The sparkling yellow diamond earrings, worth over $650,000 which Meghan paired with a blue maternity gown during a state dinner in Fiji, were a wedding gift from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who was behind the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Meghan’s lawyers deny that she knew about the rumors that the prince was involved in Kashoggi’s murder in Istanbul three weeks before the Fiji state dinner and further stated that the duchess’s royal aides were well aware of the earrings’ provenance. Although the chandelier earrings were a wedding gift to Meghan, it seems that neither she nor Harry were present to take receipt of them—they were in fact given to Queen Elizabeth IIduring Mohammed bin Salman’s official visit to Buckingham Palace in March 2018. As individual members of the royal family are not allowed to accept such gifts, the earrings are therefore property of the Crown, and Meghan had merely borrowed them. The question now is whether royal staff knew that the earrings could prove controversial and whether they concealed this from Meghan. She is far from the only royal to wear gems that were gifts from the Saudi royal family, including the Duchess of Cornwall and the queen herself. Last fall, the Duchess of Cambridgewore a sapphire necklace that appeared to have been reworked from a set of sapphires known as the ‘Saudi suite’ that were a wedding gift toPrincess Dianafrom Crown Prince Fahd. Next up, the ‘seawater gem’: see the Countess of Wessex’s two favorite aquamarine tiaras.
