Secrets of Queen Elizabeth’s engagement ring revealed

The ring, which features a three-carat round brilliant-cut diamond flanked by ten smaller diamonds in a platinum setting, was personally designed by Philip and made by London jeweler Philip Antrobus Ltd.

The diamonds come from a tiara belonging to Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, later known as Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark, who died in 1969 at the age of 84. The jewel became one of the most recognizable pieces associated with the late monarch, with royal experts saying she never removed it during her 73-year marriage.

The proposal itself came in the aftermath of the Second World War, when Britain was still adjusting to peacetime austerity. Philip reportedly sought permission from Elizabeth’s father, King George VI, who died in 1952 at the age of 56, before formally announcing the engagement in July 1947. The young couple had known each other for years, but their relationship deepened during the war when Philip served as a naval officer.

Philip reflected on his feelings in a 1946 letter, providing a rare insight into the emotional background of their engagement. “To have been spared in the war and to have seen victory, to have had the opportunity to rest and readjust myself, to have fallen in love completely and without reservation, makes all your personal and even world problems seem small and insignificant,” he wrote in 1946.

The ring itself carried layers of family history. The diamonds came from a tiara that belonged to Philip’s mother, a piece originally given to Princess Alice by Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra of Russia when she married Prince Andrew of Greece in 1903. Philip dismantled the tiara to make Elizabeth’s engagement ring and a matching bracelet, later known as the Edinburgh wedding bracelet.

In addition to the engagement ring, Philip also commissioned Elizabeth’s wedding ring using Welsh gold supplied by the people of Wales. Ingrid Seward revealed it in her book Prince Philip: A portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh that Philip had secretly made a private inscription in the binding – an inscription that, she wrote, only three people ever knew: Philip, Elizabeth and the engraver who had made it.

Elizabeth and Philip were married on November 20, 1947 at Westminster Abbey in London. The wedding took place during a period of rationing in Britain, and Elizabeth famously used clothing vouchers to pay for her dress, a gesture that reflected the cuts the public faced after the war. The dress was designed by Norman Hartnell and completed in less than three months by approximately 350 seamstresses working in his studio.