Section:GDN 1N PaGe:9 Edition Date:220917 Edition:01 Zone:
Saturday 17 September 2022 The Guardian •
Anatomy of a crown
2,868 diamonds,
17 sapphires, four
rubies, 11 emeralds
and 269 pearls
Esther Addley
T 3
he Imperial State
Crown, the latest
incarnation of
which has been
resting on the
Queen’s coffin
as thousands have filed past
this week, has witnessed many
resonant moments in history, and
a few less majestic ones too.
After the death of the Queen’s
grandfather, George V, for
instance, the king’s coffin was
being transported from King’s
Cross station in London with the
crown on top when the jolting
of cobbled streets caused the
diamond-encrusted globe on
top, and the cross and sapphire
it supports, to snap off and roll
into a gutter.
Though it was hastily
retrieved, the dead monarch
lay in state under a mutilated
crown, which many in the
crowd, including the new king,
Edward VIII, took as a bad
omen. Sure enough, 11 months
later he abdicated.
The tradition of crowns
representing royalty is “a
time-honoured thing seen in
cultures across the world and
through deep time,” notes
Anna Keay, a former curator at
the Tower of London who has
written the official guide to the
crown jewels. “The business
of wearing something on your
head that speaks of your status
as a special person – we see it
through millennia.”
Enchanting or repulsive, in
other words, the vast, ridiculous
excess of the crown’s 2,868
diamonds, 17 sapphires, 11
emeralds, four rubies, and 269
pearls is its symbolic point.
These are some of their stories:
1
St Edward’s sapphire
This may be the oldest
stone in the crown,
having been buried as a
PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES
ring, according to legend,
with King Edward the
Confessor in 1066 (and dug out of
his grave a century later). Edward
had given the ring to a beggar,
the story goes, who turned out
to be St John the Evangelist. The
remarkable Wilton diptych, now
Sent at 16/9/2022 18:39
Explained
The jewels
1
3
2
4
in the National Gallery, may show
Richard II wearing it in a ring.
On the other hand – this could
be a different sapphire entirely.
After the civil war, the medieval
crown jewels were broken up,
melted and sold.
Charles II had new regalia made
at the Restoration from whatever
jewels he could reacquire; this
sapphire wasn’t added until the
Victorian era.
“The difficulty is it is very hard
to confidently identify any of these
gems to say confidently that they
are the ones from before,” says
Keay, who is now the director of
the Landmark Trust.
In the case of the sapphire,
disappointingly, “I don’t think the
▲ The queen said ‘I like to think of case is very strong.”
[the ruby] being worn by Henry V’ “In crown terms it’s quite small,”
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
she adds. “Obviously, in everyone
else’s terms it’s enormous.”
2
The Black Prince’s
ruby
Actually a 170-carat
spinel, it is certainly a
very ancient unfaceted
jewel that was pierced
at some point in its history (a little
visible lump is a ruby plugging the
hole). The Black Prince is said to
have demanded it in exchange for
helping Peter of Castile (variously
known as “the Just” or “the Cruel”
depending on one’s point of view).
Peter had taken the stone from Abu
Said, the ruler of Granada, stabbing
him to death while he was trying
to surrender, which may settle the
question of the nickname.
A delightfully dated 1960s film
9
‘Apparently [the
manager] just dug
[the diamond] out of
the rock face with
his walking stick’
Queen Elizabeth II
On the Cullinan diamond
available
av
Queen
Q
saying
sa
on YouTube shows the
talking about the crown,
of the ruby: “I always like
to think of it being worn by King
Henry
H V during the Battle of
Agincourt.”
A Richard III may also
have
h had it on his helmet when
he
h was killed at the Battle of
Bosworth,
B the Tudors retrieving it
before
be it ended up with his body
under
u a car park.
Queen Elizabeth’s
earrings
The Imperial Crown
is so named not
because of the British
Empire, but because
of its closed arch form, which
Henry VIII adopted (instead of
H
an open coronet) to signal his
supposedly imperial status.
su
Dangling from the centre of the
D
arches and just seen are four
ar
large pear-shaped pearls.
la
According to the Royal
Collection Trust, these have
C
been linked to seven pearls that
be
Catherine de Medici gave to her
C
daughter-in-law, Mary Queen of
d
Scots. Elizabeth I may have later
Sc
worn them as earrings, though
w
she apparently preferred pearls
sh
on her costume.
On the other hand, notes the
trust, “it appears that at least two
tr
of the pearls did not enter the
collection until the 19th century”,
co
which undermines some of the
w
Elizabethan romance.
E
4
Cullinan II
So named because,
even at a boggling 317
carats, it is not the
biggest jewel cut from
the Cullinan gem,
the
th biggest uncut diamond ever
discovered.
d
That, at 531 carats, is in the
Sovereign’s
So Sceptre, which is also
currently perched on top of the
coffin in Westminster Hall.
Though some in the continent
would undoubtedly welcome it
back, the “Second Star of Africa”
does not have a particularly
disputed origin – unlike the Koh-i-
Noor diamond, which is currently
set in the Queen Mother’s crown,
which very much does.
The Cullinan diamond was
found in a mine in South Africa in
1905 – “apparently [the manager]
just dug it out of the rock face
with his walking stick,” according
to the Queen. The government of
Transvaal bought the stone and
presented it to Edward VII on his
67th birthday.
“There are two smaller pieces,”
the Queen continued, “which my
grandmother always referred to
as ‘the chips’.”