This Tuesday, the Windsors gathered at Buckingham Palace to commemorate what would have been Elizabeth II’s 100th birthday, and the official photo from the event is already generating a lot of discussion.
King Charles and Queen Camilla are in the center, flanked by the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke of Kent, Princess Anne, and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, Edward and Sophie.
It is a historic image that, upon closer inspection, also reveals something disconcerting: the British monarchy is aging, and the only active members under the age of 50 are William and Kate.
But if one thing captured visual attention on the day, it was Kate’s look. For this celebration, she chose a purple dress by Emilia Wickstead, impeccable in its simplicity, but it was the jewelry that bore the full symbolic weight of the day.
The Princess wore the Bahrain earrings, pieces from the Royal Collection featuring diamonds and pearls from a seven-piece exceptional oyster shell that the Ruler of Bahrain gave to Elizabeth II and Prince Philip as a wedding gift in 1947. Each earring features a large round diamond, four smaller diamonds, and three baguette-cut diamonds, from which one of those pearls dangles.
To this, she added a three-strand pearl necklace that had belonged to Queen Elizabeth herself, a piece that the monarch wore on an almost daily basis throughout her reign. Kate wearing it today, on the centenary of her birth, is not a stylistic detail; it is a highly deliberate gesture of continuity.
The photo also reveals the void left by the Sussexes in 2020. Without Harry and Meghan, the pool of young working members was drastically reduced, and the generational handover represented by George, Charlotte, and Louis will not occur for at least fifteen years.
Names like Lady Louise or Earl James are mentioned as possible reinforcements, but that would require a structural reform that Charles has not yet confirmed. For now, William and Kate bear a significant portion of the institution’s visible weight, and days like this make that abundantly clear.