Princess Anne’s State Visit Tiara Debut in Vienna

This Friday marks the 75th birthday of the Princess Royal, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II and sister of King Charles III. In her honor, we’re devoting our time here for the next several days to some of the interesting jewelry pieces from her collection. First up: a look at one of her first state visit gala appearances, in a family tiara during a trip to Austria.

Princess Anne began her life as a working member of the royal family in February 1969, when she was eighteen. In May, she joined her parents, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, for her first state visit abroad. The trio were scheduled to travel together to Austria for a visit with President Franz Jonas and his wife, Grete, but Anne caught the flu and had to miss the first two days of the trip.

Anne recovered sufficiently to join her parents in Austria on May 7, 1969, landing in Vienna in the midst of a thunderstorm. That evening, she was with Elizabeth and Philip as they hosted the return banquet of the visit at the British Embassy. The event was a grand occasion, with the Telegraph reporting, “About two tons of silver, china and candelabra, had been flown to Vienna for the occasion.”

Both the Queen and Princess Anne wore full gala dress for the white tie banquet, including gowns, decorations, and tiaras. Both ladies wore the sash and star of the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria. The Queen wore the Royal Family Orders of King George V and King George VI, while Anne wore her mother’s Royal Family Order.

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Here’s a color photograph of the royal ladies in their gala attire. The Telegraph‘s correspondent, Gerda Paul, wrote, “The Queen wore an evening dress in two shades of green, high-waisted in Empire style and embroidered with diamanté,” while “Princess Anne wore a straight-cut gown of white corded linen.”

Anne was still in the earliest years of building her personal jewelry collection in 1969, and her tiaras in this era were borrowed from her mother’s collection. On this occasion, the Queen loaned her Princess Andrew’s Meander Bandeau, a tiara that belonged to her paternal grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, the wife of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark. The tiara, appropriately, has a Greek key motif incorporated into its sleek design. Princess Andrew gave the tiara to her daughter-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II, as a wedding present in 1947. Elizabeth never wore the piece in public, and she eventually gave it to Anne in 1972.

For the banquet, Anne kept the rest of her jewelry extremely simple. She wore no earrings and secured her order sash with a small floral brooch. A bracelet on her right wrist was the only other visible jewelry piece of the ensemble.

Of course, there was no way that Anne was going to out-dazzle her mother on an occasion like this. The Queen wore a selection of jewels linked to her grandmother and mother: Queen Mary’s Girls of Great Britain & Ireland Tiara and Dorset Bow Brooch with the Greville Chandelier Earrings, a gift from the Queen Mother. She finished off the look with the Diamond Festoon Necklace commissioned by her father, King George VI, and Queen Victoria’s Diamond Bracelet, worn on her right wrist.