Kate Middleton Has Only Worn Four Different Tiaras During Her Time as a Royal

• Throughout her 13 years as a working royal, Kate Middleton has only worn four tiaras
• Two of the tiaras have only been worn one time apiece: the Cartier Halo Tiara, which she wore for her 2011 wedding to Prince William, and the Strathmore Rose Tiara, which she wore to a state visit in 2023
• She has worn the Lotus Flower Tiara twice, but her by far go-to is the Queen Mary Lover’s Knot Tiara — which was also a favorite of Princess Diana’s

As Kate Middleton continues her gradual return to public duty following her cancer diagnosis earlier this year, one can only hope for a tiara moment in the not-too-distant future. Over the course of her 13 years of royal life since marrying husband Prince William in 2011, the Princess of Wales, 42, has worn only four different types of tiaras — and one has emerged as her go-to.

The first and only time Kate ever wore the Cartier Halo Tiara (so far, anyway) was on a day she’ll remember forever — her April 29, 2011 wedding day to William. Kate’s tiara debut was a piece on loan from Queen Elizabeth herself, which the newly minted Duchess of Cambridge wore to her wedding at Westminster Abbey.

Kate wears pieces from the late monarch’s collection regularly — including on Nov. 10 at Remembrance Sunday, when she wore the Queen’s Bahrain Pearl Drop earrings — but did so for the first time on her wedding day. The tiara was made by Cartier in 1936 and given as a gift from the then-Duke of York (who would soon become King George VI) to his wife Elizabeth (later known as the Queen Mother) that same year. In 1944, when the couple’s eldest daughter Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth) turned 18, the Queen Mother gave the tiara as a gift to her newly adult daughter. The future Queen Elizabeth frequently loaned the piece to her younger sister, Princess Margaret, who even wore it to her sister’s coronation in June 1953.

In addition to Kate, Princess Anne — Queen Elizabeth’s only daughter — also wore the Cartier Halo Tiara to a royal first: her public tiara debut at the State Opening of Parliament in 1967, when she was 17 years old.

Kate’s decision to wear the Cartier Halo Tiara on her wedding day “is a clear signal that she wants her royal role to be patterned after that of the late Queen Mother,” according to the blog The Court Jeweller.

As for Queen Elizabeth, though it was her first tiara, she was never publicly photographed wearing the Cartier Halo Tiara — though she owned it for the last 78 years of her life. The tiara, according to Tatler, “was often considered a good ‘beginner’ tiara of sorts, perfect for a younger family member with a smaller-than-average size that wouldn’t induce headaches.”

After her 2011 wedding day and tiara debut, it would be another year and a half before the then-Duchess of Cambridge wore her second tiara, the Lotus Flower Tiara, which she wore to a diplomatic reception at Buckingham Palace on Dec. 3, 2013.

Garrard crafted the tiara for the Queen Mother in 1923, and Kate wore the piece along with an Alexander McQueen dress to the diplomatic reception — just as she wore Alexander McQueen on her wedding day.

“It’s a beautiful pearl and diamond piece,” expert Leslie Field, author of The Queen’s Jewels, said about the Egyptian-style tiara, which was also previously owned and worn by Princess Margaret. “It’s very much in the ‘20s style and probably quite lightweight and comfortable to wear.”

Geoffrey C. Munn wrote in his book Tiaras, A History of Splendour, that the Lotus Flower Tiara is “one of the prettiest of Queen Elizabeth’s tiaras … arranged as a band of stylized lotus flowers and overreaching arches, with the graduated pinnacles surmounted by a single pearl.”

He added, per The Royal Post, that “The tiara was given to Queen Elizabeth by Queen Mary.”

Speaking about Kate’s 2013 appearance in the tiara, Field said that “In the 1920s, it was tradition to wear it low on the forehead, like a horizontal headband. Then fashion changed. When Princess Margaret wore it in the 1960s, she wore it the way Catherine wore it last night, on the back of the head.”

Kate wore the Lotus Flower Tiara a second time on Oct. 20, 2015 for her first official state banquet, welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Madame Peng Liyuan — and paired it with a red Jenny Packham dress. Seven years would pass before Kate wore the tiara again, donning it on Dec. 6, 2022 at the Diplomatic Corps reception at Buckingham Palace. Though Kate repeated a familiar pattern — wearing a red Jenny Packham gown with the tiara — she did try something new: she wore her hair completely down for the first time with a sparkler atop her head.

By far and away, the tiara that is Kate’s go-to is the Queen Mary Lover’s Knot Tiara, which she wore for the first time on Dec. 8, 2015, paired with an ice blue Alexander McQueen gown for the annual Diplomatic Reception. Before it became a favorite of Kate’s, it was beloved by Princess Diana, who wore it on multiple occasions.

Since its debut atop her head in 2015, Kate wore the Lover’s Knot Tiara on Dec. 8, 2016 to the annual Diplomatic Corps reception at Buckingham Palace; on July 12, 2017 for a state banquet at Buckingham Palace hosting Queen Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain; on Dec. 5, 2017, Dec. 4, 2018 and Dec. 11, 2019 to the annual Diplomatic Corps reception; on Oct. 23, 2018 for a state banquet at Buckingham Palace; on June 3, 2019 for a state banquet hosting the United States at Buckingham Palace; and on Nov. 22, 2022 for a state banquet hosting South Africa — the first state visit of King Charles’ reign, which began two months prior.

The Lover’s Knot Tiara came out again on June 1, 2023, when she attended a royal wedding in Jordan alongside Prince William; it came out once more on Dec. 5, 2023 for the Diplomatic Corps reception — the last time Kate publicly wore a tiara (for now, anyway).

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The sparkler was originally commissioned from Garrard by Queen Mary in 1913 or 1914, hence the name of the Queen Mary Lover’s Knot Tiara. It is also referred to as the Cambridge Lover’s Knot Tiara, but actually not because of Kate’s former title of Duchess of Cambridge before she became the Princess of Wales in September 2022. It’s called such because the tiara is a replica of a 200-year-old Gothic Revival tiara owned by Queen Mary’s grandmother, Princess Augusta of Hesse, who was also the Duchess of Cambridge.

After Queen Mary’s death in 1953, she left the tiara to her granddaughter Queen Elizabeth, who wore it during many formal appearances in the 1950s. She later loaned it to Lady Diana Spencer as a wedding present, with many bets being hedged that Diana would wear the topper to her July 29, 1981 wedding day to then-Prince Charles. She famously chose to wear the Spencer tiara — her birth family’s ancestral sparkler — for her big day instead.

That said, Diana wore the Lover’s Knot Tiara frequently throughout her royal life — though rumors abound that the late Princess of Wales often said that it gave her headaches. The tiara wasn’t seen from Diana’s death in 1997 until Kate wore it for the first time in 2015, 18 years later.

The fourth and final tiara Princess Kate has worn throughout her 13 years as a royal — and a tiara she’s only worn once heretofore — is the Strathmore Rose Tiara, which she wore on Nov. 23, 2023 for a state visit from South Korea along with a white Jenny Packham gown with gold embellishments. Clearly following a theme here, the Strathmore Rose Tiara once belonged to the Queen Mother — and hasn’t been seen publicly since the 1930s.

The topper’s name comes from the Queen Mother’s father, who was the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, according to The Court Jeweller. The sparkler was a gift to the Queen Mother when she married Prince Albert (later King George VI) in 1923. Following the Queen Mother, Kate is only the second person to wear this particular tiara in public.

“Kate has always signaled that she’d like to emulate the Queen Mother’s royal role, and wearing her jewels is an important symbol of that continuity,” Lauren Kiehna, founder of The Court Jeweller, told PEOPLE.

“It’s fitting that Kate — likely with some assistance from King Charles — would choose to wear the tiara exactly a hundred years after the Queen Mother originally received it. The piece is an antique that wasn’t fashionable for many decades, but many jewels once considered fussy or unstylish have now been embraced again,” she added.

King Charles was famously close to his grandmother, who died in 2002 at 101 years old. The King, 75, is also close to the Princess of Wales, previously referring to her as “my beloved daughter-in-law.”

Bethan Holt, author of the 2021 book The Duchess of Cambridge: A Decade of Modern Royal Style, told PEOPLE that seeing the tiara felt like a “lost treasure”: “I think it’s lovely as the King was so close to the Queen Mother, and knowing that one of her most precious pieces of jewelry is being worn by his daughter-in-law gives a really emotional tie between the generations,” she said. 

“It has been said that Kate has looked for inspiration to the Queen Mother in terms of how she conducted herself, and so to have that tiara symbolizing that in such a public moment, I think it is really significant. I think if there was anyone to wear that tiara, it was Kate; she was the woman to wear it and carry it forward,” Holt added.