Wilhelmina — Queen of the Netherlands | Simple Appearance, Million‑Dollar Royal Jewels – HT
In October 2018, Queen Máxima of the Netherlands walked into a state banquet at Buckingham Palace wearing a tiara that hadn’t been seen in public for 46 years. The photographs went everywhere. At the top of it sat a pear-shaped diamond, 39.75 carats, the color of seawater in shallow sunlight, purchased in 1690 by a king as a gift for his wife.
The woman behind that entire collection, the one who assembled it, wore it, and made sure it survived, was described by Time magazine as dressing like a dumpy Dutch housewife in frumpy hats, flat shoes, and baggy tweeds. She never pierced her ears. On the day she abdicated, she told her security detail to get out of the car because she was, in her words, not a queen anymore.
Her name was Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. And what she left behind is still being worn. Thank you for all your likes and comments. It means so much that you’re here for these stories. If you want more royal jewelry history, subscribe and hit the notification bell. Wilhelmina is just the beginning. The Stuart diamond, a stone with 300 years of opinions. The stone has a name.
Not all diamonds do, but this one earned it. Around 1690, King William III of England, simultaneously Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, bought it as a gift for his wife, Queen Mary II. A jeweler suggested cutting it into two smaller stones. Mary refused. She had it cut in Amsterdam into a single pear shape and set into a brooch.
Then she died of smallpox in 1694. William followed in 1702. No heirs. The diamond returned to the Netherlands. Queen Anne of England sued for it. She lost. Over the next century, it traveled wherever the House of Orange traveled, into exile, into London jeweler’s hands for a redesign as a pendant necklace, and back again when the monarchy was restored.
In 1897, Queen Emma commissioned the Frankfurt jeweler Edward Schürmann and company to build something entirely around it. The resulting Stuart diamond tiara weighs 2,400 g. Six sections of openwork scrolls and flowers, topped with 10 large rose-cut diamonds. The whole structure designed to come apart into earrings, pendants, or a simpler bandeau.
At the very top, the Stuart diamond itself, 39.75 carats of greenish sea blue. Queen Wilhelmina wore the full tiara for her inauguration on September 6th, 1898, at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. She was 17. Queen Juliana wore it one last time in 1972. Then it went into storage, not sold, not damaged, simply put away, and stayed there for 46 years.
In October 2018, Queen Máxima wore it to the state banquet at Buckingham Palace. Deep blue gown, the Stuart diamond at the top, catching chandeliers in a room where Queen Victoria had once received foreign dignitaries. The photographs spread across every royal jewelry account within hours. For followers of the Dutch collection, the appearance was genuinely startling.
Many had assumed it was too heavy or too fragile to wear again. Máxima wore it like it had been waiting. She came back to it in 2021 at the state banquet for the South Korean president at Huis ten Bosch. This time with a crimson gown, the greenish tint of the diamond reading almost turquoise against the red. The photographs from that evening are among the best the tiara has ever had.
Dutch diamond stars, a constellation of diamonds that has come to symbolize elegance and royal continuity in the Netherlands. These jewels date back to 1879 when Queen Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont received them as a wedding gift. There are two sets of stars with 10 and 12 rays, crafted in different sizes, allowing them to be arranged in countless ways.
From tiaras to brooches, even woven into the design of gowns. Her daughter, Wilhelmina, who reigned for nearly 60 years and became a symbol of resilience during the World War II, also wore the diamond stars with quiet strength and dignity. The tradition continued with her daughter, Juliana, who embraced a more creative approach, wearing the stars in her hair, along ceremonial sashes, and even during her inauguration.
Later, Beatrix reimagined their use, combining different sets to create new compositions, bringing a sense of modernity to these historic jewels. Today, the stars still shine. They are most often worn by Máxima, who transforms them into striking tiaras and luminous accents for state occasions. They have also begun to appear on Catharina-Amalia, the heir to the throne, a quiet snark that the legacy continues.
The wedding gift sapphire parure, the tiara that no longer exists. In 1901, the Dutch people gave Queen Wilhelmina a wedding gift. Not a modest one. The jewelers Vita Israel and J.A. Heuting produced a parure from over 800 diamonds and sapphires set in white gold. A tiara, a mirror-image necklace, two bracelets.
The center stone of the tiara was a square diamond from the Golconda mine in India, the same mine that produced the Hope diamond and the Koh-i-Noor. Contemporaries described it as larger than a pigeon’s egg. Photographs from 1903 show Wilhelmina in the full set. She was the only queen who ever wore it that way, as the designers intended.
When she died in 1962, Queen Juliana inherited everything. Within a short time, the parure was dismantled. >> >> The stones went to Juliana’s four daughters. Beatrix received diamond earrings and sapphire pendants, Margaret her own sapphire set, >> >> the others their share. Why Juliana made this decision has never been explained publicly.
The tiara may have been unwearable at its scale. She may have wanted each daughter to have something personal. Jewelry historians have weighed these explanations and found them insufficient. The tiara frame went to the jeweler Steltman as payment for the dismantling work. Then it was melted down. Five lozenge elements from the original necklace survived and were eventually reworked into the Dutch sapphire necklace tiara, a flatter, lower bandeau that Queen Máxima wore at the Dutch state visit to Japan in 2014.
Cobalt sapphires against a matching blue gown, the photographs clear and well-lit. She has worn it at the 2019 state banquet for the King and Queen of Spain, >> >> and at several Dutch state occasions since. Pieces of that 800-stone parure are still appearing in press photographs.
They’re just unrecognizable now as what they were. The diamond trellis necklace, 800 diamonds on knife-edge platinum. This one disappears in photographs. The stones are enormous, roughly 100 individually set old-mine-cut diamonds, but the knife-edge platinum mounting keeps the piece so flat and close to the body that it reads almost like a plain collar until the light catches it.
Queen Emma gave it to Wilhelmina as a wedding gift in 1901. The design is a trellis, diamonds crossing over each other in a grid that creates depth without bulk. Its real trick is the center row. The largest diamonds there can be swapped out entirely for pearls, sapphires, or rubies, turning the same necklace into several different pieces.
Wilhelmina preferred the pearl setting and wore it that way at her silver wedding anniversary in 1926. The diamond trellis necklace is one of those pieces that instantly stands out whenever it’s worn by Queen Máxima. On official occasions, she often chooses it for its striking yet delicate look, a kind of diamond lace that catches the light beautifully with every movement.
Although the piece is designed to be versatile and can technically be transformed, in public appearances, Máxima wears it purely as a necklace, and it has become one of her signature elegant choices in that form. Today, the jewel remains part of the Dutch royal collection and is gradually being seen on the next generation as well, including Catharina-Amalia, Princess of Orange.
The emerald parure, Queen Emma’s gift and the duck egg pendant. The emeralds were already over 100 years old when Wilhelmina first wore them. They came to the Netherlands in 1767 with Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia, who brought them as part of her dowry when she married into the House of Orange.
They sat in the collection untouched for over a century. Then between 1896 and 1899, Queen Emma commissioned Edward Schürmann & Company, the same Frankfurt house behind the Stuart Tiara, to build something new around them. The emerald parure is a V-shaped tiara that can be worn with emerald toppers, pearl toppers, or stripped to all diamonds.
The necklace carries a detachable pendant set with one of the largest natural emeralds in the Dutch collection, called the duck egg emerald for exactly the reason it sounds like. There’s also a brooch, earrings, and two bracelets. Emma gave the entire set to her daughter as a mother’s gift, and Wilhelmina wore it consistently.
Queen Máxima wears it in more configurations than any previous queen. The Württemberg Ornate Pearl Tiara, the crown on the stamps. For about two decades in the early 20th century, Dutch citizens buying postage stamps were looking at this tiara and didn’t know it. Edward Schürmann & Company made the Württemberg Ornate Pearl Tiara in 1897 in time for Wilhelmina’s inauguration the following year.
35 round pearls, 11 pear-shaped pearls, an elaborate diamond structure, and a height that makes it read almost like a crown rather than a tiara. It comes apart into four different configurations. >> >> Wilhelmina was photographed in it so consistently during her early reign that the image became the standard official portrait, reproduced on stamps across the 1900s and 1910s.
For an entire generation, that silhouette simply was what the queen looked like. Queen Beatrix wore it at her own wedding in 1966, the first major royal appearance it had made in a generation, and throughout her long reign, though she reportedly found the heaviest pieces uncomfortable. This one qualifies.
Queen Máxima has made it among her most documented pieces. At the 2013 state visit to China, one of her first major international appearances after Willem-Alexander’s accession, she wore it in the full pearl configuration against a vivid orange gown, the contrast striking across every wire photograph from the evening. For the 2022 state visit to Sweden, she wore it at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, where both Swedish and Dutch court photographers documented it from multiple angles.
It’s among the most thoroughly photographed Dutch tiaras of the last decade. The Ruby Peacock Parure, the mystery gift and the 30-year disappearance. In 1956, Wilhelmina held a gathering at Het Loo Palace for her family. Princess Beatrix, the heir, was turning 18. There was a jewelry case. Instead of giving the most significant piece to the heir, Wilhelmina handed the Ruby Peacock Parure to Princess Irene, the second granddaughter.
The family was apparently surprised. No explanation was recorded. Queen Emma had commissioned the parure from Edward Schürmann & Company in 1897. The rubies reportedly from the collection of William the III’s first wife, Queen Sophie. The centerpiece is a detachable diamond and ruby peacock tail motif, a spray of color that can be unpinned and worn separately as a brooch.
Full set includes a tiara, necklace, stomacher, bracelets, and earrings. Irene wore it through the 1960s. Then in 1964, she married Prince Carlos Hugo of Bourbon-Parma, a match that triggered a constitutional crisis when she converted to Catholicism without seeking parliamentary approval, and they divorced in 1981. After that, the Ruby Peacock Parure stopped appearing in any photograph.
No auctions, no press. Many observers concluded it had been sold. In 2009, at a state banquet during the Swedish royal visit to the Netherlands, Queen Máxima walked in wearing the Ruby Peacock Tiara. How it came back, under what terms, at what price, through what kind of arrangement between Irene and the family, nobody has said.
Máxima has worn it at several state occasions since. In 2024, Princess Amalia, the heir to the Dutch throne, wore it at a state banquet in Spain. The youngest generation of the family wearing a parure that Wilhelmina handed to the second granddaughter in 1956 while the heir stood there watching. The Dutch Diamond Bandeau, 100 carats hidden in a hairband.
>> >> In 1879, the Dutch people gave Queen Emma a wedding gift, a riviere necklace containing 34 old mine cut diamonds. Emma wore it as a necklace for decades. In 1937, Wilhelmina had 27 of those 34 stones lifted from the setting and placed onto a flat platinum band. The resulting Dutch Diamond Bandeau contains over 100 carats of diamonds arranged in a design that sits close to the head and reads, from any distance, like a particularly nice hairband. That was deliberate.
After nearly 40 years of the towering Stuart and Württemberg Tiaras, Wilhelmina wanted something that didn’t announce itself across a room. She wore it for her final official portraits before abdicating on September 4th, 1948. Paired with the Romanov Pearl and Diamond Devant de Corsage, the two pieces quiet and enormous at the same time.
Then she stepped down, left the palace, and went to live simply at Het Loo. Her security detail prepared to follow. She told them to get out of the car. Today, the Diamond Bandeau doesn’t feel like a museum piece at all. It’s a living part of the royal wardrobe. Queen Máxima wears it regularly, and each time she styles it a little differently.
Sometimes as a classic tiara, sometimes almost like a modern headband, giving it a fresh, effortless feel. It’s one of those rare jewels that seamlessly fits into a contemporary look. At the same time, the bandeau is no longer just Máxima’s piece. It’s already moving into the next generation. Princess Catharina-Amalia has appeared in it at official events, signaling a natural continuation of the tradition.
So today, this bandeau isn’t just a family heirloom, it’s a jewel in motion, worn, reinterpreted, and passed on exactly as royal jewels are meant to be. The foundation that kept it together. On July 27th, 1963, Queen Juliana signed a document establishing the Foundation Regalia of the House of Orange-Nassau. Later expanded in 1968 into the broader Crown Property Foundation, the agreement did one simple thing.
>> >> Jewels placed in it cannot be sold, cannot be dispersed, and remain available to all family members across generations. Juliana had already dismantled the Sapphire Parure. She had seen what happened when pieces went unprotected. The foundation was the correction. It’s why the Stuart diamond still exists as a complete tiara.
It’s why Máxima can clasp a necklace that Emma chose for Wilhelmina in 1901. It’s why Princess Amalia, when she eventually becomes queen, will have access to pieces that Wilhelmina wore to her inauguration at 17. The Sapphire Parure was already gone. Everything else is still here. Wilhelmina died on November 28th, 1962 at 82.
She was reportedly worth somewhere between 100 and 200 million dollars, one of the wealthiest private individuals in the world. She had spent her reign leading her country through two World Wars, broadcasting resistance messages to occupied Holland from London, and refusing, on principle, to turn on her own heating while her people went without.
The pieces she wore, once, twice, sometimes only on inauguration day, are still in circulation. The Stuart Diamond Tiara came back to Buckingham Palace in 2018 after 46 years. The Emerald Parure travels to Paris and Stockholm. The Ruby Peacock Tiara turned up on Princess Amalia’s head in Madrid in 2024. The Bandeau appears at state banquets looking like a hairband, carrying 100 carats, worn by a woman four generations removed from the queen who had it made.
If you have a favorite piece from Wilhelmina’s collection, I’d love to hear which one in the comments. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do. There’s so much more still to come.