The recent cancer diagnoses of both King Charles III and Kate Middleton have put the royal family in an unprecedented moment of both scrutiny and event cancellations. The requisite schedule changes have now given Queen Camilla to take on an historic first of a happier variety. On Thursday, the queen attended Maundy services at Worcester Cathedral, and became the first royal consort to ever take part in the centuries old Maundy money tradition, which celebrates community elders with a ceremonial gift. Camilla’s outfit, a leopard print dress under a cream coat by Fiona Clare, might have seemed more eclectic than the usual for the event.
Still, she made a nod to tradition by accessorizing with a pair of brooches referencing the late Queen Elizabeth II and father, King George VI, two gold flower Cartier brooches with small cushion-shaped sapphires and brilliant cut diamonds at their center, both of which once belonged to the late queen. She wore them only occasionally throughout her many years on the throne, but in 1969 author Sheila Young wrote that the queen regarded them as “mementoes from her father.” With one small styling choice, however, Camilla made them her own. The queen used to wear both brooches, one on top of the other, on a single side of her chest, while Camilla separated them by placing them on the shirt’s collar.
According to jewelry historian Leslie Field, who wrote about the brooches in her survey of the late queen’s jewelry collection, the brooches were a gift from George VI, and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, to their oldest daughter. Field notes that the objects were purchased from Cartier on two separate occasions, one in 1942 and the other in 1945. A matching pair with rubies in the center were also given to Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret. (They were later auctioned at Christie’s, and their current whereabouts are unknown.) Though Cartier has never been the official court jeweler—that honor has normally gone to Garrard & Co., who have held a royal warrant since 1843—they have been the particular favorites of a few different generations of royals, including King George VI, who often bought gifts for his wife and two daughters.
During their childhood in the 1930s, the future queen and her younger sister were often given matching pieces of finery, such as the pair of platinum necklaces to which they added pearls throughout their childhood. Despite these occasional parental gifts, as historian and style writer Suzy Menkes notes in her book The Royal Jewels, then-Princess Elizabeth actually started her adult life with a limited collection of jewelry, especially when compared to the treasure trove she would acquire throughout the 20th century. But the choice to give Elizabeth the sapphire set of Cartier and Margaret the ruby one seems to have set them down different paths as jewelry collectors. Her first major jewelry gift was an Art Deco sapphire and diamond Cartier bracelet she received for her 18th birthday, and the first tiara she owned was for her wedding day. One of the most extravagant gifts from wedding gifts from George to Elizabeth was a sapphire necklace featuring 14 stones and an optional pendant and matching earrings, and in 1963 the queen had a tiara designed to match. Before that point, Menkes writes, “most of her jewels were trinkets,” and her modest collection of brooches were “all flowers and mainly in sapphire.”
Margaret, on the other hand, became the royal family’s biggest collector of rubies, and was well known for a even larger ruby and diamond floral brooch from Cartier, which she wore frequently throughout her time as a working royal. Margaret’s noted love for rubies lasted into the 1990s. In his 2009 biography of the Queen Mother, William Shawcross recounts a tale from the day of the 1993 wedding of Margaret’s son, now the Earl of Snowdon. “To mark the occasion, [the Queen Mother] gave Princess Margaret a ruby ring, but rather than handing it to her, she left it for her daughter to find when she was alone after the wedding,” Shawcross wrote. “The princess was touched and wrote to thank her.”
Over the last few years, both the Princess of Wales and Queen Camilla have been seriously leaning into their sapphire collections. Most of Kate’s sapphires, from her engagement ring to the sapphire drop earrings she debuted at the 2022 Trooping the Colour, were once in the collection of Princess Diana. But ever since her husband ascended to the throne, Camilla uses special occasions to break out the notable ones from the collection of her late mother-in-law. Last week she wore what the late queen liked to call the “Albert brooch,” a spectacular oblong sapphire ringed by 12 diamonds that Prince Albert gave to his wife, Queen Victoria, in 1840. For her first tiara moment as consort in November 2022, a state dinner with the president of South Africa, she pulled out the queen’s sapphire tiara and paired it with the George VI sapphire necklace.
The monarch’s annual Maundy Thursday services, which take place in a different cathedral around the country every year, have a much less formal dress code than your average banquet. But by choosing the sapphires that one monarch gave to the next, she pointed to the moment’s significance without appearing too grand. There’s a bit of a joke embedded in the choice of these particular brooches. Though Camilla, at the age of 76, is a senior citizen herself, the event is meant to recognize church and community service of people 70 and up, and recipients are often in their 90s. What better way to tip her at the things she can still learn from those around her than to wear a treasure that dates back to their younger years.
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