Prince Harry made a sweet and special sacrifice for his brother Prince William, who was set to marry Kate Middleton. When the latter planned on finally proposing to his girlfriend of nearly a decade, Harry apparently said it would be more fitting for William to have their mother's engagement ring to give to his future bride.
The Duke of Sussex inherited Princess Diana's beautiful sapphire and diamond engagement ring after she passed away in 1997. However, Prince Harry gave up this iconic ring because he wanted William and Kate to have this instead, reports revealed.
Prince Harry picked the specific jewelry to keep as his personal inheritance from his mother's collection, while William apparently took Princess Diana's Cartier watch. According to Paul Burrell, the former butler of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, Harry decided to make the sacrifice for William and Kate despite knowing he will not be able to give his mother's engagement ring to his own bride.
Burrell said Harry thought the woman who would sit on the throne of England one day should have his mother's precious jewelry. The butler added that the engagement ring was the only thing Harry owned for himself that was his mother's old piece since he and William share the rest of their inheritance from the princess.
According to Daily Express, Princess Diana kept wearing her engagement ring despite the breakdown of her marriage to Prince Charles. The Princess of Wales only returned the jewelry in 1996, when her divorce to Charles was finalized. Prince Harry and William's mother was even photographed with the ring on the day their divorce was announced to the public.
Princess Diana's engagement ring is far from the traditional engagement ring designs since the centerpiece is not a diamond but a 12-carat sapphire. In The Crown season 4, Princess Diana apparently said that she wanted this engagement ring because the sapphire was the same color as her eyes. Vogue spoke with the show's researcher, Annie Sulzberger, who said that Queen Elizabeth raised her eyebrows over Diana's pick because it was the most expensive.
But, in the Duchess of Cambridge, the engagement ring Prince Harry originally inherited remains visible because Kate occasionally still wears the piece. Prince William said that it was nice to have the ring handed down to his wife because it was a way of keeping her mother close.
Meanwhile, Prince Harry's future bride still had something of Princess Diana's jewelry in her engagement ring. According to Brides, the center stone of the ring she gave to Meghan Markle had two round diamonds that came from Princess Diana's other collections.
