User:Pseudo-Richard/Beau Sancy

The Beau Sancy is a 34.98 carat modified "pear double rose cut" diamond. The stone is famous because it has been owned by four European royal families in France, England, Prussia, and the House of Orange. Owners of the stone include Mary Stuart, Marie de Medici and Kaiser Wilhelm II. In May 2012, it was sold at auction to an anonymous buyer for $9.57 million.

Description
The "Beau Sancy" diamond is a colorless, flawless, rounded, double-sided pear-shaped diamond of 34 carats. The exact color and clarity grades of the diamond are not known, because it has not been subjected to modern laboratory analytical techniques. However, the diamond appears to be D-color, and internally flawless. The most striking feature of the diamond, is the perfect symmetry of its 110 facets which is highly unusual for a diamond of the 15th-16th centuries. The technique of cutting a diamond into symmetrical facets was pioneered by Louis de Berquem of Bruges. The Beau Sancy is one of three diamonds which de Berquem used to showcase his innovative technique.

Origin
Despite the lack of documentation regarding the diamond's origin, it is generally assumed that the diamond originated from mines of Golconda in India which were the only source for diamonds during this period of history. Edwin Streeter judged the original cutting and polishing of the stone to have been the work of an Indian lapidary. However, there is no record of a stone of this size ever having been known in India.

Charles the Bold
Little is known about how the diamond was transported from India to Paris. Charles the Bald, Duke of Burgundy, is believed to have purchased the Beau Sancy, together with two other diamonds of Indian origin, from travellers, who are presumed to have acquired them in Istanbul.

The stone was re-cut in 1465 by Lodewyk van Berquem (Louis de Berquem) of Bruges who was a pioneer in the development of modern diamond cutting techniques. De Berquem is credited with introducing the use of absolute symmetry when cutting facets into a stone.

According to one legend, the stone is said to have been lost when the army of Burgundy was routed by the Swiss on the battlefield of Grandson in 1476. A Swiss soldier reportedly found it on the battlefield and, being unaware of the stone's great value, sold it to a priest for a florin. The priest, equally ignorant of the stone's true value, subsequently sold it to the burghers of Berne for a paltry amount. A similar story is told of the Florentine Diamond being lost at the Battle of Morat.

Nicolas de Harlay
The first official record of the stone's ownership establishes that it was in the possession of Nicolas de Harlay, Lord of Sancy, who acquired it in Istanbul in the mid- to late-1500s. Some sources date the acquisition as having occurred in 1570.

Marie de Medici
In 1604, the French king Henry IV bought the stone as a gift for his wife, Marie de Medici at a cost of 75,000 livres (25,000 ecus). It was said that the queen had long coveted the stone, especially after learning that de Harlay had sold a larger diamond to King James I of England. This larger diamond came to be known as the Sancy diamond and the smaller one, the Beau Sancy.

Marie wore the Beau Sancy at her coronation in 1610. Henry IV was assassinated the day after and Marie became regent during the minority of her son King Louis XIII of France. , After years of rivalry between Marie and Louis, Louis eventually exiled his mother who eventually settled in the Netherlands. Lacking any source of income and yet spending on an extravagant scale, she found herself in financial difficulties and was forced to sell her possessions to settle her debts. Thus, she sold the Beau Sancy in 1627 to Prince Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange of Orange-Nassau for 80,000 florins.

Mary Stuart
Frederick Henry gave the stone as a wedding gift to his son's bride, Mary Stuart. According to one account, the stone was pawned by Mary to fund the claim of her brother Charles II to the throne of England. According to another account, the stone was pawned to settle her debts after her death in 1660.

William and Mary
The stone re-entered the Treasure of the House of Orange-Nassau in 1677 when William III gave it to his bride, Mary II Stuart, as a wedding gift. The couple ascended the throne of England in 1689 and the stone became part of the Crown Jewels of England. However, since the couple had no children, the diamond was inherited by Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg who was a second cousin and thus the stone returned to the Netherlands.

Crown Jewels of Prussia
Around 1700, Duke Frederick of Prussia was embroiled in a dispute among the heirs of the House of Orange. Frederick considered the Beau Sancy to have such great symbolic importance that he agreed to give up his legacy jewels in exchange for the Beau Sancy.

In 1701, Frederick crowned himself "King Frederick I in Prussia" and the Beau Sancy became property of the Prussian monarchy. Being the premier stone in the Crown Jewels of Prussia, Frederick had it set as the central stone in the new royal crown of Prussia.

House of Hohenzollern
The stone remained among the crown jewels of Prussia until Kaiser Wilhelm II fled to exile in the Netherlands at the end of World War I. The Beau Sancy remained a possession of the House of Hohenzollern in the Kaiser's Palace in Berlin.

In the last days of World War II, the stone was transferred to a bricked-up crypt in Bueckeberg for safe-keeping. British troops found the stone and returned it to the House of Hohenzollern which retained it until it was sold in 2012.

Sold at auction
In 2012, George Friedrich Ferdinand, head of the House of Hohenzollern and great grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II, put the Beau Sancy up for auction at Sotheby's. After a  bidding war among five bidders, the stone was finally sold to an anonymous bidder for $9.7 million, almost five times the low end of the pre-sale estimate of $2-4 million.