Some jewels are remembered for their beauty. One is remembered for the trouble it caused. As Vanity Fair Italia retells this week, the so-called Affair of the Diamond Necklace was an elaborate confidence trick played out at the court of Louis XVI, and its most famous victim was a queen who never owned, wore or even saw the piece at its centre.
A necklace nobody could afford
The story begins with the Crown jewellers Charles Auguste Böhmer and Paul Bassenge. According to the Château de Versailles, they spent years trying to sell an extravagant necklace of nearly 650 diamonds weighing almost 2,800 carats. Marie Antoinette had already turned it down. Even at a reduced price of 1.6 million livres it was considered ruinously expensive.
Enter Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, who styled herself the Comtesse de La Motte. She claimed a private friendship with the queen, which was untrue, and found the perfect target in Cardinal Louis de Rohan, who was desperate to win back royal favour. Forged letters supposedly from the queen began to reach him. In August 1784 he was even led to a night-time meeting in the gardens of Versailles with a woman he believed to be Marie Antoinette; she was in fact Nicole d’Oliva, chosen for her resemblance to the queen.
Vanishing diamonds and a very public arrest
Convinced that the queen wanted the necklace in secret, Rohan agreed to buy it on her behalf in four instalments over two years. The jewellers handed it over on 1 February 1785; Rohan passed it straight to La Motte, and it was never seen intact again. Her husband took the diamonds to London, where they were broken up and sold separately.
The scheme unravelled when payments failed to arrive. Böhmer wrote to the queen, and the truth eventually reached her through her lady-in-waiting, Madame Campan. On 15 August 1785 Rohan was arrested in the Hall of Mirrors in front of astonished courtiers. At trial before the Parlement de Paris in May 1786 he was acquitted, while La Motte was convicted, imprisoned and branded with a V for voleuse, or thief.
The cruel twist, as both Vanity Fair Italia and Versailles itself note, is that the innocent queen came off worst. The scandal fed the image of a monarch obsessed with luxury at a time of national hardship, and her reputation never fully recovered.
A happier kind of sparkle
The tale is a reminder that the best jewellery is the kind you actually get to wear. For a touch of courtly drama without the scandal, browse our pendant necklaces, from deep blue sapphire pendants to coordinated jewellery sets, or add candlelit warmth with ruby earrings and a delicate stack of bracelets.
Sources: Vanity Fair Italia, “L’affare della collana: la clamorosa truffa dei diamanti che travolse Maria Antonietta” by Maddalena Gomez (28 October 2026); Château de Versailles, “The affair of the diamond necklace, 1784-1785”; Alpha History, “The affair of the diamond necklace”. Featured image: AI-generated scene.
