Tea at Trianon: Princess Anne and the Romanov Jewels

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Princess Anne and the Romanov Jewels

From Express:

Princess Anne is the current owner of the Empress Maria Feodorovna choker. It features a large diamond and sapphire clasp at the centre of four strands of pearls with gold as diamond spacers. It can also be taken apart and worn as a brooch and two pearl bracelets. The necklace originally belonged to Empress Maria Feodorovna, wife of Tsar Alexander III.
When the Romanov family fled Russia, after Tsar Nicholas II and his children were murdered in 1917, this choker was among the jewels the Empress brought with her. After her death in 1928 it was inherited by her daughter, Grand Duchess Xenia, who later auctioned a selection of her mother’s jewels in London. Queen Mary of Teck – Queen consort to King George V – brought the choker for a reported £6,000 (roughly £400,000 today) and wore it both as a necklace and disassembled. When she died, the choker was inherited by Queen Elizabeth II, who then passed it on to Anne. (Read more.)