For the first time Prince William was seen wearing the insignia for his new honorary appointment as Personal Aide-de-Camp to the Queen.

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Adorning models, who stomped the courtyard like gawky adolescent gazelles topped by severe Marge Simpson hairpieces, there were tributes also to a romantic, earthy, wintry history of the West Lothian keep, where Mary de Guise gave birth to Mary Queen of Scots.

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The Reine de Naples collection pay tribute to the Queen of Naples, Caroline Murat, sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, for whom the first wristwatch was invented by Breguet in 1812.

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Worn by Marie de Medici during her 1610 coronation as the queen of France, it later passed on to the House of Orange-Nassau, now the Dutch royal family, and then to the collection of the queen of England before arriving in Prussia in 1702.

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There have been two previous state visits by Mexican presidents during the Queen's reign - Luis Echeverria in 1973 and Miguel de la Madrid in 1985.

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Cyclist Bradley Wiggins, who is based in Ecclestone, Chorley, has been conferred a knighthood in the Queen's New Year Honours list after winning the Tour de France and then gold at the 2012 London Olympics.

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That took place some years after her death when France's Henry IV ordered them for his wife, Maria de' Medici, Caterina's distant cousin who was to become the last Florentine queen of France.

ECONOMIST: Renaissance tapestries