It's the tiara everyone is talking about. And, let's be honest, no one expected this to be the royal gem statement of the year. But, here we are. Queen Camilla wore an emerald and diamond tiara that was given to the Royal Family by a very wealthy widow with no descendants. Oh, and it's only been seen in public once before. When it was worn by a royal bride whose name then got attached to it. And, let's face it, Camilla just blew that one out of the water. See why everyone is talking about it now?
The tiara in question once had the rather unmanageable name of the Greville Kokoshnik tiara. The Greville comes from the wealthy woman who left it to the Royal Family when she became worried they didn't have enough jewels of their own. Which only goes to prove that the upper classes have a totally different world view from the rest of us. The Kokoshnik is actually the style of the tiara. In the 19th century, it became very fashionable at the court of the Tsars for royal women to have jewelled headdresses shaped like the traditional pieces worn by peasant women. Again, world views and all that. The style, curved and smooth but with height, is actually very flattering and easy to wear and it soon became popular everywhere. So even when the Tsarist court perished in the Russian revolution, the jewellery design lived on.
However, this tiara has been known for the last seven years as Princess Eugenie's wedding tiara. And that does exactly what it says on the tin. Eugenie wore it for her marriage to Jack Brooksbank at St. George's Chapel, Windsor on October 12 2018. It was a big surprise at the time. Not only had no royal woman worn it publicly since it came into the Windsor vaults in the mid 20th century, its existence was known about but not really confirmed because of its invisibility. The fact that Eugenie wore it in what is her only tiara appearance so far, at a wedding that was televised and pored over in papers, only cemented its links with her. This was Eugenie's tiara. And then Camilla spoke.
The tiara actually belongs to the personal collection of The King so he can loan it to whoever he wants and he was never going to say no to Camilla. However, the choice has been seen as rather meaningful. It comes just weeks after King Charles stripped Eugenie's father of his titles and left the former prince as plain old Mr. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Eugenie and her sister, Beatrice, kept their HRH and title of princess as those had come to them via the 1917 Letters Patent of King George V. Recent reports have claimed The King had considered removing those titles, too, and that Andrew's compliance with his own demotion involved discussions about his daughters status. So are some royal watchers reading too much into The Queen's tiara choice?
It's certainly an unexpected move and one that can only lead to the kind of debate that has taken hold in the few hours since Camilla was seen in the tiara for the first time. Is The Queen sending a message? Is this a public statement of power over the one time 'House of York'? It certainly means that Eugenie's claim to this quasi crown is gone. The tiara is still her wedding tiara but it's also now the tiara of a queen and in all likelihood will be called the Emerald Kokoshnik again. Camilla also wore a serpent shaped necklace, seen as a symbol of rebirth. Emeralds mean loyalty and new starts. It's actually pretty hard not to see this tiara pick as anything other than a right royal statement. And, in truth, perhaps one that needed to be made.
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