Three Tiaras in Four Days: Elizabeth II’s Paris Mission in Jewels

The green fire of the legendary Cambridge emeralds, a dazzling wall of nearly five hundred diamonds in a Russian kokoshnik, and a couture gown strewn with Napoleon’s golden bees. In April 1957, French newspapers were buzzing with reports that the young Queen Elizabeth II was bringing four royal tiaras to Paris, gowns sewn behind drawn curtains, and a private detective. But why did the thirty-year-old monarch need to deploy the full power of the royal vaults at this exact moment—and how did these family heirlooms help thaw the political chill between Britain and France?