter, Princess Margaretha of Sweden. She has graciously allowed the tiara to be worn by other family members in recent years, including Crown Princess Victoria, Princess Madeleine, and Princess Christina.

Margaret wears the Cameo Tiara
Margaret wore another Swedish royal tiara during her lifetime — but this one was a loan. On more than one occasion, she borrowed the Cameo Tiara and its accompanying jewels from Prince Eugen of Sweden, her husband’s uncle.
The Cameo Tiara (SVT)
The Cameos have a long royal history: they were a gift from Napoleon Bonaparte to his first wife, Josephine de Beauharnais. They came to Sweden with Josephine’s granddaughter, Queen Josefina. Today, they’re back in the main line: Prince Eugen gave them to Prince Gustaf Adolf and Princess Sibylla as a wedding present in 1932.
Queen Silvia, wife of Margaret’s grandson, King Carl XVI Gustaf, wears the Cameo Tiara (JONAS EKSTROMER/AFP/Getty Images)
The jewels are now worn by Queen Silvia, who wore the tiara as her bridal diadem. It’s also served as a wedding tiara for Princess Desiree, Princess Birgitta, and Crown Princess Victoria.
Margaret wears the Khedive of Egypt Tiara
Margaret’s collection is also the source of another important royal wedding tiara: the Khedive of Egypt Tiara. The diamond scroll tiara, made by Cartier, was Margaret’s wedding gift from Khedive Abbas II of Egypt. The gift was especially sentimental, because Margaret and Gustaf Adolf had fallen in love in Cairo.
Margaret wears the Khedive of Egypt Tiara as a tiara (left) and a corsage ornament (right)
The lovely jewel was able to be worn as a traditional tiara, or taken off the frame and worn as a corsage ornament. In the portrait on the right, pained by Axel Jungstedt, Margaret wears the Khedive of Egypt Tiara on the bodice of her gown (and the Connaught Diamond Tiara on her head!).
The Khedive of Egypt Tiara (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
When Margaret died, the tiara was inherited by her only daughter, Queen Ingrid of Denmark. All three of Ingrid’s daughters, as well as three of her granddaughters, have worn the tiara on their wedding days.
Margaret’s granddaughter, Queen Anne-Marie, wears the Khedive of Egypt Tiara (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
When Ingrid died in 2000, the tiara was bequeathed to her youngest daughter, the former Queen Anne-Marie of Greece. She continues to wear the jewel (and lend it to other family members) today.
Margaret wears the pearl and turquoise bandeau
Margaret’s wedding gifts also included a large collection of turquoise jewelry. In this portrait, Margaret wears the Connaught Turquoise Bandeau, which is likely made of turquoises and pearls. It’s also quite likely that the piece converted for wear either as a bracelet or a choker necklace.
Margaret’s daughter, Queen Ingrid, wears the turquoise and pearl bandeau (Chronicle/Alamy)
The bandeau was inherited by her daughter, Queen Ingrid. Above, she wears it at the wedding of her cousin, Princess Astrid of Sweden, in 1926.
Margaret’s granddaughter, Queen Margrethe II, wears the Turquoise Daisy Bandeau (KELD NAVNTOFT/AFP/Getty Images)
Margaret’s turquoise wedding gifts also included the Turquoise Daisy Bandeau, which was also left to Queen Ingrid and now belongs to Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. In the portrait above, Queen Margrethe wears the bandeau with additional turquoise and diamond jewels that also belonged to Margaret of Connaught.
Crown Princess Martha wears the Turquoise Daisy Bandeau and Princess Ingeborg wears the Norwegian Emerald Parure (Chronicle/Alamy)
At Princess Astrid of Sweden’s 1926 wedding, Ingrid loaned the Turquoise Daisy Bandeau to her cousin, the future Crown Princess Martha of Norway. But this portrait also features another tiara worn by Margaret of Connaught…
The Connaughts at the 1911 coronation; Margaret wears the Norwegian Emerald Parure
…the Norwegian Emerald Parure Tiara! Princess Ingeborg of Sweden loaned the tiara to Margaret to wear at the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary of the United Kingdom in 1911. Margaret posed with the rest of the Connaught family wearing the emeralds during the festivities.
Queen Sonja wears the Norwegian emeralds (Mark Renders/Getty Images)
Princess Ingeborg gave the emeralds to her daughter, Crown Princess Martha of Norway, and today the emeralds are the grandest suite of jewels in the Norwegian royal vault. Queen Sonja wears them often.
Princess Margaret of Connaught, Crown Princess of Sweden (Grand Ladies Site)
Princess Margaret of Connaught wore fantastic tiaras associated today with all three Scandinavian royal families. Which ones are your favorites?

The Bulgarian Fleur-de-Lis Tiara

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Princess Marie Louise of Bulgaria wears the Bulgarian Fleur-de-Lis Tiara (Wikimedia Commons)

Royal families often own tiaras that are full of symbols related to their countries and dynasties. Today’s sparkler, the fascinating Bulgarian Fleur-de-Lis Tiara, is a particularly interesting example.

Prince Ferdinand and Princess Marie Louise photographed in Austria, ca. 1893 (Wikimedia Commons)

In 1887, Bulgaria’s National Assembly was searching for a new sovereign. The previous ruling prince, Alexander of Battenberg (brother of Prince Henry and Prince Louis, who both married into the extended British royal family), had abdicated a year earlier following a military coup. The assembly found its new prince in Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. He was a well-connected royal, with family ties to the British, Portuguese, and Belgian royal families. He was also a grandson of King Louis Philippe I, who had reigned in France from 1830 to 1848.

Ferdinand was formally elected as the next Prince of Bulgaria in July 1887. His ascension was greeted with shock by many of his fellow European sovereigns; Queen Victoria wrote that he was “unfit” for the role and “should be stopped at once.” Regardless, he had a much longer tenure as sovereign than his predecessor. Soon, he was on the hunt for a royal bride to help him secure the line of succession. This wasn’t an easy task. One British newspaper reported that it was “well known” that Ferdinand had “proposed to half the eligible princesses of Europe,” and had “failed in all his numerous matrimonial ventures in England, Bavaria, Austria, and Belgium.”

Ferdinand’s mother, Princess Clementine, worked for years on negotiations with Robert, Duke of Parma, hoping to arrange a marriage for Ferdinand with Robert’s eldest daughter, Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma. (Robert had a total of twenty-four children; Marie Louise’s siblings included Empress Zita of Austria-Hungary and Prince Felix of Luxembourg.) After several years, Clementine finally succeeded, and the engagement between Marie Louise and Ferdinand was officially announced in February 1893.

Princess Marie Louise, ca. 1893 (Wikimedia Commons)

Prince Ferdinand and Princess Marie Louise met for the first time during their engagement celebrations at the bride’s family home, Schwarzau Castle, in Austria. (Marie Louise’s stepmother, Infanta Maria Antonia of Portugal, was the sister of Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria. She was the sister-in-law of Emperor Franz Josef I.) They married in a Catholic ceremony in the chapel of the Duke of Parma’s Italian villa in April 1893.

The Bulgarian people celebrated the arrival of their new princess with a special national gift: a tiara featuring the country’s national colors, presented on behalf of the women of the nation. The diamond, emerald, and ruby tiara, with its distinctive fleur-de-lis designs, was made by Köchert, the Viennese firm that became famous as court jeweler of the Austrian imperial court. (The fleur-de-lis tiara is sometimes confused with the small crown, or coronet, that was given to Marie Louise by her groom; that crown, also made by Köchert, features fleur-de-lis elements in its design and was set with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires.)

Princess Marie Louise, ca. 1893 (Wikimedia Commons)

Contemporary newspaper reports described the fleur-de-lis tiara as “a superb diadem” that would undoubtedly become “the most conspicuous ornament among the Bulgarian crown jewels.” One paper noted that the tiara was made of “five magnificent clusters of diamonds in the shape of the Bourbon lily. The base of the diadem is made of rubies, emeralds and diamonds, representing the Bulgarian colors — red, white, and green. On the central lily is a ruby of rare brilliancy and value.” Marie Louise often wore the fleur-de-lis tiara with other ruby and diamond jewels from her collection. In this impressive bejeweled portrait, the princess wears the tiara with her ruby and diamond festoon necklace, as well as a ruby and diamond negligee-style pendant brooch.

Philip de Laszlo’s portrait of Princess Marie Louise, ca. 1894 (Wikimedia Commons)

In de Laszlo’s famous portrait of Princess Marie Louise, he depicts her wearing the tiara with the ruby negligee brooch pinned at her neck, plus a diamond and emerald cluster brooch on the bodice of her gown. Her wrists are adorned with more diamond and emerald bracelets.

Although the marriage between Ferdinand and Marie Louise was not a love match, the couple had four children together. Their eldest son, Prince Boris, was born nine months after their wedding. In 1899, twenty-nine-year-old Marie Louise died after giving birth to their fourth child, Princess Nadezhda.

Boris and Giovanna pictured in Assisi at their wedding luncheon, October 1930 (Scherl/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy)

Three decades passed before the tiara was worn in public again. Ferdinand — who was upgraded to the title of tsar in 1908 — passed the throne to his elder son, Boris III, at the end of World War I. In 1930, Boris married Princess Giovanna of Italy, the fourth child of King Vittorio Emanuele I and Queen Elena. Boris had been baptized Catholic but converted as a small child to the Eastern Orthodox faith. His marriage to an Italian Catholic princess was a complicated matter. It took several months of diplomatic negotiations between the families, the governments, and both churches before the engagement could officially be announced by the bride’s parents in October 1930. The couple were pelted with rain and hail when they arrived for their Catholic wedding ceremony at the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi on October 25.

Giovanna wearing the tiara at her wedding luncheon in Assisi, October 1930 (Scherl/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy)

Giovanna did not wear a tiara for the Italian wedding ceremony, choosing instead to anchor her lace veil with a garland of flowers. Afterward, however, she added the Köchert fleur-de-lis tiara to her ensemble for the wedding luncheon that followed at Villa Constanzi in Assisi. The photo above shows the tiara on the new queen (or tsaritsa) at the lunch celebrations; you’ll note that she’s also wearing Princess Marie Louise’s ruby and diamond festoon necklace. She wore the tiara again a few days later, when the couple was married again in an orthodox ceremony at the Alexander Nevsky Church in Sofia. Giovanna subsequently took on the Bulgarian version of her name, becoming known as “Tsaritsa Ioanna.”

Boris and Ioanna had two children, Princess Marie Louise and Prince Simeon, both born before the outbreak of World War II. (Bulgaria and its royal family occupied complicated political territory during the war. In 1943, after a meeting with officials in Berlin, Boris suddenly (and mysteriously) died. He was succeeded by six-year-old Simeon, whose uncle, Prince Kyril, served as regent.

Simeon and Margarita on their wedding day in Switzerland, January 1962 (screencapture)

Simeon II of Bulgaria is one of the most interesting royal figures of the past century. After becoming a monarch as a young child, Simeon’s life went through another upheaval when he was seven. The Soviets invaded Bulgaria, executing Prince Kyril and sending Simeon, his mother, and his sister into house arrest. In 1946, the Bulgarian monarchy was officially abolished by a referendum, and the family went into exile. They fled to Egypt, where Ioanna’s father, the deposed Italian King Vittorio Emanuele, was living. He was educated there until the family was granted asylum by General Franco and allowed to move to Spain. Throughout their life in exile, however, the family managed to hold on to a good deal of their jewelry.

In Spain, Simeon met his future wife: Margarita Gómez-Acebo y Cejuela, daughter of the Marquess of Cortina. Unfortunately, she was especially equipped to understand Simeon’s traumatic childhood, as her parents had been executed during the Spanish civil war. Like Simeon, she had been displaced during the war, living with various relatives in France and Spain. The couple celebrated their marriage with a pair of ceremonies — a civil wedding and an orthodox ceremony — in Lausanne in January 1962. For the religious ceremony, pictured above, Margarita wore the Köchert fleur-de-lis tiara with a tulle veil. The tiara was also worn by Simeon’s sister, Princess Marie Louise, for her wedding to Prince Karl of Leiningen in 1957.

Simeon, pictured in France during his tenure as Bulgaria’s prime minister, November 2006 (STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images)

Simeon and Margarita raised a large family in Spain, and all five of their children — Kardam (who died in 2015), Kyril, Kubrat, Konstantin-Assen, and Kalina — married Spaniards. The family maintains close ties with the Spanish royal family. At the end of the Communist era, Simeon returned to Bulgaria, where his public life took yet another fascinating term. In 2001, he was elected as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, serving in the role for the next eight years.

Simeon and Margarita at Buckingham Palace, May 2012 (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

Though Simeon and Margarita have found a home again in Bulgaria, we haven’t seen the tiara in more than half a century. There’s been loads of speculation about where it is — whether the family still owns it, or if it’s been broken up, or even sold. The word on the street is that the family does still own the tiara, but that it is extremely fragile and unable to be worn. If that’s true, I’d love to see this one restored and brought out for us to see and enjoy once more!