The Crown Jewels
Short History Of...
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The History of the Imperial State Crown
The story of the Black Prince's ruby begins in the 1360s in Granada, Spain. Documents show a 170-carat Belask ruby roughly the size of a chicken's egg. The gem also adorns the imperial state crown set above another massive Cullinan diamond. But the strangely shaped red stone is not actually a ruby at all. It was mined 400 years before technology existed to tell apart different types of red gemstones. In 1838 Queen Victoria puts the gem in its pride of place at the front of her imperial crown where it remains.
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