A mysterious diamond-laden necklace with possible links to a scandal that contributed to the downfall of Marie Antoinette, sold for $4.8 million at an auction in Geneva Wednesday.

The 18th century jewel containing around 300 carats of diamonds had been estimated to sell at the Sotheby’s Royal and Noble Jewels sale for $1.8-2.8 million.

But after energetic bidding, the hammer price ticked in at 3.55 million Swiss francs ($4 million), and Sotheby’s listed the final price after taxes and commissions at 4.26 million francs ($4.81 million).

The unidentified buyer, who put in her bid over the phone, was “ecstatic,” Andres White Correal, chairman of the Sotheby’s jewelry department, told AFP.

“She was ready to fight and she did,” he said, adding that it had been “an electric night.”

“There is obviously a niche in the market for historical jewels with fabulous provenances… People are not only buying the object, but they’re buying all the history that is attached to it,” he said.

Some of the diamonds in the piece are believed to stem from the jewel at the center of the “Diamond Necklace Affair” — a scandal in the 1780s that further tarnished the reputation of France’s last queen, Marie Antoinette, and boosted support for the coming French Revolution.

The auction house said the necklace, composed of three rows of diamonds finished with a diamond tassel at each end, had emerged “miraculously intact” from a private Asian collection to make its first public appearance in 50 years.

“This spectacular antique jewel is an incredible survivor of history,” it said in a statement prior to the sale.

Describing the massive Georgian-era piece as “rare and highly important,” Sotheby’s said it had likely been created in the decade preceding the French Revolution.

“The jewel has passed from families to families. We can start at the early 20th century when it was part of the collection of the Marquesses of Anglesey,” White Correal said.

Members of this aristocratic family are believed to have worn the necklace twice in public: once at the 1937 coronation of King George VI and once at his daughter Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953.

“Spectacular piece of history”

Beyond that, little is known of the necklace, including who designed it and for whom it was commissioned, although the auction house believes that such an impressive antique jewel could only have been created for a royal family.

Sotheby’s said it was likely that some of the diamonds featured in the piece came from the famous necklace from the scandal that engulfed Marie Antoinette.

That scandal involved a hard-up noblewoman named Jeanne de la Motte who pretended to be a confidante of the queen, and managed to acquire a lavish diamond-studded necklace in her name, against a promise of a later payment.

On Oct. 16, 1793, Marie Antoinette was guillotined — but it turned she was actually innocent of the necklace fraud that she was accused of. 

While the queen was later found to be blameless in the affair, the scandal still deepened the perception of her careless extravagance, adding to the anger that would unleash the revolution.

Sotheby’s said the diamonds in the necklace sold Wednesday were likely sourced from “the legendary Golconda mines in India” — considered to produce the purest and most dazzling diamonds.

“The fortunate buyer has walked away with a spectacular piece of history,” Tobias Kormind, head of Europe’s largest online diamond jeweler 77 Diamonds, said in a statement.

“With exceptional quality diamonds from the legendary, now extinct Indian Golconda mines, the history of a possible link to Marie Antoinette along with the fact that it was worn to two coronations, all make this 18th Century necklace truly special.”

In 2018, a large, drop-shaped natural pearl pendant sold for more than $36 million at a rare auction of jewelry that once belonged to Marie Antoinette. The “Queen Marie Antoinette’s Pearl,” a diamond-and-pearl pendant, was among the highlight offerings on the block at the Sotheby’s sale of jewelry from the Bourbon-Parma dynasty in Geneva.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has accused Donald Trump of repeatedly criticizing him because of his “ethnicity” and Muslim faith, comments likely to renew his long-running feud with the US president-elect.

The pair became embroiled in an extraordinary war of words during Trump’s first presidency, initially sparked by Khan speaking out against a U.S. travel ban on people from certain Muslim countries.

Trump then accused Khan — the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital when he was first elected in 2016 — of doing a “very bad job on terrorism” and called him a “stone cold loser” and “very dumb.”

The mayor in turn allowed an unflattering blimp of Trump dressed as a baby in a diaper to fly above protests in Parliament Square during his 2018 visit to Britain.

Speaking on a podcast recorded before Trump’s re-election on November 5 and released earlier this week, Khan, a son of Pakistani immigrants to Britain, said he viewed the past targeting of him as “incredibly personal.”

“If I wasn’t this color skin, if I wasn’t a practicing Muslim, he wouldn’t have come for me,” he told the High Performance podcast, which interviews prominent people in different sectors.

“He’s come for me because of, let’s be frank, my ethnicity and my religion.”

Khan added that during this period he was “speaking out against somebody whose policies were sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist” and that he has “a responsibility to speak out.”

His latest comments on Trump are in stark contrast to those of his colleagues in Britain’s Labour party, which swept to power in July.

Several Labour members of Parliament now in senior government posts, including Foreign Secretary David Lammy, were critical of Trump while they were in opposition during his first White House term.

In 2018, Lammy labeled him a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath.” But Britain’s now-top diplomat last week dismissed the remarks as “old news.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has appeared at pains to forge a positive relationship with the president-elect, promptly congratulating him on his “historic election victory.”

Starmer said their phone call was “very positive, very constructive” and the so-called special relationship between the U.K. and U.S. would “prosper” in Trump’s second term.