Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond

by William Dalrymple

Until Duleep Singh personally placed the Koh-i-Noor in her hand, Victoria had been racked with guilt over the gem. The manner in which it had been taken from him, coupled with her genuine fondness for the maharaja, had been enough to prevent her from wearing her most fabulous jewel. Though the handover ceremony in the drawing room at Buckingham Palace was more a performance than an actual granting of permission, the maharaja had, by his actions, set Victoria free. Soon after, she took to wearing the Koh-i-Noor frequently and conspicuously. One of the jewel’s earliest and most spectacular outings took place just over a year after Duleep’s handover. In 1855 Queen Victoria announced plans to travel to France for a state visit. This was momentous news, for not only would this be the first state visit to France by a British sovereign in more than four hundred years, it would also cement a historic alliance between France and Britain in the Crimean War. The French had never had an easy relationship with monarchy. They had gone through a cycle of removing and reinstating their kings with a frequency that alarmed other sovereigns of Europe. In 1792 Louis XVI of the House of Bourbon was not merely dethroned, he was decapitated. A series of bloody purges followed, and as the people took power France’s First Republic was born. The country remained without a monarch until Napoleon Bonaparte morphed from military dictator to emperor in 1804. His reign lasted only eleven years and was e...