Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning British monarch, died on Thursday in Balmoral. She was 96 and reigned over Britain and 14 commonwealths for a little over 70 years. The next in-line for succession is Elizabeth's eldest son, Prince Charles, 73. He became monarch immediately after Elizabeth's death at her Scottish Highland retreat on Thursday.
As Charles takes over the throne, the question is: Who will get the Kohinoor diamond embedded British crown?
The Queen herself had announced that Prince Charles' wife Camilla would get the crown with the diamond since she would become Queen Consort.
The Queen had said it was her "sincere wish" for Camilla to be styled "Queen Consort" when Charles succeeded her "in the fullness of time".
Here is all you need to know about the Kohinoor and its possession over the years:
Why is the Kohinoor in news?
The word Kohinoor started trending on Twitter in India, soon after the news of Queen Elizabeth's death.
Kohinoor, which means mountain of light, is among the world's largest cut diamonds and weighs around 105.6 carats. It is embedded in the British crown. The diamond was found in India in the 14th century and is believed to have been mined in Kollur Mine, in Andhra Pradesh during the period of the Kakatiya dynasty.
The diamond has a long history and has seen several changes of hand over the years. While the Kohinoor is currently on show in the Tower of London among the crown jewels, it was brought out briefly in April 2002 during the Queen Mother's funeral.
While historical evidence shows that the diamond was taken by the British Crown from 11-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh of Punjab from his treasures in 1849 under the peace treaty that ended the Anglo-Sikh Wars, the Indian government in 2016 told the Supreme Court that it should not try to reclaim the diamond from Britain. The solicitor-general had then said the stone was "neither stolen nor forcibly taken" but was "gifted to the East India Company by the former rulers of Punjab in 1849", contrary to the majority belief.
The peace treaty of 1849 had specified that the Kohinoor was to be given to Queen Victoria. The diamond was sent from Bombay to Portsmouth, England.
Two years later, it was publicly displayed as Queen Victoria's for the first time in 1851 during the Great Exhibition.
"The document signed by the ten-year-old maharaja handed over to a private corporation, the East India Company, great swathes of the richest land in India – land which until that moment had formed the independent Sikh kingdom of Punjab. At the same time, Duleep Singh was induced to hand over to Queen Victoria the single most valuable object not just in Punjab but arguably in the entire subcontinent: the celebrated Koh-i-Noor, or Mountain of Light," William Dalrymple and Anita Anand wrote in the book 'Koh-I-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond'.
Many takers for one diamond
While India has claimed the stone in the past, Pakistan, too, has staked a claim several times citing the fact that the Kohinoor was "surrendered to the British at Lahore, the capital of the Sikh empire, under the Treaty of Lahore in 1849."
The diamond changed hands from Indian rulers to the British crown at a tie almost a hundred years before the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan after a bloody partition as the Crown left India.
According to reports, Pakistan's former prime minister ZA Bhutto in 1976 wrote to his British counterpart, James Callaghan, saying that the Koh-i-Noor was part of the "unique treasures which are the flesh and blood of Pakistan's heritage". Callaghan denied saying that the diamond was part of the "peace treaty Britain signed with the maharaja of Lahore".
The Taliban in 2002 also staked a claim on Kohinoor.
Former British prime minister David Cameron in 2010 had said, "If you say yes to one, you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty" when he was asked about Britain's stand on returning the Kohinoor to India.
The 'curse' of the Kohinoor
The Kohinoor diamond is said to be cursed and unlucky for men who wear it "owing to its long and bloody history."
Legend has it that a note was sent to England in 1849 with the diamond which said, "he who owns this diamond will own the world, but will also know all its misfortunes. Only God or woman can wear it with impunity."
Dalrymple and Anand in their book address the question of Kohinoor being "cursed" or not. "As we have seen, Lord Dalhousie firmly believed that the great diamond was not cursed, and he used to quote Shah Shuja who told Ranjit Singh that it brought only good fortune 'as those who possess it have it in their power to subdue their enemies'," the book notes.
Lord Dalhousie believed that the stone "had belonged to some of the luckiest, richest and most powerful monarchs in history and scoffed at the notion that a curse was even possible."
However, the authors write that many owners of the Kohinoor, including Shah Shuja, have "suffered in the most appalling ways. Its owners have variously been blinded, slow-poisoned, tortured to death, burned in oil, threatened with drowning, crowned with molten lead, assassinated by their own family and bodyguards, or have lost their kingdoms and died in penury."
In an exclusive, the Daily Mail reported that the platinum and diamond crown will be placed on Camilla's head on the day of King Charles' coronation.
