Queen Victoria’s Pearl and Diamond Tiara

Queen Victoria’s jewelry collection was legendary, and new pieces were added right up until the end of her long royal life—including today’s jewel, her diamond and pearl tiara, later worn by the Duchess of Connaught.

The story of this diamond and pearl fringe begins with a fascinating royal man: the Aga Khan III. Sultan Muhammad Shah became the Imam of the Nizari Ism’aili branch of Shia Islam in 1885, when he was just seven years old. The young Aga Khan was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and he retained strong ties with the British royal family throughout his life.

In May 1898, when he was twenty, Queen Victoria made Shah a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire. Two months later, on July 13, 1898, the Aga Khan arrived at Windsor Castle to receive the insignia of the order. Queen Victoria performed the private investiture with her son, the Duke of Connaught, by her side. In return, Shah also offered a jewel to the Queen. That evening, she wrote in her journal that the Aga Khan “presented me with a most beautiful tiara in pearls & diamonds, which can also be worn as a necklace.” The next evening, Shah was a guest at a dinner party at the castle, with the Duchess of Albany and Princess Beatrice also in attendance.

The diamond and pearl tiara given to Queen Victoria by the Aga Khan is said to be this one, later worn by the Duchess of Connaught. She was photographed in the tiara shortly after Victoria’s death, suggesting that it was a gift or an inheritance around 1901.

This photograph from the same session was published widely in British papers and magazines in June 1902, around the time of King Edward VII’s originally-scheduled coronation. (The ceremony was pushed back to August after the King developed appendicitis.)

History records the Duchess of Connaught wearing the diamond and pearl tiara for a very important family occasion: the wedding of her daughter, Princess Margaret, and the future King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden in June 1905. In Sydney Prior Hall’s painting of the ceremony at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, the Duchess can be seen wearing the tiara as she stands between the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Sweden.

In June 1911, the Duchess appears to have loaned the diamond and pearl tiara to her younger daughter, Princess Patricia of Connaught, to wear for the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary in London. Patricia is standing between her parents in this photograph. In the image, the Duchess wears her diamond shamrock tiara, while Crown Princess Margareta wears an emerald tiara and jewels loaned by her husband’s aunt, Princess Ingeborg.

It’s not clear precisely what happened to Queen Victoria’s tiara of diamonds and pearls after the death of the Duchess of Connaught in 1917. The tiara was likely inherited by one of her children, but it seems to have faded from the historical record by that point.