Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip will celebrate their 73rd wedding anniversary in November, and it has taken so many years to uncover a secret about their marriage or more specifically the Queen’s wedding band.
It is common knowledge that the Queen, like Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton, has a ring made of Welsh gold. Most British royal brides wear rings fashioned from the same nugget of Welsh gold which came from a Welsh mine, Clogau St David’s at Bontddu. This gold is more valuable than gold from Australia or South Africa.
While there is only a sliver of the original gold left over, the Queen owns a large nugget of 21 carats Welsh gold which is held by the Crown Jewellers to be used for the royal wedding rings of today. Sarah, Duchess of York, Duchess Kate, and Duchess Meghan Markle all sport wedding bands made from this nugget.
Her engagement ring was made from a tiara that once belonged to Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg. It was a gift from the Prince, who had the tiara taken apart and reassembled into a three-carat solitaire with five smaller diamonds.
An unknown fact about this ring, however, is that it had a secret inscription inside of it. It is so secret that only the Queen, Prince Philip, and the inscriber know what it says.
The inscription was chosen by Prince Philip in 1947.
In the new biography, ‘Prince Philip: A Portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh’, London-based royal expert and biographer Ingrid Seward explains: “At least Philip didn’t have the expense of a wedding ring, as the people of Wales supplied a nugget of Welsh gold from which the ring as made.
“She never takes it off and inside the ring is an inscription. No one knows what it says, other than the engraver, the Queen and her husband.”
Picture: Instagram / The Royal Family
