Sunday 7 September 2014

Princess Ragnhild’s granddaughter marries – in a tiara

This is a bit of old news by now, but on 9 August the late Princess Ragnhild’s granddaughter, Victoria Ribeiro, married Felipe Falcão, to whom she became engaged in November last year. The only member of the royal family present seems to have been the bride’s grandfather, Erling S. Lorentzen.
25-year-old Victoria Ribeiro, who has taken her husband’s surname, is the only child of Princess Ragnhild’s and Erling Lorentzen’s eldest daughter, Ingeborg, and her husband, Paulo Ribeiro. She is a graphic designer and runs her own company, called Vi Ragna.
I have only seen a couple of photos from the wedding, but it was interesting to note that the bride wore a tiara, which is a first for the non-royal descendants of the royal family. As the family are very well-off there is no reason to believe that the tiara is a fake, but it was not one of the two owned by Princess Ragnhild.
On the other hand it has some resemblance with the diamond tiara (convertible to a bracelet) which was a wedding present to Crown Princess Märtha from her uncle and aunt, King Gustaf V and Queen Victoria of Sweden. But this now belongs to Princess Astrid, who wore it for the first and so far only time for the state banquet during the Latvian state visit in 2011, and although Princess Astrid could have lent it to her goddaughter for her wedding it seems somewhat unlikely that it should have been sent all the way across the Atlantic to Brazil.
Victoria Ragna Lorentzen Ribeiro was born in Rio de Janeiro on 19 December 1988 and christened in the Palace Chapel in Oslo the following summer in the presence of her great-grandfather, King Olav V. Given the geographical and genealogical distance she plays no public role and rarely attends royal family events. Except for her grandmother’s funeral in the Palace Chapel in Oslo two years ago I believe her last such appearance was at the big family gathering held in Trondheim in 2006 for the centenary of King Haakon VII’s and Queen Maud’s coronation. However, she and her cousins Sophia Anne Lorentzen and Alexandra Lorentzen Long cut the ribbon when the new Norwegian seamen’s church in Rio de Janeiro, named Princess Ragnhild’s Church in honour of their grandmother, was opened on 3 May this year.

UPDATE (1 November): Having seen a better picture I can now say that it is indeed not Princess Astrid's tiara, but a previously unseen one.

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