The year 2024 has seen many royal history discoveries. From lost portraits to a controversial monarch’s voice, experts have continued to uncover the past lives of royals.
Mayan royal jade mask found
In January 2024, a team of archaeologists led by Francisco Estrada-Belli of Tulane University shared that in 2021 they had discovered a complete jade mask from a Mayan King dating back roughly 1,700 years. It was discovered at a site known as Chochkitam in a royal pyramid; the LiDAR scan showed that grave robbers had missed a small chamber.
Estrada-Belli shared in National Geographic that ”everything suggests to me that this was a Maya king who was part of a network of Maya royalty in the sphere of influence of Tikal and Teotihuacán.”
Ring from unknown Danish royal family found in Jutland
In February 2024, Lars Nielsen, a treasure hunter, discovered a gold ring with a semi-precious red stone in Jutland in south-western Denmark. The National Museum of Denmark examined the ring and found that it may have links due to the Merovingian royals who ruled areas of France, Germany, and Belgium from the fifth to eighth centuries.
The ring, complete with Frankish design elements, points to a possible existence of an unknown royal family in the area with links to the Merovingians.
Portrait of last Byzantine emperor found
A team of archaeologists in southern Greece have discovered what they believe is a portrait of the last Byzantine Emperor. Working to help restore the Holy Monastery of Pammegiston Taxiarchon, the team discovered a fresco in a deeper layer of wall paintings that depicts Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos who ruled from 1449 to 1453 until Constantinople fell.
The clothing and crown point to the figure being an emperor from the Palaiologos dynasty, Uniquely, the portrait appears to be based on the emperor’s actual appearance rather than the typical stylised portrait.
Richard III’s voice recreated
A group of experts in Leicester have recreated King Richard III’s possible voice. After vocal coach Yvonne Morley-Chisholm came up with the idea, craniofacial specialists used the former King’s skull to create an avatar based on his actual face.
Linguists, vocal coaches, and actors then worked on providing the king’s voice. Actor Thomas Dennis provided the voice we can hear now. Notably, the project’s team landed on Richard speaking with a Yorkshire accent, as he spent considerable time there.
A lost tiara of Queen Mary is found
One of Queen Mary’s tiaras that had not been seen in several decades was rediscovered, thanks to Saad Salman, author of The Royal Watcher. Saad noticed the tiara on the bride at a recent Malaysian royal wedding.
Queen Mary’s Lozenge Bandeau is a smaller diamond and pearl tiara that she commissioned in the 1910s. She frequently wore the tiara in the 1930s and 1940s to the ballet, opera, and theatre. Princess Margaret then wore the lozenge-style diadem for one of her first tiara appearances in 1948 in Amsterdam.
There is still somewhat of a mystery to be solved. Queen Azizah, the Malaysian queen, purchased the tiara in 1988 in New York but had no idea that it had previously belonged to Queen Mary. How it ended up for sale in the United States remains to be discovered.
