Albanian Sapphire Goat Tiara

Prince Leka of Albania, pretender to the Albanian throne, will marry Ms Elia Zaharia on October 8th at the Royal Palace in Tirana. In one of her pre-wedding interviews, the bride has stated that she will wear a tiara from the groom’s family. As their grandest tiara, Queen Geraldine’s Wedding tiara, was auctioned decades ago, the only other option is the Sapphire Goat Tiara, which has been worn by Prince Leka’s mother and Grandmother.

Sapphire Goat Tiara | Queen Geraldine’s Ruby Earrings | Queen Geraldine’s Sapphire Suite

Featuring a base of diamond leaves with sapphire swirls, an arch of diamond leaves with sapphire flowers, and the most distinctive feature of the sapphire encrusted royal crest of the “Ram of Skanderbeg”, which has featured in all Albanian royal tiaras, Sapphire Goat Tiara was made at some point after the 1930s, during the Royal Family’s time in exile.

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The Tiara was seen on Queen Geraldine of Albania at the International Monarchist League’s Annual Banquet in 1975 and later that year at the wedding of her only son, King Leka, in Biarritz. Hungarian-born Queen Geraldine and her husband King Zog, were exiled from Albania just days after she had given birth to their only child and heir, when Mussolini’s Italy invaded Albania. The Sapphire Goat Tiara was probably commissioned as a replacement for the bulk of Queen Geraldine’s jewelry collection, which was sold to Ostier in 1960, during their time in exile. Widowed in 1961, she died in 2002, just months after being allowed to come back to Albania.

The next wearer of the Sapphire Goat Tiara was Queen Susan, mother of Prince Leka, and daughter-in-law of Queen Geraldine, who wore the tiara for the a series of portraits in the 1980s. The Australian-born Queen Susan was the consort of King Leka II, and spent the majority of her married life in exile before being allowed to return to Albania in 2002. Sadly, she died just a few years later, in 2004, of lung cancer, in Tirana. The Sapphire Goat Tiara was inherited by Prince Leka. Interestingly, the necklace worn by Queen Susan has already been worn by Elia Zaharia for an official portrait.

Embed from Getty Images

The Sapphire Goat Tiara was worn by the new Crown Princess Elia of the Albanians at her wedding to Crown Prince Leka in October 2016, and later for portraits, including a series released for Albanian National Day in 2016. The Tiara was worn most recently for another series of portraits, in 2019, and will no doubt we worn for decades to come.

Sapphire Goat Tiara | Queen Geraldine’s Ruby Earrings | Queen Geraldine’s Sapphire Suite

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For more information, check out:

Royal Magazin

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