Whose diamond is it anyway?

Laughing at our obsession with sparkle

23 Oct 2025

We plundered the planet, colonised the mines, swapped geological miracles for paperwork and then hired curators to call it culture. When the Louvre recently discovered that a few of its Crown Jewels had staged a quiet, glass-shattering exit in under eight minutes, the world gasped. How could someone steal away a piece of history? As if history itself weren’t one long, beautifully cut act of theft. A gallery of quiet robberies and centuries of conquest re-cut into art, faith and ornament. Indian courts once wore Golconda diamonds in turbans; European queens later reset the same stones into tiaras.

WHOSE LOSS ARE WE MOURNING?

Because the missing diamonds and emeralds didn’t exactly spring from French soil. Europe had no historic diamond mines of significance; diamonds in European regalia arrived first from India (Golconda), then Brazil (1720s–1860s), and later South America (post-1867). That’s diamond-history 101!

By the time they reached Europe, they were rebranded as heritage. And ever since, whenever one (or eight) disappear, headlines scream foul play. That’s adorable. If anything, the stones have simply gone back to the shadows of uncertainty, to the chaos from which they came. Maybe, they longed for mischief, to perhaps draw blood again, cause another war? Or maybe they just got tired of carrying the weight of empires, their vanity and their subsequent downfall.

"The crowns changed, the blood dried and the stones still sparkle. That's the cruel genius of a diamond. It reflects everything, but remembers nothing"

The French Crown Jewels displayed at the Louvre; Photograph courtesy Wikipedia

BILL OF QUANTITIES (AND PLACES OF ORIGIN)

From the heist at the Louvre, Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense’s sapphire set consisting of the tiara with 24 Ceylon sapphires, 1,083 diamonds, a matching necklace and earrings, explicitly described its sapphires as Ceylon Sapphires. Married to Louis-Philippe, Queen Marie-Amélie (also Marie Antoinette’s niece) ruled during the July Monarchy from 1830 to 1848. After the revolution, she was exiled to England, where she lived out her final years far from the courtly glitter.

The emerald set of Empress Marie‑Louise (wife of Napoleon I) originally held 79 Colombian emeralds from the mines of Muzo in Colombia. It was a wedding gift from Napoleon Bonaparte, intended to cement an empire through matrimony. Less than five years later, the empire fell, and so did the marriage. The emeralds outlasted both.

Portrait of Queen Maria Amelia wearing the jewels; Image courtesy Wikipedia

Constructed in the 1660s and had housed the museum's collection of the French Crown Jewels since 1887; Photograph courtesy Wikipedia

And closer to home, it can be inferred that the Tiara and Large Bodice-Knot Brooch had some diamonds from the Mazarin cache, likely from Golconda, India, once bequeathed to Louis XIV. The set belonged to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, a woman as famed for her beauty as for her love of diamonds. Set with 94 diamonds, the brooch is (was) shaped like a miniature altar, meant to hold a sacred relic close to the heart. Eugénie wore it at the height of the Second Empire, when Paris glittered under gaslight and grandeur. But the sparkle didn’t last. By 1870, the empire fell, Napoleon III was captured, and Eugénie fled to England, leaving behind most of her jewels. The reliquary, like the empire it adorned, became a relic itself.

SURVIVORS OF THE HEIST

But not every gem chose the exit. These survivors of revolutions, auctions, and insurance audits, still sparkle dutifully under the Louvre’s spotlights. Stones that have seen (and caused) blood, betrayal, battles and beheadings.
Among them, the 140.64-carat Regent Diamond still reigns supreme at the Louvre. Mined in Golconda in 1698, it was smuggled out of India by a corrupt English sea captain and later sold to Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. It adorned Louis XV’s crown, glittered in Marie Antoinette’s hair, and eventually rested on Napoleon’s sword hilt. It has survived revolutions, thefts, and the fall of every regime that ever touched it. Few stones have seen so much blood spilled in their light.

Necklace of Empress Marie Louise of Austria with Colombian emeralds; Photograph courtesy Shonagon / Public Domain

The Galerie d'Apollon, the site of the heist, is on the first floor of the Louvre; Photograph courtesy Wikipedia

Beside it sits the Sancy, a pale-yellow Golconda diamond that wandered through royal hands like a well-travelled aristocrat before returning to Paris. It once belonged to Charles the Bold, who lost it on the battlefield at Nancy along with his life. Later, a messenger carrying it to Henry IV was murdered for the gem, his body cut open and the diamond retrieved from his stomach. A stone that polite vitrines now call “historic” once inspired a trail of corpses.

And the Hortensia, a soft peach-pink diamond also born in Golconda, carries a quieter kind of tragedy. It decorated the sword of Napoleon Bonaparte, was looted during the French Revolution, and vanished into the chaos before being recovered years later. Today it sits blushing under glass, as if unaware how much blood its glow once illuminated. The crowns changed, the blood dried and the stones still sparkle. That’s the cruel genius of a diamond. It reflects everything, but remembers nothing. History, as always, has excellent taste in irony.

So whose diamond is it anyway?
The miners?
The monarchs?
The museums?
The nations?
Or the thieves?
Ownership is temporary. Repercussions are real, and lasting.