Cool Crown

Some of the many types of crowns.^note Left to right, top to bottom: Queen Elizabeth II, Aragorn, Usagi, King Slime, Tiana, Claudius, Sapphire, Starscream.

"This one last gift, dear child, for thee,
The symbol of thy royalty.
A crown to wear in grace and beauty,
As is thy right, and royal duty."

— Flora, Sleeping Beauty

A sure-fire way to get across that you are important is to wear a fancy crown. It's the headgear of choice for Kings, Queens and Princesses alike, and no Awesome Moment of Crowning would be complete without it.

Cool Crowns come in many sizes and shapes but a few have distinct associations:

• Tiaras are the iconic crown of the Princess Classic and heavily associated with fairy tales. Perched directly on top of the head, usually with heart or flower designs worked in, they are dainty and sparkly and make great hair accessories. It's almost solely women who wear tiaras,^note The Pope's triple crown used to be referred to as a "tiara" in English, despite looking nothing like the other sort of tiara and doesn't even need to be royalty (small tiaras were very popular — almost de rigeur — for fashionable upper-crust women in the early 20th century), although queens and princesses will wear the fanciest ones. Real Life examples tend to be heavily Gem-Encrusted. Because of the forward-facing half circle shape, very elaborate tiaras may invoke a Holy Halo.
• Frill-like Diadems, often seen being worn by Pageant Queens tend to have the same connotations as tiaras despite having more robustness, similar to a heavy circlet.
• Circlets are the staple of Modest Royalty. Who wants to wear a heavy, clunky crown everywhere? These Royals need to be able to move and get things done. The circlet is usually a ribbon-like strand of metal that wraps around the forehead, sometimes with a simple jewel on the front, or a heavier band that perches atop the head that may have other decorations, but no hoops or caps. They are worn by both genders, and Elves seem to like the really thin across-the-forehead kind, for some reason.
• Hoop Crowns or Closed Crowns, with gold arches, jewelry (often Gem-Encrusted), velvety-cloth caps, and/or ermine-edging are the coolest crowns of them all. Usually seen on Kings, although the occasional Queen, Emperor, and Empress, get to wear them. They are big and in your face and anyone wearing one is really important, or seems to want you to think he is. Even most Royalty don't like to wear them all the time, though. During everyday royal activities, a circlet — or just an ordinary hat — will do.
  • Coronets are basically a Hoop Crown without the hoops and are traditionally worn by titled noblemen (and their wives) on very festive occasions. (In the UK, they are worn only for coronations.) You will encounter a coronet as a heraldic device way more often than as an actual crown.
  • Small hoop crowns, much smaller than the skull of the wearer, are typical for queens and worn using pins to hold them in place. Queen Victoria was known for having a silver, diamond-encrusted one from 1870 onward. (Both the size and the material were chosen so she could wear it with the widow's weeds she insisted on wearing after the death of Prince Albert in 1861—gold and coloured jewels were not allowed in Victorian mourning, but silver and colourless jewels like diamonds were, and a larger crown would not fit atop her widow's cap.)
• Chaplets (simple crowns made of woven, often evergreen plant matter) are associated with the Roman Caesars and, despite being simpler than a typical crown (essentially a partial circlet) because of Roman hatred for traditional monarchy^note The oak civic crown was originally the traditional headgear for Roman senators before it was appropriated by Agustus for Just the First Citizen, they tend to indicate someone who is at the top, in terms of importance. Emperors and Greek Gods really like them. Traditionally, they were given out for achieving some great accomplishment, from winning a battle to finishing first in the ancient Olympics, so it can also be used to indicate that this is a ruler who actually gets out and does things. The chaplet is often made of gold fashioned to look like leaves, but is just as often made of actual leaves.
• Pimped Out Helmets are perhaps the most badass type of crown of all. These look like war helms, only with extra decorations like golden plating, wings, dragon teeth and the like - stuff that says "a crown, not a grunt's helmet". These crowns are the best choice for the Warrior Prince. The hoop crown is in fact a product of evolution of a certain type of pimped-out helmet that lost its practical (protective) function in the process of becoming more pimped-out.
• Heraldic devices are crowns that do not exist in physical form but are merely depicted on coats of arms. A lot of types of crowns only appear on coats of arms, especially the types reserved for communities and organizations (mural crown, astral crown, naval crown etc). Most coronets also belong here.

A key piece of Requisite Royal Regalia. See also, Signature Headgear and Crown-Shaped Head. If it's cool enough to grant powers, it's a Crown of Power.

Sometimes combined with its Sister Trope, Cool Helmet.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach: Baraggan Louisenbairn has a bone-like protrusion poking out of his head that resembles a crown. Fitting, as prior to encountering Aizen, he was the king of Hueco Mundo. His Resurrection form has a more normal crown on his head, made of gold and encrusted with all sorts of jewels.
• In Castle Town Dandelion, crowns are worn by the Sakurada siblings in the promotional material for the manga and the anime, and of course, worn by Mr. Sakurada. Well, they are indeed royalty, so this is justified.
• Code Geass: Averted, even though it's full of royals, but not in the CLAMP artbook - they did in fact design one for Lelouch as Emperor. They comment that it does look more like a tiara.
• Daimos: The crowns of the Baam-seijin crowns look like serpents and the tips are designed to explode once they're detached from the headpiece. Richter, being the Alien Prince, has a crown that looks like a golden bird instead of a snake and is attached to a red cloth headpiece.
• Daltanious: To emphasize her wealth, Princess Catine has an exquisitely designed crown. It has three prongs at the center, two prongs near the ends, and two leaves at the side, all made of gold. She also wears beautiful clothes, and snarks at Sanae for looking poor and like "a servant girl".
• Doraemon: Nobita and the Kingdom of Clouds have the Golden Crown that controls the titular kingdom, where anybody wearing it have everyone else within it's vicinity obeying all his / her orders. Nobita wears this crown for most of the movie (even on the posters and DVD covers) but it was stolen by the villains at the end, who proceed to hijack the entire kingdom for nefarious purposes.
• Hello! Sandybell: To celebrate her engagement to Marc, Kitty Shearer hosts a Masquerade Ball party where she wears a golden, wired crown. Marc, however, spends the night dancing with Sandybell, leaving Kitty scorned.
• Pretty Cure:
  • In HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!, Cure Princess wears a gold crown in her transformed state, reflecting her regal status as the Princess of the Blue Sky Kingdom.
  • In Go! Princess Pretty Cure, each Cure's transformation is complete by them placing a gold crown on their heads.
  • In KiraKira★Pretty Cure à la Mode, Cure Gelato's outfit includes a crown, as her theme animal is the lion, the king of the jungle.
  • In Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure, Cure Grace wears a jeweled tiara as her main headgear.
  • In Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure, Cure Finale wears a purple gem tiara, reflecting her status as the most feminine of the Cures.
  • In Wonderful Pretty Cure!, Cure Wonderful and Cure Nyammy both wear headbands with crowns attached to them.
• In Sailor Moon, all Sailor Guardians wear tiaras in their transformed states, mostly because they're all princesses in another life. At least two had functions - Sailor Moon could throw hers like a discus while Sailor Jupiter had an antenna extend from the jewel in the center, which allowed her to bring lightning down to her. Later on, Neo-Queen Serenity wears a more pimped out tiara.
• In Tenchi Muyo!, Princess Ayeka wears one, but it's very hard to see as her purple bangs hide everything save for a small part at her sideburns. The best way to see what it looks like is the opening of the first OVA series or a picture of Ayeka with her original blue hair.
• In Valvrave the Liberator, the Dorssian royalty have circlets featuring a golden curved piece on a chain. Both genders also wear a sort of pink and purple paint around the eyes along with it. Interestingly enough, the Chancellor of the Military Federation, who overthrows the royal family, still wears this, perhaps showing the support the royals still have.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pharaoh Atem wears an elaborate gold coronet with a giant eye on the front, reflecting where it would be when he uses his shadow powers. Elaborate as it is, it still isn't as elaborate as some of the Egyptian crowns. See Real Life below.

Arts

• Drinking Bacchus: Bacchus is wearing a crown made of grapes and grape vines that is at least half as thick as his own head.
• Nefertiti Bust: The cap crown Nefertiti wears is unique to her and due to its presence on the bust one of the best-known Ancient Egyptian crowns. For comparison, it's easily more recognizable than the khepresh worn by Akhenaten and other pharaohs.
• Seven Virtues:
  • "Fortitude" wears a diadem with embedded pearls that point towards the sky.
  • "Charity" has an elaborate, golden crown on her head. It represents that wealth is to be shared with others. It also complements the woman's Madonna imagery.
• Statue of Liberty: Lady Liberty ironically wears a tiara, showing that the only supreme monarch for America is freedom from monarchs.

Comic Books

• DC Comics:
  • Aquaman: When seen in animation, Aquaman, who is king of Atlantis, is rarely to never seen with his crown. His wife Mera, however, is rarely to never seen without hers.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Diana is (usually) the crown princess of Paradise Island and wears a tiara that has a sharp edge which she can use as a boomerang style weapon.
    • Wonder Woman (1942): Queen Atomia wears a bronze crown studded with green gems that match and reflect her poison green eyes and darker green top and which is just spiked enough to be almost threatening while elegant, which befits a villain so dangerous and incapable of sympathy.
    • Wonder Woman (Rebirth): Queen Atomia wears a striking black crown with a gem centered in the front.
• The Transformers (Marvel): When Grimlock took over as leader of the Autobots on Earth, he got himself a nice crown.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm:
  • Harry gets a simple golden circlet with a triskelion design, which he only really wears on official occasions, with the usual connotations of Modest Royalty and someone who does stuff.
  • In the sequel, it changes to varying designs of gold or white-gold circlet with a single shining white gem inset — the same connotations, but with an added air of Harry's adjustment to his royal station (which he's still occasionally uncomfortable with).
• Cinderjuice: The title character of The Bug Princess receives her title when she's presented with a specially made tiara. It resembles a silver spiderweb adorned with four large jeweled beetles in different colors.
• Several characters in The Night Unfurls sport this, assuming their design in the fanfic is the same as Kuroinu canon.
  • The Goddess Reborn and High Elf Queen of Eostia, Celestine, wears a chaplet, indicating her authority over the Seven Shields.
  • Olga is the holder of Haughty Garan's Jagged Crown to indicate that she inherits the goddess's power. Ironically, the pale purple crown she wears is neither jagged nor covered with thorns.
  • Prim, the Princess Classic of the Seven Shields, wears a golden tiara with a red jewel in the middle.
• In Queens of Mewni, the crowns are so distinctive from each other that they are noted in their queens' respective entries. Even so, the crown of Helia, the Light of Power is of special note because it's her wand: she was so powerful that she could cast spells without her wand, and after her mother chastised her one too many times about being careless with her wand, Helia transformed it into her tiara. Aside from Helia's unusual crown, some of the queens had more unusual crowns than the trope implies: Solena the Smitten just used the flower crown her dance troupe wears when dancing, Crescenta the Eager had a jeweled headband with a little crown on the side of it, and Festivia preferred a crown from Silvan (a headband with horns and bunches of grapes on it) because she spent her formative years there.
• The Palaververse: The Capricious Crown of Capra, an ornate, enchanted crown that just so happens to also be alive and the supreme ruler of the nation of Capra. It speaks in a metallic voice and shows emotion by flashing its gems in different colors.
• In The Parselmouth of Gryffindor, the single (but memorable) marker of the Goblin King Ragnuk VII's royalty is his golden crown — in contrast to his rather ordinary clothes.
• Sew Cute Pretty Cure: As Cure Gemstone, Jewel's simple tiara turns into a golden crown studded with rosy-pink rubies.
• Shadow and Rose: Near the end , the new King and Queen of Ferelden are gifted with crenellated hoop crowns by the King of Orzammar.
• Tales of the Undiscovered Swords: In keeping with Himetsuru Ichimonji's princess image, he wears a tiara at all times, which has the Uesugi crest engraved into it.
• In The Vow, Lady Lianne is given a circlet by her fiancé Lord Shen as a proposal gift for their wedding. Designed with great care by Shen himself to fit perfectly his fiancée, the circlet is made of gold and decorated with white quartz and pearls all around the edge, and it has one large red diamond in the center (with the colors being trademarks of Shen). When Lianne wears it, she turns into a queen in Shen's eyes.

Film — Animated

• In Anastasia, the titular Russian princess wears a very sparkly diadem with her princess dress.
• The Book of Life: Xibalba has a silver crown with horns sprouting from the both sides, topped with black wax candles lit with green flames. A black skull is in the middle of the crown.
• Disney:
  • Aladdin: Jasmine wears a light blue tiara with a sapphire jewel on the front.
  • Alice in Wonderland: The Queen and King of Hearts wear tiny hoop crowns.
  • Atlantis: The Lost Empire: The queens (the unnamed queen seen in the prologue and Kida at the end of the film) wear small gold tiaras with large pink and blue feathers coming out of the back on their heads. The only kings shown in the film, Kashekhim Nedakh, does not wear a crown, nor does Milo.
  • Cinderella: During his introductory scene, the King can be seen throwing his crown out the window.
  • The Emperor's New Groove: Kuzco wears a gold crown shaped like a semicircle.
  • Frozen: Elsa wears a small gold tiara at her coronation, which she discards after she runs away. In Frozen II, Anna wears a slightly more elaborate tiara when crowned queen.
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Esmeralda wears a small gold tiara with emeralds on it (referencing both her name and her eye color) during her pole dance in the song "Topsy Turvy".
  • The Little Mermaid: King Triton, Queen Athena, and half of their daughters (Ariel is an exception) all appear to be wearing crowns made from coral. At the end of the first film, Ariel wears a gold tiara with her Fairytale Wedding Dress. In the sequel, she wears a jeweled one for Melody's party.
  • Mulan: The Emperor of China wears a traditional Chinese royal headdress.
  • The Princess and the Frog: Naveen and his parents all wear hoop crowns on their heads, while Tiana is first seen wearing a silver tiara, and later a green tiara made from flowers, then a simple gold tiara in the final scene.
  • Robin Hood (1973): Prince John wears an oversized hoop crown.
  • Sleeping Beauty: Princess Aurora wears a tiara, while her parents and father-in-law wear hoop crowns.
  • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Evil Queen wears a hoop crown over what appears to be a black Saxon-style veil.
  • The Sword in the Stone: Arthur "Wart" Pendragon wears a giant, ornate crown at the end of the move that keeps falling over his eyes.
  • Tangled: Rapunzel's tiara is a plot piece. Her parents have hoop crowns.
• The Red Crown of Omadon, seen in The Flight of Dragons, a very large hoop crown with several pointed spikes rising from its edges and a giant red jewel in its front. It is the source of Omadon's powers and crucial for the other good wizards to create The Last Realm of Magic.
• Madagascar: King Julian wears a crown made from leaves. At the end of the film, he replaces it with a larger crown with a gecko on it.
• Pixar:
  • In Brave, Queen Elinor wears a circlet on her head. Her daughter Princess Merida, by comparison, usually wears nothing at all on her head; however, for the formal events concerning her betrothal, she's forced into a head-covering Saxon-style veil held in place with a circlet.
  • Cars 2: The Queen of England is a large blue car wearing royal robes who appears to have a giant hoop crown on her roof. Her hood ornament is also shaped like a crown as well.
  • A Bug's Life: Both Princess Atta and her mother, the Ant Queen, wear crowns made from flowers.
  • In Turning Red, Sun Yee wears traditional Chinese hair jewelry with the appearance of a crown.
• Transformers:
  • The bottom right example in the page image is Starscream during his very brief tenure as leader of the Decepticons in the original, animated Transformers: The Movie.
  • Starscream's crown would be revived in other continuities, such as Transformers: Cybertron and the IDW comics.

Film — Live-Action

• Alice in Wonderland (2010): The Red Queen, though she actually stole it from the White Queen. When the Jabberwocky is defeated in the big battle, the Red Queen's crown of gold and rubies changes back into the White Queen's crown of silver and sapphires.
• The Chronicles of Narnia.: The Pevensie siblings each get a crown. The boys get traditional-looking crowns, whilst the girls get coronets that look like flower wreaths. The two elder siblings, Peter and Susan, have their crowns wrought out of gold, whilst the younger two, Edmund and Lucy, have silver ones.
• Cleopatra: Elizabeth Taylor wears an extraordinary confection modeled on the traditional Egyptian crown; it consisted of a golden disk between two tall horns mounted on a gold covered wig. How they kept this on her head even when she bowed deeply to Caesar is anybody's guess.
• Curse of the Golden Flower: For the Chrysanthemum Festival, the Empress dons a gold crown wrought as a splay of phoenix feathers. According to behind-the-scenes DVD features, the headgear weighed 12 pounds.
• The Elusive Avengers: In the third movie, appropriately titled The Crown of the Russian Empire, the titular Greater Imperial Crown of Russia was the MacGuffin. (Google it. It's one of the most awesome hoop crowns of Real Life).
• In From Dusk Till Dawn, Santanico Pandemonium and several of the girls at the Titty Twister wear headdresses that look like gold circlet type crowns, with Santanico's being the most elaborate. This marks her as Queen of the vampires.
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug: The Elvenking Thranduil's ornate crown◊ features protruding, spiky twigs, autumn leaves and berries.
• The Lord of the Rings
  • The Elven lord Elrond sports a circlet of the "stock thin elven" type. The Elven High King of old, Gil-Galad, did too.
  • In The Return of the King, the crown of Gondor looks like a circlet, although a fairly large one. This is contrary to the book, where it looks like a helm (not exactly hoop crown, but close).
• In Robin Hood (2010), King Richard's helmet has a crown built into it.
• Star Wars: Queen Amidala wears plenty of ridiculous headdresses in The Phantom Menace. Which one is the formal crown is harder to say. The novelization of Episode II, however, says that some particular one of them (not specified which) was a crown. Note that this was intentional, and part of the whole "decoy trick": the queen's exaggerated and exotic look made her stand out next to her handmaidens, so no one would suspect that she was a decoy, and the real queen was disguised as one of the handmaidens.

Literature

• Black Crown: The titular crown is a gift to the Milvian Kings from the Northern Tribes, and is a symbol in Northern culture of both strength and humility in leadership.
• The Chronicles of Narnia:
  • The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: The Awesome Moment of Crowning makes a special point of mentioning that the crowns given to the Pevensies aren't the heavy, gaudy, over-embellished sort (like the British Crown Jewels) but elegant circlets. The royal lines of Narnia all tend to fall in the Royals Who Actually Do Something camp.
  • In The Magician's Nephew, Helen and Frank have their coronation after the dwarfs make their crowns from silver and gold peeled from a "sovereign" tree. The crowns are of the "circlet" type, much lighter than the British Royal crowns, as compared in the book.
• Deryni: There's a number of these:
  • The Haldanes have the State Crown of Gwynedd, bejeweled and with intertwined gold leaves and crosses, worn at coronations and state occasions. Even Kelson wears this when duty calls for it, though he prefers a "simpler circlet of gold" like the hammered gold circlet he wears when addressing the bishops at Valoret in The Quest for Saint Camber.
  • Also in The Quest for Saint Camber, Kelson wears "the oldest and plainest of Kelson's official crowns: a band of hammered gold two fingers wide, chased with a design of Celtic interlace and set with small, round cabochon rubies in some of the interstices."
  • Caitrin Quinnell, soi-disant Queen of Meara, has a regal crown of gold set with sapphires and rubies. This one is notably heavy; it creases Caitrin's brow (the marks are visible when she takes it off), Ithel flinches under its weight when Caitrin briefly sets it on his head, and Kelson complains of its weight after wearing it at the surrender ceremony in Laas.
  • Mátyás brings a crown from Torenth's treasury when he comes to Rhemuth to escort Liam-Lajos back for his investiture: "a handsome circlet of beaten gold, nearly the width of a man's three fingers, set round with smoky balas rubies, baroque pearls, and chunky rough-polished emeralds the size of a man's thumbnail." Liam receives a newer traditional Torenthi crown at the ceremony: "a golden diadem studded with rubies and emeralds and pearls, with great jeweled pendants hanging just short of his shoulders at either side.".
  • Late in The King's Deryni, Brion Haldane wears a leather band studded with cabochon garnets (a "practical diadem for travel") while on a military campaign.
• In Dune Messiah, Paul wears a crown with the Imperial emblem of a fist and fish. (Arranged how, no one knows).
• The Elenium:
  • The sapphire rose Bhelliom once adorned the Crown of Thalasia, until the loss of both crown and the king who wore it in circumstances very similar to Isildur's loss of the One Ring.
  • The large ornamental state crown of Elenia is on the head of Queen Ehlana, as described in the first book, The Diamond Throne. Ehlana is also wearing her robes of state and has every royal symbol with her - she's encased in a magic spell that has her in what looks like a glass box, and the objects are in there to keep them from being taken by those who would see her dethroned. In the third book of the series, when the Queen is released from the spell and becomes an active member of the cast, she's described as wearing an assortment of tiaras.
• Enchanted Forest Chronicles: The crown of the dragons is a heavy circlet made of iron. When, after her first day as King, Kazul exhaustedly hurls it against the wall, Cimorene chides that she shouldn't treat the crown that way. Kazul responds, "Of course I should. It's expected. That's why we made it out of iron and not something soft and pliable like gold."
• Every salon head in Girls Kingdom as well as the student council president is allowed to wear a tiara, and all of them wear one themed after their salon. For example, the head of the Sky Salon wears a star-spangled tiara, while the head of the Mauve Manor wears one modeled after rose stems, complete with thorns. Angelica, the student council president's, meanwhile, has a bat on it because she's a Friendly Neightborhood Vampire.
• Harrow the Ninth: As the one and only divine ruler of the Nine Houses for ten thousand years, the Emperor has little need for status symbols, but, for a formal occasion, breaks out a circlet of mother-of-pearl laurel leaves, each with a fetal finger bone animated to make it wave as though in a breeze.
• Harry Potter: The Diadem of Ravenclaw, a "delicate-looking circlet" with the inscription "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure". It's said to bestow wisdom on the wearer. Sadly, it's been lost for centuries, and after being turned into a Horcrux by Voldemort, was left to rust in a version of the Room of Requirement.
• Heralds of Valdemar: The Valdemaran royals wear understated circlets to go with their Modest Royalty and indicate they don't think they are better than their subjects. Other royals in neighboring countries either copied them or came up with the idea independently (probably the latter).
• The Heroic Legend of Arslan: Prince Arslan has a circlet and gold Pimped Out Helmet for battle as crowns.
• Journey to Chaos: Kasile wears a circlet as a princess and she's upgraded to the ancestral hoop crown once she becomes queen in Looming Shadow. Both are bedecked in jewels and Ataidar fire symbols. Eric observes that the latter is also a heavy crown.
• The Quest of the Unaligned: The Prince's Crown is either a circlet or a Hoop crown. Described as "made of white metal accented by gold trim and a myriad of diamonds that beam forth rainbows in every direction", this crown is both incredibly powerful and very dangerous. Each Crown Prince of Caederan must take this crown from its vaults at the Temple Of The Elements and carry it to the City Of Balance by the summer solstice, when it will be needed for his coronation ceremony. Except in the coronation ceremony, the Crown must never be touched, not even by the prince or its own caretakers. It turns out the reason for this is that touching the Crown is necessary to become an orah or a hoshek.
• Septimus Heap: The True Crown. Made from the gold of the spiders of Aurum, it was withheld by Queen Etheldredda from her daughter Esmeralda and only taken back by Princess Jenna five hundred years later.
• A Song of Ice and Fire has a number of these:
  • The King of the North wears a crown of bronze swords, because it's Grim Up North. Two iterations: the original pre-Targaryen crown and the replica made for Robb Stark after he reinstated the Northern kingdom. Notable for being made of relatively common metals, bronze and iron, which are nonetheless stronger than the more traditional and gaudy gold, symbolizing the belief that a king should first and foremost be strong.
  • The High Septon wears a crown of crystals that throws rainbows everywhere, which is a symbol of the Faith of the Seven. The original was lost when the High Septon wearing it died during a riot, so the Lannisters had a new one crafted as a gift slash bribe. When a highly fundamentalist High Septon was elected, he promptly sold it off to purchase food for the poor.
  • Styled after his House's stag sigil, Renly Baratheon's crown has its own antlers.
  • Daenerys Targaryen receives a crown with three dragon heads as a gift. It's a reference to the Targaryen sigil, the three-headed dragon, and to Daenerys' three dragons. Because the Qartheen jewelers, who made the crown, like everything rich and posh with little regard for practicality, Dany often complains about how heavy the thing is.
  • There was also one decidedly uncool crown, made for Theon Greyjoy in Winterfell by a half-competent blacksmith who had only previously crafted nails and horseshoes, after the more or less competent one was killed on Theon's orders. It only invited extreme sarcasm from Theon's sister Asha.
  • The Targaryen kings wore a whole bunch of crowns, including Aegon I's Valyrian Steel and ruby circlet, Aenys's heavy gold crown, Jaeherys I's jeweled circlet, Aegon III's gold headband, Baelor's crown of flowers, Aegon IV's heavy dragon head crown, and Maekar's crown of iron spikes. Whichever one a ruler wore can be seen as symbolic of their character and rule.
  • Stannis Baratheon wears a crown whose fringes resembles the flames of the Lord of Light.
  • The Ironborn traditionally used a crown made of driftwood to mark their kings. In an upcoming chapter from The Winds of Winter reveals that Euron Greyjoy has dispensed with it and had a new crown made for himself out of iron, with shark's teeth for points.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • In The Lord of the Rings, the first crown of Gondor was a war helm that belonged to Isildur, and the second (Aragorn was crowned with it), was a more pimped-up, crown-like helm. And in the other Númenórean kingdom, Arnor, a simple circlet with a single diamond was used. The Arnorian crown also existed in two iterations: the original and the replacement that was made after the original was lost. After LOTR, the original circlet was found, giving Aragorn a total of three cool crowns.
  • In The Silmarillion there's an evil version- Morgoth's Iron Crown, a massive, bulky thing most notable because it's where he displays the three stolen Silmarils.
• The Wheel of Time: A Crown of Swords is named after the Laurel Crown of Illian. The crown is of a laurel wreath design, but between the leaves are tiny daggers alternately pointing up and down; the intention in the design is that the wearer can never wear it comfortably, reminding him of the obligation and danger it represents. After he notices this, Rand gives the Laurel Crown its other name.
• In Wyrd Sisters, Lancre doesn't have a flashy crown, at least not compared to the crowns a group of actors have. It's lampshaded by Granny Weatherwax that imitation crowns are always cool and flashy looking, because that is what people expect crowns to be. Real crowns are just an impractical hat and badge of office so aren't that impressive.
• Skin Game: The Physical God Hades wears a "crown" of floating motes of mordite — solidified anti-life that usually disintegrates anyone it touches. Even the famously irreverent Harry Dresden has a Sarcasm Failure at the sight.

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory: In one episode, Sheldon and Amy have a fight, and Sheldon gives Amy jewelry as an apology. Amy is chewing Sheldon out for such a shallow gesture, until she sees it's a tiara.
• The Crown, as you might expect, has rather a lot of these:
  • There is of course the Crown, i.e. St Edward's Crown, with which Elizabeth is crowned halfway through Season 1. Its weight, both symbolic and literal (5 pounds!), is a major theme.
  • The coronation scenes also give us one of the few instances where Peers' coronets appear as physical hats rather than just representations in coats of arms.
  • Philip gets a fancy coronet in Season 2 after Elizabeth officially makes him a Prince of the United Kingdom.
  • Season 3's "Tywysog Cymru" includes Prince Charles's investiture as Prince of Wales, during which he received his rather excellent-looking Modernist princely coronet.
  • The Imperial State Crown has the distinction of appearing the most in the series, on a technicality—it’s featured in the opening credits. It also shows up on Her Majesty’s head in a few episodes.
  • The numerous jewelry tiaras of the ladies of the House of Windsor appear frequently, especially in the show's frequent dinner scenes in the early seasons.
  • The second episode has an exchange during then-Princess Elizabeth and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh's review of local dignitaries in Nairobi, in which Philip flippantly tells one older gentleman wearing a rather distinctive headdress "Like the hat". His wife reproaches him:
    The Princess Elizabeth: That’s not a hat. That’s a crown.
    *Cut to opening credits*
• The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: Mayrin, queen of the Vapra Clan and All-Maudra (High Queen) of all Gelfling Clans, wears a pointed yet elegant-looking crown. After an All-Maudra's death, each tip of the crown has to be sent to a Maudra, then all Maudras must gather to reassemble it and crown the new All-Maudra.
• Downton Abbey features Edwardian and 1920s fashion, and in keeping with the style Lady Grantham is sometimes seen wearing a small, elegant, jeweled tiara.
• Game of Thrones:
  • The most distinctive crown — and the most striking piece of headwear—in the series belongs to King Renly Baratheon; several golden stag antlers (the sigil of his House) protrude prominently from its rim. It was chosen as one of The Coolest Helmets, Hats and Headpieces in Science Fiction and Fantasy by io9.com.
  • The other kings of the Baratheon dynasty, namely Robert, Joffrey and Tommen, also wear similar crowns. Joffrey's and Tommen's are actually the same crown.
  • None of the rival kings wear any crowns in the series, not even Daenerys. It appears that in series-Westeros, cool crowns are a Baratheon-only thing.
• Merlin (2008): King Arthur and King Uther go through a couple of crowns, and Arthur gets the short end of the stick each time. Whilst Uther wore a simple but respectable looking circlet, Prince Arthur had something that looked like a shiny metal headband. In a Flash Forward, Arthur was seen wearing Uther's crown, but when he finally became King himself, he switched to a giant gold crown with fleur-de-lis spikes on it, which most people thought looked a little bit like the Burger King crown. Guinevere on the other hand, is lucky enough to wear a very elaborate, but still elegant-looking silver crown adorned with jewels. Since her coronation was filmed twice (first as a Flash Forward, and then in real time) you can see the difference in Arthur's crown here, and here.
• Nirvana in Fire: There are some stunningly elaborate royal headpieces in this drama, but the Empress's crown◊ definitely takes the prize.
• Odd Squad:
  • Otis wears one in "Sir" when he (somehow) becomes crowned the king of Potatoland and emerges from the Potato Room.
  • One of the turtles that Oprah meets in "Hands on a Desk Chair" as part of a top-secret mission wears a rather large one on its shell to signify its hierarchial status as king.
  • King Berry, the ruler of Gooland, wears a gem-studded one.
  • Lady Sunshine, a local villainess specializing in light, wears a sharp and regal-looking yellow crown with a gem on the front to match her overall divine aesthetic.
  • During his reign as the Shadow King in "Odd Squad in the Shadows", Omar wears a crown made solely out of office supplies and has a throne made out of the same materials to match. At the end of the episode, Orla cites him wearing a crown as a reason why he should be the leader of the Odd Squad Mobile Unit, but he shoots the idea down and takes the crown off, stating that he doesn't have the time to be both the Shadow King and the leader of the Mobile Unit.
• Pawn Stars: A real life example — a 1920s emerald tiara belonging to a former First Lady — was brought to the shop. Rick initially turned down the purchase, but after thinking about it, he decided that he liked it so much that he called the prospective seller and agreed to buy it for his own personal collection.
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers Operation Overdrive: The Corona Aurora. It and its five scattered jewels serve as the MacGuffins that everyone's after, granting incredible power if they're reunited.
  • King Mondo of Power Rangers Zeo had a mechanical crown that could rotate. This didn't really do anything, but it looked cool.
• Schitt's Creek has Alexis Rose wearing a golden tiara to break up with Ted, and it is later revealed after Alexis is pressured into given it to Twyla, that Alexis first wore the tiara for her bat mitzvah.
• In Vikings, king Harald Finehair has a crown made out of gold and the teeth of a shark.
• WandaVision: In the in-universe Halloween Episode, Wanda wears a version of her comics costume, complete with the famous red headpiece, which looks a bit like a crown. In the finale, when she accepts her identity as the Scarlet Witch and comes into her full power, she gains an updated version of that costume forged of magic. In the new version, it's definitely a crown.
• Wonder Woman (1975): Wonder Woman's tiara is a razor sharp boomerang that she uses regularly to disable Nazi boats, disarm bad guys, and destroy equipment among other things.

Music

• The Jamster character Pussycat Tiger is seen wearing a tiara.
• The cover of Joanna Newsom's Ys shows her wearing a flower crown.
• Beyoncé, fitting with her Queen Bey status, is no stranger to wearing a cool crown, such as the one she wore in her 2017 Grammy's performance.
• The cover of Janelle Monáe's The ArchAndroid shows her wearing a golden headdress that resembles a metropolitan city.
• Kendrick Lamar wears a custom-made diamond-encrusted crown of thorns on the cover of Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, an homage to the one that Jesus wore. He also wore it while performing on tour for the album.
• Chappell Roan wears a tiara on the cover of The Rise and Fall Of a Midwest Princess.
• In the music video for All Mirrors by Angel Olsen, her Mirror Self wears an extravagant headdress.
• HANA wears a futuristic purple crown on the cover of Hanadriel.

Professional Wrestling

• GLOW's champion used to wear a blinged-out tiara instead of a championship belt.
• Debra McMichael (later Mrs. Steve Austin) used to wear one as part of her "Queen Of WCW" gimmick in the mid-1990's.
• Triple H, during his "King of Kings" period.
• Jerry Lawler, Harley Race, and Ernie Ladd all wore them as part of a "King of Wrestling" gimmick.
• Most of the winners of WWE's King of the Ring tournaments. Kurt Angle's crown looked stupid but went well with the oblivious dork character he was playing at the time.
• Randy Savage wore a circlet crown during his "Macho King" period, with Sensational Queen Sherri wearing a tiara. One of Savage's WCW girls, Miss Madness, had a tiara as part of her pageant queen gimmick.
• Madison Rayne in her later years in TNA.

Religion and Mythology

• The Bible: Mockingly used with the crown of thorns forced on Jesus Christ. It's usually portrayed as a bulky circlet.

Tabletop Games

• Changeling: The Lost: Crown is one of the six Arcadian Regalia (the categories of Contracts wielded by the True Fae and their creations), and contains the Contracts of command and leadership.
• Pathfinder: The Icecrown of Irrisen, a crown of never-melting ice worn by the Queens of Irrisen that bonds directly with the wearer's head and can only be placed or removed by Baba Yaga herself.
• Planescape: The Lady of Pain setting has something like this. When seen from a distance, she seems to be wearing a wicked cool headdress made of long, razor-sharp metal blades that encircle her entire head. However, if one gets close enough to see her features more clearly (not recommended, given what she's known to do to people who annoy her), one sees that it's not a headdress... It's part of her body!
• Warhammer has the Crown of Sorcery, also called the Crown of Nagash, which greatly enhances a sorcerer's power and can even grant magical power to those without it. Unfortunately it suffers greatly from Depending on the Artist, being portrayed at various times as a simple circlet, two (completely◊ different◊) elaborate faux-Egyption headdresses, and a bunch of iron spikes welded together◊.

Toys

• Plushie Dreadfuls: The Narcissistic Personality Disorder bunny has a shiny gold crown and collar, representing the delusions of grandeur the condition can cause.

Video Games

• In Angry Birds, some of the bigger and tougher Pigs wear crowns. Such attire is usually switched with whatever headgear is appropriate for the level's theme, however.
  • Also, the King Pig always wears one of these. The first episode of the Toons series that centers around the pigs shows the pigs don’t recognize him if he isn’t wearing it.
• Bug Fables: The Big Bad of the game, the Wasp King, has his royalty highlighted with a golden crown decorated with red gems. After his defeat, the crown is both used to represent Chapter 7's completion on the file menu and a trophy found in Team Snakemouth's home to signify the game has been beaten. The crown turns out to be a Roach-made artifact that lets the Wasp King control Wasps, specifically yellowjackets with undamaged antennae.
• Dark Souls:
  • Dark Souls II had its DLC focused around crowns. The objective of each chapter of the DLC was to obtain the crown of a lost king. Getting all three of them and speaking to Vendrick afterward allows him to place a charm on the crowns such that when they are worn, the player character does not Hollow.
  • Dark Souls III: High Lord Wolnir gets extra points for how he had his crown made: he melted down the crowns of the kings of all the kingdoms he conquered and fashioned his own crown out of mixing them together. And yes, you can obtain his crown and wear it.
• Dragon Age:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, the "Paragon Crown", made by whichever Paragon you side with in the Deep Roads, can be given to whichever claimant to the throne of the dwarven city of Orzammar you wish. It's suitably dwarven in styling, made of gold and rubies.
  • Viscount Dumar, in Dragon Age II, wears a circlet. In the epilogue slides of the Trespasser DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition, a similar circlet is shown on the head of his successor, Varric Tethras.
  • Concept art for Inquisition indicates that the Inquisitor was originally going to be given a cool crown featuring the Inquisition's sigil and pointed decorations rather like arrows. In the final game, however, the Inquisitor never receives any sort of crown or other badge of office at all.
• Dual Blades: While Alperen is not royalty of any kind, but he nonetheless does wear an impressive circlet as can be seen here◊.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Barenziah, Queen of Wayrest in Daggerfall and Queen Mother of Morrowind in Morrowind, wears circlets and tiaras. However, the Crown of Barenziah in Skyrim is hard to classify. It's technically a circlet, but has gold wings big enough that it seems to be a helm when looked from the front. Barenziah also never was seen wearing this crown in either previous appearance, though this is possibly justified, since in Skyrim the crown has been broken into 25 fragments and must be reassembled, and it's not made clear how long ago it was shattered (she'd also held the title of reigning Queen of Morrowind before her first appearance in the games, and the chaotic events that led to her abdication could easily have resulted in her crown being lost and shattered).
  • Also from Morrowind, as seen in the Tribunal expansion, Almalexia wears a crown made of some sort of greenish-bronze metal. When she finally snaps and attacks the Nerevarine in the Clockwork City, she dawns a scary war mask made of this same metal.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
    • The Jagged Crown, a long-lost diadem which has been worn by many past High Kings and Queens of Skyrim, is a prime example of a pimped-out helmet: it's a helmet decorated with dragon's teeth. Rather fitting for a Proud Warrior Race like the Nords.
    • The Jarls from Skyrim wear some pretty much plain circlets, not different from player-available jewelry. Justified because they are merely local aristocracy, not full royalty.
    • The Aetherial Crown from the Dawnguard DLC. It's a circlet with a glowing piece of Aetherium embedded in it. It also boasts a unique and incredibly powerful effect: the ability to have two Standing Stone bonuses at once.
• Fantasy Quest presents you with the Crown of Destiny, which grants you access to a sword you need.
• Fire Emblem: While the main lords (and royal units in general) series tend to not wear crowns, probably because it makes little sense to wear one in war, there are some exceptions. Eliwood wears a very basic thin circlet around his forehead, Lucina wears a relatively modest-looking tiara, and Marth wears a circlet, often with simple decoration, above his forehead. The rare non-combatant royalty often sport more elaborate hoop crowns or circlets.
• Charlotta from Granblue Fantasy sports a very tall crown designed to make her look taller.
• illWill (2023) has all it's bosses being King Mook versions of regular enemies, and they all have a golden crown as a sign of their dominance over lesser monsters.
• Kingdom: Your ruler's crown is a key element. Should they be hit by something while their coin purse is empty, the crown will be knocked from their head — and if the Greed get their hands on it, Game Over.
• Kingdom Hearts: Queen Minnie wears a tiara with gems that form the hidden Mickey symbol, while Daisy, who seems to be a noble of some sort, also wears a tiara. In the Final Mix of Kingdom Hearts II, Sora could obtain a crown that perched on his hair spikes as a reward for completing quests.
• Kirby:
  • In Kirby's Return to Dream Land, there is a powerful crown called the Master Crown guarded by the four-headed dragon Landia that Magolor desires to rule the universe with. He guides Kirby, King Dedede, Meta Knight, and Bandana Dee to beat Landia for him and takes it. Unfortunately, the Crown is a sentient Artifact of Doom and overtakes Magolor himself when his Traitor form is beaten by Kirby's Ultra Sword. Even after Magolor's monster form is beaten, the Crown survives via its fragments and orders Electricky Dooter, Fiery Puffer, Hydriath and 4 Rampaging Doomers to collect Fruit Fragments, while upgrading Grand Doomer, its most powerful servant, into Crowned Doomer after Magolor collects the Fragments to make the first Gem Apple of the series. Even after Grand/Crowned Doomer is defeated by Magolor, the Master Crown itself possesses that very Gem Apple into a giant tree monster, making itself even more cool.
  • In Kirby Star Allies, Void Termina's avianoid form uses a similar crown via its Crown of Great Evil and Obsession attack. It's more obvious when facing it on Soul Melter difficulty, where it shares a very similar color scheme.
  • The "elemental" abilities (Fire, Ice, Spark, for example) that Kirby obtains generally have a base design of a crown with the element being emitted from the top.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Princess Zelda normally wears a thin circlet.
  • Starting with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Ganondorf has worn a crown typically consisting of an amber gem set in silver and hooked to braids going to the back of his head.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Midna wears a kind of circlet which appears as silver knotwork in the center of her forehead, once she's restored to her proper form as the Twilight Princess.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, King Dorephan and Chief Riju wear silver and gold crowns respectively that are centered mainly on the backs of their heads. Calamity Ganon's mechanical form also has a Third Eye and rigid skullcap vaguely resembling Ganondorf's typical aforementioned crown.
• Pokémon: Slowking has a Shellder (who is normally bivalve-shaped, but becomes gastropod-shaped if evolved with Slowpoke) for a crown.
• Exaggerated in Psychonauts 2, where the royal crown of Grulovia is larger than its wearer and so decked out in gems, gilt, and candles that it looks more like a chandelier and would probably cause severe neck problems for anyone who actually wore it.
• Puyo Puyo Quest holds a Popularity Contest ballot for players to vote on their favorite character in the game, and the winner of the vote gains a special form with a crown, which is then later distributed as a gift or as part of an event. So far, Sig, Witch, Arle, and Schezo have gained the honor.
• Ravensword: Shadowlands: The gypsies outside the town sell a jeweled helmet that looks like a pretty sweet crown.
• Shining Series
  • Recovering Princess Jessa's tiara in Shining in the Darkness is required to go further in the game.
  • Satera's tiara in Shining Wisdom prevents her from coming to physical harm; however the Big Bad gets around that by turning her into a swan. The only way Mars finds her afterwards is that she's the only swan wearing a tiara.
  • In Shining the Holy Ark, you can equip crowns that will greatly raise certain stats.
• Pearl from Splatoon 2 is not actual royalty but an Idol Singer, and she always sports a crown as her Signature Headgear. She is most commonly seen wearing a white crown with pink tips, fitting her on-stage appearance of a typical "pop princess". In her her more underground, hip-hop inspired "MC.Princess" persona, she instead has a larger golden crown encrusted with gems.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • The series averts the association of Princesses with tiaras by giving Princess Peach a heavy gold circlet decked out in sparkly jewels. (Heavy enough to be a powerful melee weapon, even.) Her crown is also a treasure in Pikmin 2 (the first region, as far away as you can get from the landing site). Daisy and Rosalina also wear similar crowns as well.
  • A few bosses throughout the series, such as the Bob-Omb King from Super Mario 64, sport these, often to set the King Mooks apart from their underlings. Bowser, the Koopa King, is ironically never seen wearing one in the games^note He does, however, wear one in the cartoons until Paper Mario: Sticker Star where he sports a big 'ol hoop crown after taking the power of the Sticker Comet.
• Turbo Pug 3D has a crown as one of the hats you can put on your pug/cat/penguin.
• World of Warcraft:
  • The Lich King has the helmet variant, and it looks incredibly badass.
  • In Warcraft III, King Terenas preferred a relatively plain circlet adorned with golden spikes or fingers reaching upwards. (This latter detail is almost certainly so some of them can snap off dramatically at plot-appropriate moments.)

Visual Novels

• Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: When the mastermind's identity is revealed halfway through the final trial, they arrive at the courtroom wearing an impressively regal crown and decide to quote the Dragonlord for good measure.
• In Double Homework, the most distinguishing feature of Amy's mom, the queen, is the circlet on her head.

Web Animation

• DOUBLE KING by Felix Colgrave revolves around The (Double) King constantly getting bigger and better crowns even trying to steal the crown of Olov, The Mountain King (a giant mountain). In the end, The (Double) King kills several rulers and bitches his way into getting Agatha, Matriarch of Death's crown and flinging himself into space to have it all to himself.
• Homestar Runner: The King of Town appears to be wearing a paper crown he bought at Burger King, according to Strong Bad.

Web Original

• Empires SMP: The Emperor's Crown — a golden coronet with twelve multicoloured inlaid jewels, infused with the essence of each empire — is the crown-est of crowns, marking the player who has the authority to make a rule that every other player must follow. There's even a prophecy about this Crown in particular in "The Book Of Prophecies, Past & Future". It was ultimately presumed destroyed in the Rapture during the explosion of the Grimlands in Season 1… but Pixlriffs bizarrely finds it in the ruins of the Ancient Capital in Season 2 and brings the Crown into circulation among the season's new iteration of empires again.

Webcomics

• Charby the Vampirate:
  • The Elf King Malachai of Eldenlon has a circlet crown featuring the stylized figures of three elf goddesses with a single gem centered in a low downward facing arrow on his forehead.
  • King Rodericke has a black crown befitting his dark nature.
• El Goonish Shive: The immortal Hanma made a game that rewards the winner with a crown that makes people want to obey the person who wears it. No, it's not magical.
  Catalina: You made a hypno crown?!
  Hanma: What? No! I wouldn't do that! People just like to obey people who wear crowns! Why do you think royalty bothers to wear them?
• Exiern: King Urtica has the circlet (emblazoned with a stylized sun) style of crown, which is in keeping with his status as a hard-working (albeit in a Magnificent Bastard cum Chess Master kind of way) monarch.
• The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: Wonderella, Wonderita, and Wonderella's mother all wear cool tiaras. Oddly, despite it being part of their superhero outfits, they also wear those tiaras in their civilian clothes.
• The Order of the Stick: Xykon has a small crown upon his head, stolen from a wizard he murdered. In his case, he got it explicitly because he thought crowns were cool, rather than it being some special artifact (though it has since become a low-grade Artifact of Doom due some of his evil rubbing off on it).

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Many royals wear crowns, tiaras and other head ornaments of some kind. The Ice King's is the most notable, as aside from its large size it grants the wearer great ice-based powers. It's also an Artifact of Doom that slowly corrupts the wearer's body and mind. Princess Bubblegum's crown protects her from the Lich's Mind Control, which may be true of other royals' crowns as well. The season four finale also reveals that their jewels can, along with the Enchiridion, open a gateway between worlds.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Fire Lord and his family all wear flame-shaped hair ornaments instead of crowns. When Ozai declares himself Phoenix King, he wears a huge, helmet-like crown with gold prongs.
• All fairies in The Fairly OddParents! wear "floaty crowny things".
• Mighty Max: When Skullmaster claims Max's cap in the series finale, the baseball cap transforms into a magnificent jeweled crown.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Princess Celestia and Princess Luna wear tiaras — Luna's is black and on the smaller side, while Celestia wears a larger gold one halfway to being a full crown. Cadence wears a minute one that's almost a hair decoration. Twilight Sparkle also has a "big crown thingy" that she wears when the ponies must use the Elements of Harmony, plus an "official", regular spiky golden tiara that almost never appears.
  • Rarity wore a tiara with her dress for the Galloping Gala and Rainbow Dash wore a laurel wreath.
  • Queen Chrysalis wears a small and spiky crown, although it's hard to tell if it's an accessory or an actual part of her head.
  • King Sombra wears an iron crown somewhat difficult to tell apart from the rest of his design.
  • Minor characters Diamond Tiara and Zippoorwhill both wear tiaras. Diamond Tiara's Cool Crown is even part of her Theme Naming and is her Cutie Mark.
• ReBoot: Viruses typically feature these as part of their designs, each reflecting its owner's personality. Megabyte's crown is sleek and flame-like, Hexidecimal's vaguely resembles a jester's hat and Daemon's looks like a clock-shaped Holy Halo.
• Recess: King Bob's crown-shaped football helmet.
• In Sofia the First, Princess Amber has thousands of tiaras in her collection, and she shows them off to her parents to distract them from seeing the broken stained glass window in "A Royal Mess".

Real Life

• Some of the coolest and strangest crowns ever were sported by the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt:
  • To start with there was the official crown of the Two Kingdoms (which the Greeks called the Pschent after mishearing the Egyptian word "Sekhmety"), which combined the Deshret, the conical Red Crown of Lower Egypt, with the Hedjet, the tall, ninepin-shaped White Crown of Upper Egypt. Certain texts describing/depicting the actual coronation of the monarch suggest that the Pschent was never actually a single crown but was literally created by placing the Hedjet inside the Deshret on the new king's head. In the New Kingdom^note And possibly the Middle Kingdom, records are sketchy. this was given added significance because the Deshret was carried into the ceremony and placed on the king's head by the chief priest of the cult of Ra (a cult based at the Lower Egyptian city of Iunu/Heliopolis) and the Hedjet by the chief priest of the cult of Amun (a cult based at the Upper Egyptian city of Thebes), thereby symbolizing the political and religious unity of the Two Lands that made up Egypt.
  • If the king wanted a less formal look, he went with the Khepresh or Blue Crown, which was a Pimped Out Helmet: a tall rounded hat sometimes covered with gold sequins and frequently decorated with a golden uraeus cobra. The Blue Crown was a particular favorite of Ramses II, to emphasize his Young Conqueror image.
  • Best of all was the Atef crown. In its simplest incarnation this consisted of a pair of rams' horns surmounted by a shape like the white crown but in reeds flanked by ostrich plumes and topped off by a sun disk. This usually wasn't worn by Egyptian kings, being a specific symbol of Osiris, the Lord of the Dead and god of fertility (and one of several royal deities associated with the concept of kingship).
  • A fancier version of the Atef, the Hemhem, multiplied the reed thingies and sun disks and hung cobras all over it. The Hemhem was so cool that their neighbors noticed and adopted it for their own; one of the most famous depictions of Cyrus the Great, a relief at Pasargadae (in modern Iran), shows him with a Hemhem even though he never ruled Egypt. (Persia did conquer Egypt, but only under Cyrus's son, Cambyses II, about five years after his death.)
  • What these crowns were made of and how they were kept on is mostly unknown to science; it's likely that they were at least sometimes made at least partly of cloth or dyed leather. Interestingly, some texts suggest the crowns (as in the physical hats) were passed on from generation to generation like the crowns of today's monarchies. It is possible that some of the more elaborate structures were mere artistic convention never worn in Real Life.
  • The queens were no slouches either, having the vulture crown as their headdress of choice. It originated in art as an accessory in depictions of the vulture goddess Nekhbet, but became a real head adornment for Pharaohs' wives and high-ranked priestesses to wear from the Fifth Dynasty and onwards. It was sometimes combined with horns or the sun disc, and the vulture's head on it was occasionally replaced with the uraeus cobra.
• These gorgeous henna "crowns" decorating the heads of cancer patients.
• Poland's national symbol is a snow-white eagle. But how to set it apart from all the other countries that use eagles as symbols? Simple. Give it a gold crown.

---