The extended European royal family suffered yet another loss this week, when Princess Désirée, an elder sister of the King of Sweden, passed away at the age of 87. In her honor, we’re taking a look at a memorable tiara appearance from a family royal wedding in 2013.
When the King of Sweden’s three children married in the 2010s, his four older sisters were able to be present for all of the royal weddings in Stockholm. Princess Désirée was the third of the four sisters, who were known as the Haga Princesses. She arrived for the 2013 wedding of her niece, Princess Madeleine, wearing a gold dress festooned with sequins, paired with the sash and star of the Order of the Seraphim and her brother’s Royal Family Order. She was accompanied by her husband, Baron Niclas Silfverschiöld, who wore the neck badges of the Order of Vasa and the King’s Medal.
Désirée coordinated the golden color of her dress with her choice of tiara, wearing one of the few yellow gold tiara examples from the Swedish royal vaults: the Napoleonic Cut Steel Tiara, an early nineteenth-century heirloom from the Beauharnais family that gleams without any diamonds at all. The tiara’s feathers, leaves, and acorns are all made of highly polished steel, which glows beautifully in candlelight.
With the tiara, Désirée wore a pair of earrings from her personal collection that feature rectangular studs and circle pendants. The ruby and diamond brooch also seems to have been part of Désirée’s own jewelry collection, as she wore it frequently through the years for gala occasions. The royal family owns a similar, but smaller, ruby and diamond brooch which is now frequently worn by both Queen Silvia and Crown Princess Victoria.
Four years after this royal wedding, Désirée was widowed when Niclas died at the age of 82. The couple had been married for 52 years and had three children, Carl, Christina, and Hélène, and five grandchildren. Désirée died on Wednesday at Koberg Castle, the Silfverschiöld family seat in Västergötland.
Last year, as Désirée celebrated her 87th birthday, I shared a lengthy article about her diamond scroll tiara, which was a gift from her grandfather, King Gustaf VI Adolf, and her step-grandmother, Queen Louise. The tiara is, I believe, the same one that Louise received from her brother and sister-in-law, Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, as a wedding gift in 1923.
The death of Princess Désirée comes on the heels of the passing of her cousin, Princess Irene of Greece and Denmark. Tomorrow at Hidden Gems, I’m doing a deep dive on Irene’s year as Crown Princess of the Hellenes, during the time that elapsed between the death of her father in 1964 and the birth of her niece in 1965. The article will be available for paid subscribers on Saturday morning. See you there!
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