If the gift succeeded - if the queen liked it and wore it - it had fulfilled its function of winning the queen's favour and confirming the giver's devotion and loyalty.
After helping organise the benefit concert to raise money for the Boxing Day tsunami and receiving a CBE from the Queen, it is arguably Clapton's time for reappraisal.
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When she abdicated in 1980 in favour of her daughter Beatrix, the present queen, it occurred to some that this shy, plain woman might never have wanted majesty very much.
And because Royal Mail had already printed millions of the stamps before it received the Queen's official approval, it is too late for a redesign.
Rumours of ghosts have haunted the Queen Mary since it came to Long Beach.
But the queen is finding it difficult to keep any fluids down.
The controversy lost some of its heat after Queen Victoria let it be known that she had relied on "blessed chloroform" during the birth of Prince Leopold.
King is the traditional title of Otuam's ruler, and Bartels says she's happy to be called a king, rather than queen, because it means she can achieve more.
Wearing a cloak with the legend "Dancing Queen" on it, she belted out Lucky Star, which segued seamlessly into her Number 1 hit Hung Up, finishing with a multitude of golden balloons falling over the exuberant crowds at the front.
It is not always the Queen that performs these ceremonies: today it was the Princess Royal handing out the honours for example (you might know her better as Princess Anne).
Much of the city's clunky, unreliable Underground was built in the reign of Queen Victoria, and it shows.
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The Silver Jubilee was the first time I'd ever seen the queen: in fact it was the first time I'd ever seen any of the royal family.
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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It's been a while since Nathan Lane got this much screen time to camp it up, as the Queen's butler, Brighton (even if he does spend some of it in the form of cockroach), and Hammer's a hoot as the arrogant -- but oh-so-eligible -- prince.
It dates back to 1565 when Queen Elizabeth I granted a fief for the island, on condition that it was kept free of pirates and occupied by at least 40 men who could carry arms.
In "Cryin' for the Queen, " however, it's a different British singer who grabs Coppola's attention.
It means the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh will miss Prince Harry's best man's speech and Michael Middleton's father-of-the-bride address.
It was the Queen's first official visit to Wales since she opened the third session of the Welsh assembly in June 2007.
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This is an impossible world defined by Alice's Queen of Hearts, and it may be one reason the South today is filled with red states.
All this makes it unlikely the bill will make it into the Queen's Speech without a fundamental rewrite, which would be seen as a setback for Home Secretary Theresa May.
The queen can knight him if it is destiny.
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Local legend has it that Mary Queen of Scots spent a night there while a prisoner at Sheffield Castle, and in the perimeter wall there is a monument to a young man killed by a stag in the late 1400s.
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It was when Queen Victoria decided, 17 years after her marriage to her cousin Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, to appoint him Prince Consort and to consult him fully about the matters of state that she had to deal with as sovereign.
It was - formally at least - the Queen who honoured Fred Goodwin in 2004 for services to banking and it was Her Majesty who today decided to dis-honour him.
It has marked the Queen's Diamond Jubilee over the weekend and a commemorative tree has already been planted.
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"It also confirms that Queen's receives more blue light ambulances than any other hospital in London, " she added.
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