Worst Royal Jewels 1

[Jane1]

It is something about opals..so often they look tacky and cheap, even though they can be quite lovely.

 

[hofburg]

It is something about opals..so often they look tacky and cheap, even though they can be quite lovely.

I think it has to do with the design rather than a particular stone.

 

[Eliza]

OMG that's truly ugly.... no wonder HM has never worn it
But that aside, Opal is a very beautiful stone, it set correctly. My late mother in law left me a very old opal ring - it's shape is oval and surrounded by small diamonds - very old fashion setting and it's very beautiful...

 

[LynnW]

It looks like a Christmas ornament.

Or a St. Patrick's day hat. Whichever, Rania's tiara is really a waste of nice jewels.

 

[Warren]

There was a raging discussion about that going on in Camilla's jewelry thread when she first wore it. I believe the consensus is that it's open now.

There is no visible evidence that the Durbar tiara is no longer a diadem. Until we see something to the contrary we can just as validly conclude it is still intact.

You can't leave this image just hanging. Do you have a photo? Asked the noble Idriel?

Thomas, I did the set up and left it open for your punchline, and you repay the favour by misquoting my name!

 

[LaChicaMadrilena]

Spanish tiaras wasn't mentioned here at all (fortunately)! They are all absolutely beautiful, quite modest but also regal. I love Sofia and Letizia's wedding tiara (the Prussian one) and the floral one as well.

 

[norwegianne]

I think some tiaras are quite horrifying, but for some of them - it really depends on the wearer. A tiara that looks good on someone - may look terrible on someone else who has a different age, shape of head or hair-do.

 

[Margrethe II]

For a really awful piece of jewelry, take a look at this opal piece of jewelry that Elizabeth II received as a gift. Is it a necklace; is it a tiara? Who knows? The good Queen has thankfully never worn it.

http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=110939&d=1110972771

HM the Queen has worm it, but only once I believe...it was either a gift from the people of South Australia or Australia as a whole...can't quite remember but the Queen did wear it.

Such a shame about the opal...the setting of the diamonds is quite beautiful!

"MII"

 

[norwegianne]

If the Opal was the other way around, and the tiara was more flat, would it look better?

 

[ysbel]

I agree, MII. The setting would have looked better with a smaller stone, I believe. But I imagine that the giver thought more enhancing their own status and publicity by giving the Queen an enormous opal rather than giving her something she could really use.

It's a shame because if they had given her a beautiful piece of opal jewelry with a smaller stone, she would have worn it more often and people would always refer to it as the Australian opal as they did with the Star of Africa which was a gift from South Africa.

I wonder what other horrid gifts, jewel and non-jewel, the Queen has received that has remained in the vault. That would make a truly worst royal jewels thread but I think we'll never see them.

 

[HRHAmy]

Here are a few more jewels...
Note to Sofia and Margrit: don't convert any already small necklaces to tiara's it just doesn't work.

1. Queen Sofia of Spain's ruby and diamond converted necklace. This to me does not look like a tiara, this should stay as a necklace I hope she doesn't pass it on to Letezia to wear as a tiara. http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17183&d=1063731745

2. Princess Margrit, yet another tiara we can not see! I think they are emeralds but who knows! If this is a converted necklace then yet again this should stay as a necklace, what's the point in having a tiara if you can't see it? http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=158315&d=1118588268

3. Now I'm not sure if this is a family heirloom or not but I think it should stay in the vault! I've never been one to like turquios, yes it is an interesting stone but I don't think it has any place on this necklace or earrings. And whomever posted the hideous "snake" necklace for Camilla, Thank you! http://pro.corbis.com/images/DWF15-259851.jpg?size=67&uid={37d47256-a5af-4e01-ae6d-fa7ef2b9863b}

4. Now this has been circulating around the Princess Caroline jewelry forum for a while, this I just don't understand. This necklace and earrings, first of all what is it? shells or something? and what is it made out of? Looks like plastic to me. It's post # 144 But I could post Caroline's whole jewelry box on here, she only wears decent jewels when they are her mother's, other than that they look horrible to me.
http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums/f20/princess-caroline-jewelry-1006-8.html

5. Now I don't think this is a horrible jewel set but doesn't it bare a striking resembelance to Mary's ruby tiara set. Hmmm!
http://pro.corbis.com/images/DWF15-712159.jpg?size=67&uid={50ba2a17-82dc-4168-8a07-3fb1dc6949b1}

 

[magnik]

Yes, this Sofia's tiara probably would look better as a necklace, as a tiara it's terrible!!! What happen with the other Spanish taras?
I'm not a big fan of the Duch tiaras - some of them.
Camilla need some more jewelery. This is well...
About Ann-Marie jewelery, the - necklace came from Mary's ruby tiara and necklace.

 

[Marengo]

I actually like the necklace/tiara Queen Sofia is wearing. Princess Margriets tiara (which belonged to Duchess Louise of Brunswick, sister of King Willem I) was always a tiara. Laurentien and Maxima wore this one with pearls. The tiara disappears in the hair, as do most tiara's on Margriet and Beatrix.

 

[Louise]

About Ann-Marie jewelery, the - necklace came from Mary's ruby tiara and necklace.

I would just like to clarify that the necklace is NOT from the danish jewel chest. The ruby parure that Anne-Marie i wearing was given to the first greek queen by the king, because he thought that she looked lovely in rubies(read that somewhere, don't remember the exact book). hope this helps

 

[magnik]

Thanks. My mistake. I always thought that it's from Danish. I don't know why maybe becouse they look little similar?

 

[EmpressRouge]

Thanks. My mistake. I always thought that it's from Danish. I don't know why maybe becouse they look little similar?

I believe the mentioned ruby set came to the Greek royal family from Russia, via Queen Olga.

 

[magnik]

I believe the mentioned ruby set came to the Greek royal family from Russia, via Queen Olga.

"This parure is one of the oldest parures in the Greek royal family and can be traced all the back to Queen Olga, who recieved them because rubies looked so nice on her.
It has lived an interesting life, belonging to various brances of the Greek royal family, but it was bought back by King Paul I (father of King Constantine)
Queen Anne-Marie recieved the parure as a wedding present from her parents-in-law.

The parure consists of a tiara, necklace, brooches and earring.
It is set with rather big rubies and diamonds.

The necklace can be worn long or short, and with- or without the drop pendants.
The Queen has 5 drops, which she can put on the necklace.
Both brooches can be worn with- or without drops."

More here http://www.slaikjaer.com/jewellery/anne-marie2.html

 

[Thomas Parkman]

Dear Warren:

Mea Culpa, mea maxima culpa. I have misquoted your name. Horrors. Please accept my most abject apologies. I can only hope that someday you will forgive me, but you will understand that I was in a state of total shock and dismay. All my delusions about royalty being models of superb taste and elegance had just been blasted out of the glalaxy. Had come crashing to the hard cold and cruel ground of reality.

Take that space trip aquamarine number of Princess Maxima. Now really, is she receeving messsages from outer space. Everyone has said that this or that is the ugliest thing ever seen. Yet all agree that the weeds growing out of QMII's head look the worst. She looks like the queeen at the botton of the barrel in the 6o's movie Voyage to the bottom of the World. Color just fits right in.

So if in my state of total shock I have misquoted or misatributed such and such, you must remember I am a sensitive soul. It took me years to get over what they did in the 1920's to poor Rameses II. So you can just imagine what this has done for me. Cheeers. Thomas Parkman (BTW it is Parkman, not Parkham but then I have been called so much worse in my lifetime, and all of it merited)

 

[HRHAmy]

I'm not a fan of this tiara, I don't particularly like turquoise on tiaras.

http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=210300&d=1131310362

 

[Elspeth]

That tiara has interchangeable stones, and it looks quite a lot better in its other incarnations. It's rather a delicate tiara for opaque stones like turquoises.

 

[Warren]

Dear Warren:
Mea Culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Grudgingly accepted, and happily fixed. (refer original)

 

[Nefertiti]

It took me years to get over what they did in the 1920's to poor Rameses II.

What happened to Rameses II in the 1920's? Or were you thinking of Tutankhamen and Carter?

 

[Thomas Parkman]

The ultimate indignity

Actually, dear members, the poor royals have really had a time of it. Take the beheading of Marie Antoinette. Awful. They did not just chop off the poor woman's head they did even worse!!! And then they replaced these admittedly no so great people with Napoleon, the supreme egoist. Revolutions are usually dumb affairs. They almost always make matters much, much worse. Witness poor witless Nicholas II and his pathetic czarina. Better them than Vladimir Ilyich and Josep whatever any day of the week.

As for poor Rameses II, they hauled him off, sans mummy case, his remains that is, and put them on display in the Cairo Museum, if my memory serves me. In a glass case, no less. Now how would you feel if three thousand years from now you knew that people were going to be walking by and looking at you on display in a glass case. The insensitivity of it all is just appalling. Cheers. Thomas Parkman

PS. Speaking of appalling. The jewelry in this thread is nothing less than revolting, where on earth did you people find it?

 

[HRHAmy]

PS. Speaking of appalling. The jewelry in this thread is nothing less than revolting, where on earth did you people find it?

You have our beautiful yet at times outragoues royals to thank for the appalling jewelry. Some of them, at times mean well with the stones but somewhere in the transaction it gets lost and they end up with a horrible piece. But hey, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It just so happens that all these eyes don't really like what they see.

 

[Saturn]

1. Queen Sofia of Spain's ruby and diamond converted necklace. This to me does not look like a tiara, this should stay as a necklace I hope she doesn't pass it on to Letezia to wear as a tiara. http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17183&d=1063731745


Yes, I agree with you, this is a nice necklace but as a tiara it looks horrible, fortunately Sophia only has worn it once.
by the way, the floral tiara, was a necklake originally, but sophia converted it in a tiara though she wore it as a necklace on the evening gala before she married to JC.

 

[Crown Jewel]

I think jewels are beautiful no matter what but there are times when they are put in a weird setting or paired with other not so good looking jewels, then the pieces, for example: tiara, necklace, brooch etc. look ugly. I was wondering if you have a piece that just was not esthetically pleasing to your eye in one way or another.

I'll go first, for some reason I didn't like Sophie Countess of Wessex's wedding pearl necklace that Edward designed for her. To me it looked tacky, just the way the pearls came down into a cross and then to make it worse Edward threw in those big black pearls. I'm all for pearls, I think they're very beautiful but this necklace struck me as weird looking. It would have been better if Edward maybe put the pearls on a gold pendant cross with a plain gold chain or used the pearl necklace but put a big pearl in the center. To me this one just didn't hit the mark. Here's a pic:

http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=4084&d=1050006256

I agree with you Amy, the necklace looks out of balance on her and with her gown. Do you know if she has worn this necklace since the wedding?

 

[pollyemma]

I dont believe she has. personally i really liked the necklace. it was sort of medieval. it was the only thing that salvaged her wedding outfit. the dress was so ill-fitting.

 

[lizz70]

How about the tiara worn by Queen Dina on her marriage to King Hussein - very elegant and delicate in comparison to some of the monstrosities shown here. Sorry don't have a pic but felt the need to look at something tasteful following the golden poppies and opals

 

[ysbel]

I agree with you Amy, the necklace looks out of balance on her and with her gown. Do you know if she has worn this necklace since the wedding?

I wouldn't call Sophie's necklace the worst royal jewel. I think the design would work if Edward had just added an extra pearl under the black pearl to give the cross some more distance from the necklace. As it is, the necklace overshadows the cross.

I think it would have really looked nice if he had made the necklace all white pearls and hung a black pearl from it to hang the cross from.

 

[Thomas Parkman]

I couldn't agree with you more.

Dear Members,

At the risk of offending by misquoting the name of one of the esteemed writers on this board-sorry, folks, but my feeble remnants of a brain is a sieve-I will simply refer to the above writer and say I completely agree that the poppy number and the opal thing take the cake. That opal looks like malignant gall stone or some such. The type of thing they haul out before the sick patient to persuade him or her to have the old gall bladder removed forthwith. As for the star trek poppy number, Henry VIII would have had her hauled off to the Tower and beheaded had she dared appear in public or private toting such a contraption about.

I agree with another writer, could somebody please find some tasteful, lovely trinkets of diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, pearls and rubies to soothe my rattled nerves. Cheers. Thomas Parkman