Tea at Trianon: Duchess of Angoulême’s Diamond Tiara

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

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Duchess of Angoulême’s Diamond Tiara

From Royal Watcher:

While the exact origin of this magnificent Diamond Tiara is not exactly known, it was either created by Bapst or Nitot around the time of the restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy, using Diamonds from the French Crown Jewels, possibly created by resetting earlier jewels created for Empress Josephine or Empress Marie Louise. In 1816, Madame Royale, the Duchess of Angoulême was portrayed wearing a sumptuous diamond parure comprising the large Diamond Tiara, two rivière necklaces, a pair of chandelier earrings, a belt buckle, a ring, and her mother’s pair of Diamond Bracelets by painter Antoine-Jean Gros. The Duchess of Angoulême asked her uncle, King Louis XVIII, to allow the Tiara to become her personal property, so the Tiara was reset with diamonds from the Royal Family’s collection, and the older diamonds were returned to the Crown Jewels around 1820. (Read more.)