A
State Crown is the working
crown worn by a
monarch on recurring state occasions such as
State Openings of
Parliament, as opposed to the
coronation crown with which they would be
formally crowned.
Some state crowns might however be used during parts of the
coronation ceremony. In isolated cases,
individual monarchs sometimes chose to use their state crown
instead of the official
coronation
crown for the crowning, but those cases were exceptions rather
than the norm.
Some states where there was no ceremonial coronation only had state
crowns, or neither as in Belgium.
British state crowns
The term
state crown was particularly used in the Kingdom of England and its successor
Kingdom of Great
Britain
to describe the crowns of Kings Charles II and George I that were worn on
occasions such as the State
Opening of Parliament. While the crown of Charles no longer
exists, the jewel-less frame of the
State Crown of George I is
still kept among the British Crown Jewels
.Because they were more frequently in use, in
contrast to a coronation crown which was usually only worn once
during each reign, state crowns were repeatedly replaced due to
wear and tear.
Because of its age and fragility, the State Crown of George I was
replaced in 1838, the new replacement crown was instead called the
Imperial State Crown, as was
its replacement in 1937. The adjective 'imperial' was not abandoned
after the Indian and Pakistani independence in 1947 led to the
abolition of the imperial style after the British Empire had been
transformed into the British Commonwealth of Nations in 1931.
References