From July 8 to 10, 2025, French President Emmanuel Macron and First Lady Brigitte Macron will make a state visit to the United Kingdom at the invitation of Kings Charles and Camilla. The Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Kate, will play a leading role, as they will welcome the presidential couple upon their arrival in the country on Tuesday and will travel with them to Windsor Castle, where they will be received with honors and will stay during their visit.
There will be a welcome reception, a review of the royal guard, and a colorful carriage procession. As night falls, Windsor Castle itself, since Buckingham Palace is under renovation, will host the traditional state banquet; the big question is the presence of Kate Middleton, who has not attended an event of this kind since 2023. We review the options that the British royal jewel collection has for her during the state visit.
The jewel collection of the British royalty is one of the largest, most valuable, and astonishing in the world.
The return of Kate Middleton, after going through the cancer that kept her withdrawn or in the background for almost a year and a half, has been gradual. The Princess of Wales began attending public events related to health and, little by little, she was regaining her main causes. However, she has not yet resumed trips abroad and she has also not been present at a State banquet, one of the events of maximum institutional relevance and one of the few occasions where the dress code requires a tiara to distinguish women of the royal tiara. So, the anticipation, with only a few hours to go before the French president lands on British soil, is at its peak.
Will she bet on a new tiara that symbolically marks the beginning of a new stage?
Her story has been woven around four tiaras, which she has progressively gained access to, in parallel with her growing institutional significance.
Following these unwritten rules, tiaras also narrate the personal journey of each woman within the Royal House: they reveal whether she is a princess by birth or by marriage, and they anticipate the role she is destined to play. In Kate’s case, her story has been woven around four tiaras, which she has gradually accessed, in parallel to her growing institutional relevance. But that doesn’t mean that, in her much-anticipated return, she can’t surprise us by choosing an unprecedented piece, a new tiara that symbolically marks the beginning of a new stage.
The initiation of a future queen
The first tiara worn by Kate Middleton was the one from her wedding to Prince William in 2011. It is a simple, relatively small, and discreet piece, but it has always belonged to the Windsors, which is important considering that the Windsor collection contains countless jewels that are controversial or disputed regarding their origin. Furthermore, it was a tiara that told a story of love, as King George VI, the grandfather of Prince William, commissioned it for his wife, who has gone down in history as the Queen Mother.
First steps in institutional life
Transformation into Princess of Wales
To date, the most important tiara she has worn and the one she has worn the most often is known as the Cambridge Lover’s Knot, a neoclassical design made of diamonds and drop-shaped pearls. It is a tiara that was indeed created for a queen, specifically commissioned by George V for Queen Mary (Mary of Teck, the great-grandmother of Charles III), so it has the dimensions and presence befitting a queen, to such an extent that on some occasions, Elizabeth II wore it, having always had access to the most important pieces since her youth due to her position as heir to the throne.
As if that weren’t enough, this tiara was the one that Queen Elizabeth II gave to Diana of Wales after her wedding to then-Prince Charles. Although Diana of Wales wanted to wear her family tiara, the Spencer tiara, since she belonged to one of the most noble families in the United Kingdom and wanted to emphasize that, she later needed a tiara that belonged to the Windsors for her state duties and this was the Cambridge Lover’s Knot tiara, which was also the one Diana wore for most of her official portraits.
Between the strong emotional bond that this tiara has with Diana of Wales and the reference in its design to the ‘lovers of Cambridge,’ the title of Duke and Duchess of Cambridge that Elizabeth II granted to William and Kate at the time of their wedding, it was clear that this tiara was destined for Kate and that only she would wear it. There are others, like the previous one, the Lotus Flower, that can be shared, but this one cannot; this is the tiara of the Princess of Wales.
The rebirth of a forgotten jewel
The last surprise that Kate Middleton gave related to the royal jewelry box was when she retrieved a historic piece of jewelry that belonged to the Queen Mother, originally a wedding gift from her father, the Earl of Strathmore, in 1923. The tiara had not been worn publicly for almost 90 years until Kate wore it in November 2023 to a State Dinner, one of her last appearances with a tiara before stepping back for health reasons. It is a garland of wild roses that is also designed to be worn in two distinct ways, either on the head or across the forehead, similar to the lotus flower tiara, an accessory that women like the Queen Mother made fashionable.
This flirtation with the royal jeweler the recovery of forgotten pieces, the selection of tiaras with history, but without excessive institutional weight is part of the path delineated by Kate within the British monarchy. Her choices not only reflect her personal style but also her position: a rising figure, yet not at the pinnacle. The most imposing jewels remain reserved for the queen, and that is Camilla, as tradition dictates. Meanwhile, the Princess of Wales has built her narrative through tiaras that, while not the most magnificent, already speak of her legacy.
