The ring is a twelve-carat oval Ceylon sapphire, surrounded by fourteen solitaire diamonds, set in eighteen-carat white gold. It was chosen by Prince Charles from a Garrard catalogue in 1981 as Princess Diana’s engagement ring. It was worn through all the years of that marriage — the wedding that 750 million people watched, the state visits, the charity engagements, the declining years of a relationship that the whole world eventually knew was failing — and on Princess Diana’s right hand after the divorce.

When Princess Diana died in August 1997, the ring passed to her sons. When Prince William proposed to Catherine Middleton in October 2010, in Kenya during a visit to the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, he used his mother’s ring. He said he wanted to keep Diana close to the important moments of his life that she could not share in person.

Princess Catherine has worn the ring every single day since October 2010. It is the most photographed piece of jewellery in the world. It has appeared in thousands of images — at official engagements, at Wimbledon, on school runs, at Trooping the Colour, at two coronations, at a state funeral, at moments formal and informal across fifteen years of public life.

Princess Diana chose that ring in 1981. Princess Catherine wears it in 2025. The two women never met. Diana died when Catherine was fifteen years old. They share, through the ring, a connection that is daily and visible and never spoken about — because speaking about it directly would require saying things that neither the palace nor the family has found the language for.