The Meghan Markle sparkle has taken the world by storm — even at the Invictus Games.
Just before Prince Harry‘s opening speech, presenters Kumi Taguchi and Nate Byrne took the stage, and viewers quickly noticed that the large, aquamarine ring Taguchi was wearing looked familiar.
The ring bears a striking resemblance to stunning aquamarine sparkler that Meghan wore when she stepped out in her evening ensemble after the couple’s royal wedding in May.
The emerald cut ring belonged to Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, who famously wore it to an auction of her own clothes at Christie’s in 1997. The jewel is part of a set — the other piece is an aquamarine bracelet, where it’s connected by five strands of pearls. Diana wore both to a gala dinner in Australia in 1996.
Since Prince William and Harry inherited their mother’s jewelry collection, very little of it has been seen in public. But some pieces have been given to the royals’ wives.
Prince William poignantly gave the diamond and sapphire sparkler that was Diana’s engagement ring to Kate Middleton when he proposed in 2010, a lovely reminder that she was with them on their royal wedding day.
Prince Harry was able to mirror that gesture by giving Meghan the aquamarine ring, which, it has now been revealed, was a gift for Diana to wear in place of her engagement ring after her divorce from Prince Charles in 1996. Diana, who died in 1997, was given the square-cut beautiful piece by her good friend Lucia Flecha de Lima, the wife of the former ambassador of Brazil to the U.K.
Lucia, who died last year at her home in Brazil at 76, “bought it to replace the engagement ring Diana no longer wanted to wear once her marriage ended,” veteran royals journalist Richard Kay (who was a friend of Diana’s) writes in the Daily Mail.
According to Kay, Meghan has the inherited ring with her on the couple’s 16-day royal tour of Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand, so she may wear it again soon.
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Meghan has already worn a pair of butterfly earrings and a gold bracelet that also belonged to Diana on the first day of their tour in Sydney.
In addition, the Duchess of Sussex’s engagement ring is made up of three diamonds, with one large stone in the center flanked by two smaller stones on the sides. The two side stones are from his late mother, Princess Diana‘s personal collection, while the center stone is from Botswana, a country that is close to Harry’s heart.
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