Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame
King Louis XVI
The French crown jewels — and the blue that vanished in the Revolution.
For a century the French crown gathered the greatest stones in Europe. The Regent, the finest of them, passed from Louis XV to Louis XVI; the deep blue French Blue, re-cut for Louis XIV and worn in the Order of the Golden Fleece, was the jewel of the line.
Then the Revolution. In September 1792 the royal storehouse was robbed and the crown jewels scattered. The Regent surfaced again a year later, hidden in a Paris beam. The French Blue never returned — it vanished into the dark of those years and re-emerged only decades on, half its size, under a new name: the Hope.
