Princess Charlotte, 10, Shines in a Meaningful Diamond Heirloom Gifted by Queen Elizabeth to Trooping the Colour

Like her mother the Princess of Wales, Charlotte paid her respects to the late Queen.

The Gist

• Kate Middleton paid tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth by wearing a pair of her earrings, the Bahrain Pearl Drop earrings, to Trooping the Colour on June 14.
• Like her mother, Princess Charlotte also paid homage to her great-grandmother, wearing a diamond horseshoe brooch given to her by the Queen.
• Charlotte also wore the symbolic brooch to the Queen’s funeral on September 19, 2022.

Like mother, like daughter—whereas Trooping the Colour is the annual birthday parade honoring the monarch (in this case, King Charles), Kate Middleton and Princess Charlotte kept another monarch, Queen Elizabeth, close to their hearts.

For Charlotte, her tribute to her late great-grandmother was literally close to her heart in the form of the 10-year-old princess wearing a poignant accessory, which Charlotte originally wore to the Queen’s funeral in September 2022. Charlotte’s diamond horseshoe brooch worn on June 14 was a gift from Queen Elizabeth, People reported, adding that Charlotte “has followed in the late Queen’s footsteps with a love of horses.”

Before the brooch belonged to Queen Elizabeth, it belonged to her mother, the Queen Mother, according to the outlet.

Charlotte paired her brooch with an aqua dress that mirrored her mother’s Catherine Walker coatdress. Catherine Walker was the favorite designer of Princess Diana throughout her royal life, and Diana wore a very similar turquoise and white look while visiting India in 1992.

While Charlotte’s look mirrored her mother’s and honored her great-grandmother, she added a twist that was all her own—her go-to hairstyle of “two braids with a middle part pulled back into a half-updo,” People reported.

While Charlotte has been dubbed Kate’s “mini-me,” she also has numerous similarities to the late Queen Elizabeth—beyond just resembling her. Royal biographer Robert Hardman told People that, of Charlotte, “You can definitely see traits of her great grandmother. The practical common sense—not camera-grabbing, but solid and responsible.”

Like the late Queen before her, the 10-year-old royal is “a natural and has taken to royal events like a duck to water,” a source told the publication, adding that Charlotte is “quite a strong character” and is “almost wise beyond her years.”

The Princess of Wales previously shared that Her late Majesty and Charlotte always had a special connection. Speaking in ITV’s 2016 documentary The Queen at Ninety—when Kate was still the Duchess of Cambridge—the future queen said, “The Queen was really thrilled that it was a little girl, and I think as soon as we came back here to Kensington, she was one of our first visitors here.”

Charlotte’s two middle names, Elizabeth and Diana, honor both her late great-grandmother and her late grandmother, who unfortunately Charlotte never got the chance to meet, as Diana died in 1997—nearly two decades before Charlotte’s 2015 birth.