Queen Anne-Marie’s Remarkable Romanov Emeralds in Copenhagen

Tomorrow, Queen Anne-Marie, the last Queen of Greece, celebrates her 79th birthday. In her honor, we’re devoting today’s article to a look at one of her glittering gala appearances, which took place a decade ago in her native Copenhagen.

In April 2015, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark celebrated her 75th birthday. Royal relatives and friends from across Europe descended on Copenhagen to attend her birthday festivities. Among the guests were her youngest sister, Queen Anne-Marie, and her husband, the former King Constantine II of Greece. They arrived for a banquet at Christiansborg Palace wearing full gala dress and decorations, including the sash and star of Denmark’s Order of the Elephant and the Commemorative Badge of the Centenary of the Royal House of Greece. Among her other decorations, Anne-Marie pinned the portrait order of her father, the late King Frederik IX of Denmark, to her gown.

The celebrations were Danish, but Anne-Marie’s jewels for the evening had roots in the Romanov dynasty that once ruled Russia. She wore a tiara, earrings, necklace, and brooch that are set with luminous cabochon emeralds, brought to Greece by Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia, the wife of King George I of the Hellenes. Queen Olga wore the emeralds in various configurations, affixing some of the stones to fabric kokoshniks and suspending the long, pear-shaped pendants from necklaces.

The emeralds were passed down through the family, eventually arriving in the jewelry box of Queen Elisabeth, the wife of Olga’s grandson, King George II. She had the emeralds set permanently in a diamond tiara, the shape of which echoes the kokoshniks worn by Olga and her Russian relatives. You’ll note, however, that the diamond elements set between the emerald and diamond clusters are in the shape of the letter “E”—for Elisabeth, of course.

The emeralds were later treasured by Queen Friederike, and since the 1960s they have been worn by her daughter-in-law, Queen Anne-Marie. They remained in the family’s collection even after Constantine and Anne-Marie went into exile in 1967. She has continued to wear them for gala occasions in the years since, often at the courts of Denmark, Sweden, and Spain. (Anne-Marie is an aunt of the present Kings of Denmark and Spain and a first cousin of the King of Sweden.)

For Queen Margrethe’s 75th birthday gala, Anne-Marie wore Elisabeth’s kokoshnik tiara, plus the brooch and earrings from the parure. She also suspended three more of the  emerald pendants on a diamond necklace that belonged to her Danish royal grandmother, Queen Alexandrine. There were more jewels, too: a diamond and emerald bracelet on her right wrist, gold and diamond bracelets on her left, and a large diamond ring on her right hand.

Here’s one more look at Constantine and Anne-Marie in their gala attire for the dinner. Note the array of diamond stars on Constantine’s jacket—Denmark’s Order of the Elephant, and Greece’s Order of the Redeemer, Order of George I, and Order of the Phoenix—as well as the elegant pleating detail on the back of Anne-Marie’s gown.