Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 26, 2022

With their sparkling jewels, gold trimmings and deep purple fabric, the royal crowns are symbolic of the British Royal Family and the Queen who wears them. But the story behind the rich colour used isn't nearly as glamorous as the final product and a whole lot fishier.

Purple has been associated with royalty since antiquity, as far back as 1000BC. The ruling classes of Rome, Egypt, and Persia would adorn themselves with purple robes to show off just how rich and powerful they were. It wasn't because a love of the colour developed when you hit a certain tax bracket but instead the sheer cost of the required dye.

READ MORE: The Queen's 5 million crown that was a ridiculously generous present from Brazil

Tyrian purple, as it was known, is most famously seen on the Queen's iconic Imperial State Crown. It's thought to be worth between 3 billion and 5bln with the Cullinan I Diamond in the Sceptre with the Cross, is believed to be worth 400m alone.

The purple itself was made by collecting absurd amounts of particular sea snails. To extract useable amounts of the dye you'd need to collect tens of thousands of the snails. A whopping 12,000 would produce enough to colour the trim of a single bit of clothing.

Unfortunately the snail's fishy smell would carry through the dye into the clothing meaning any of these royal garments had a fairly awful odour. So bad was it that the hands of the dyers would reek of rotting fish and the Talmud, the central text of Judaism, specifically granted women the right to divorce her husband if he became a dyer after marriage.

Still it's royal origins persisted. So willing to protect the status of the colour, in the 16th Century Queen Elizabeth I forbade everyone apart from members of the royal family from wearing it.

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In 1856 an aspiring British chemist accidentally discovered a new purple dye while trying to develop a cure for malaria. The new dye, dubbed mauveine, made the previously elite colour popularly available and purple became far more common on clothing.

Still the royal origins persisted. That's why on formal occasions when the Queen wears the Imperial State Crown such as the opening of parliament, it's purple fabric that adorns her nonagenarian head.

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Royal Family: The disgusting reason why the Queen's most famous 3billion crown is purple - My London

Category: Talmud
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