Why Queen Camilla is the new jewel in the crown, by HILARY ROSE By Hilary Rose For You Magazine Published: 08:00 BST, 28 September 2024 | Updated: 08:00 BST, 28 September 2024 e-mail View comments Two years ago, on a chilly Tuesday night in November, the king and queen hosted their first state banquet at Buckingham Palace . State banquets are impressive affairs whatever the weather, all stiff white tie and polite toasts, but they’re not exactly a barrel of laughs. That night, though, Queen Camilla looked like she was having a ball.
Why? Sapphires. She appeared to have told the crown jeweller, ‘Bling me up. I’ll take everything you’ve got.
’ Everywhere you looked there were sapphires: tiara, chandelier earrings, necklace, bracelets. She looked thrilled to bits. After the sadness of Queen Elizabeth’s death, and the never-ending sulky psychodrama of Megxit, we had a new queen with a twinkle in her eye – and an endearing soft spot for sapphires.
Camilla at her first state banquet as queen, November 2022, wearing the sapphire ‘suite’ of jewels from the late Queen Elizabeth’s collection Even a few years ago, the former Mrs Parker Bowles did not seem destined to become a national treasure. For a long time, she didn’t even seem destined to become queen. Her longstanding friend the Marchioness of Lansdowne, at whose stately home, Bowood, Charles and Camilla used to have secret trysts, recently said that ‘never in a million years’ did Camilla think she would be.
