A Celtic Knot for Queen Camilla at the Royal Maundy Service in Durham

Yesterday, King Charles III and Queen Camilla headed to Durham to participate in the annual Royal Maundy service. For the occasion, Queen Camilla wore a special diamond emerald brooch with links to both British and Russian royal history.

The Royal Maundy service, held on the Thursday before Easter, is a part of Holy Week. It commemorates Christ’s Last Supper, and it takes its name, “Maundy,” from the commandment, or mandatum, delivered by Jesus at that meal: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”

For centuries, the service included a ceremony known as the pedilavium, during which church officials, and even sometimes the monarch, washed the feet of the poor. The service also included traditional gifts of alms to those in need. Over time, the service has evolved, and no monarch has taken part in the pedilavium since the days of the Stuarts.

Now, the monarch distributes symbolic alms in the form of small purses of Maundy money to a congregation of specially-invited guests at the service. Because King Charles is 76 this year, 76 men and 76 women were invited to receive Maundy money in recognition for their service to their churches and their communities. The coins are minted specially for the occasion and handed out in small white and red purses. During the distribution, several anthems are sung by the choir, including Handel’s coronation anthem, “Zadok the Priest.”

Last year, Queen Camilla stepped in to hand out Maundy money at the Royal Maundy service when King Charles’s cancer treatment prevented him from attending. This year, she had a more relaxed role at the King’s side. For the occasion, she wore a bottle green Anna Valentine dress with a coordinating hat and a short cape-style jacket.

With the outfit, Camilla wore her gold clip earrings with gold and pavé-set diamond drops, plus her usual necklaces and bracelets. Under her jacket, she also wore a special little bauble with more than a century of royal history: a diamond and emerald brooch in the shape of a Celtic knot.

The brooch comes from the collection of Queen Mary. In this portrait, taken around 1898, she wears it pinned on the neck of her bodice. (Below that, also on her bodice, is another diamond and emerald brooch: a shamrock that now belongs to Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.)

The little knot brooch, which features a central cabochon emerald, matches the illustration and description of a jewel given to her as a wedding present by her husband’s first cousin, Emperor Nicholas II of Russia (then tsarevich), in 1893. In an article on the public display of Mary’s wedding gifts at the Imperial Institute in London that July, the Telegraph described the brooch as “a cabochon emerald and diamond knot.”

The brooch was worn occasionally by Queen Mary’s granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II. She notably wore it on the sash of the Order of the Garter during a state visit from the President of Ireland in April 2014.

Queen Camilla’s first public appearance in the brooch took place almost a decade later. She wore the jewel in Northern Ireland in May 2023 during a post-coronation tour.

And just last week, we saw her wear the brooch on a vibrant green dress for a reception at the British ambassador’s residence in Rome during the state visit to Italy.

Here’s one more glimpse of the brooch peeking out from underneath Camilla’s jacket at the Royal Maundy service. The Celtic knot motif certainly makes sense for the occasion. The design is also called a Trinity knot, and Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the Triduum, a three-day period on the church calendar that leads up to the celebrations of Easter Sunday.