Queen Camilla and Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, were among the royals supporting King Charles as he welcomed Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako of Japan to Buckingham Palace for the king’s first state dinner since his cancer diagnosis.
It was an evening of luxury and diplomacy in equal measure, with a dinner of langoustine, pommes Elizabeth, and Cornish turbot accompanied by traditional Japanese folk music—and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. In his speech King Charles celebrated the deep ties between Britain and Japan, including the nations’ shared love of mountain climbing, tea, and the Pokémon franchise—which the king said was a favorite of his grandchildren, likely a reference to Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis.
Among the gathered royals, though, Queen Camilla and the Duchess of Edinburgh were paying tribute to the British royal family itself with tiara choices that honored ties both familial and international.
Queen Camilla donned the Burmese Ruby Tiara, which boasts the rare distinction of being one of very few pieces designed by the late Queen Elizabeth II herself. As Camilla walked down the corridors of Buckingham Palace side by side with Empress Masako, the rubies and diamonds of the tiara glimmered in the colors of the Japanese flag, a touch surely noticed by the palace’s distinguished guests.
But rubies have not always been so prominent in the royal jewelry archives. As The Court Jeweller notes, Elizabeth did not inherit her mother’s own ruby tiara upon accession to the throne in 1953. The Indian Circlet, once owned by Queen Victoria and adorned with rubies by Queen Alexandra in the early 1900s, was much beloved by the Queen Mother, who was recently widowed and planned on wearing the piece for the rest of her career. By the 1970s, Queen Elizabeth realised that a tiara with red rubies, which match the color of the St George’s cross and so many other national flags, was increasingly becoming a necessity for her royal engagements.
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