TL;DR:
- Kate Middleton, Prince William, and Prince Harry toured the Tower of London in 2014.
- In Spare, Prince Harry recalled marveling at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation crown during the tour.
- Prince William and Kate Middleton “said nothing” when Prince Harry shared his thoughts on the queen’s coronation crown being “another prisoner” in the Tower of London.
Prince Harry’s thoughts on the Queen Elizabeth II coronation crown were met with stunned silence from Prince William and Kate Middleton. As the Duke of Sussex shared in his Spare memoir, the now-Prince and Princess of Wales “said nothing” after he referred to the crown as a “prisoner.”
Harry saw the queen’s coronation crown during a 2014 Tower of London tour with William and Kate
Long before Harry and William weren’t talking to each other, they went to the Tower of London with Kate. In August 2014, just weeks before the anniversary of Princess Diana’s death, the trio visited the historic landmark for an art installation.
There they saw thousands of ceramic poppies set in the grass commemorating the 100-year anniversary of World War I. Afterward, they went on a “quick tour” where, as Harry recalled in his memoir, they saw the queen, or “Granny’s,” coronation crown.
“We walked up and down the Tower’s steep stairs, peered into its dark corners, and soon found ourselves before a case of thick glass,” Harry said (via Spare). “Inside were dazzling jewels, including … the Crown. Holy s***. The Crown. The one that had been placed upon Granny’s head at her 1953 coronation.”
The Queen Elizabeth coronation crown looked ‘magical’ to Prince Harry
Harry went on, describing his reaction to seeing the coronation crown. Upon first glance, he thought it to be the same crown that sat atop the coffin of his great-grandmother, the Queen Mother, or “Gan-Gan.”
“It looked the same, but someone pointed out several key differences. Ah, yes. So this was Granny’s crown, and hers alone,” Harry continued. “And now I remembered her telling me how unbelievably heavy it had been the first time they set it upon her head.”
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“It looked heavy. It also looked magical,” he added. “The more we stared, the brighter it got — was that possible? And the glow was seemingly internal.”
“The jewels did their part,” Harry said. “But the crown seemed to possess some inner energy source, something beyond the sum of its parts, its jeweled band, its golden fleurs-de-lis, its crisscrossing arches and gleaming cross.”
“You couldn’t help but feel that a ghost, encountered late at night inside the Tower, might have a similar glow,” he said of the crown’s “ermine base.”
Prince Harry called it ‘tragic’ that Queen Elizabeth’s coronation crown be ‘locked up’
Although he saw it as a “wonder” and a “transcendent and evocative piece of art, not unlike the poppies,” one thought popped into Harry’s head as he “appreciatively” scanned the crown.
“All I could think in that moment was how tragic that it should remain locked up in this Tower,” Harry recalled. “Yet another prisoner.”
“Seems a waste,” he told William and Kate. “To which, I recall, they said nothing. Maybe they were looking at that band of ermine, remembering my wedding remarks. Maybe not.”
When Harry’s father, King Charles III, is officially crowned king on May 6, he will wear two crowns. The Westminster Abbey ceremony will include the Imperial State Crown and the St. Edward’s Crown.
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