World News
Russell Brand Trial: Accuser Says He Treated Her Like An Animal
In the Russell Brand trial, a complainant told Southwark Crown Court she was anally raped in 2009 and later texted him: you treated me like an animal.
A woman who accuses Russell Brand of anal rape told police she was left bleeding for days and later learned she had an anal tear, as the Russell Brand trial continued at Southwark Crown Court in London on Wednesday.
Brand, 51, denies three charges of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault. The allegations span a decade, from 1999 to 2009, and involve six women. He has said he has never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity, and he has pleaded not guilty to every charge.
Wednesday was among the busiest days of the trial: the jury heard from three of the six accusers, according to Deadline’s live coverage.
What The Complainant Told Police About The Night In 2009
The woman, referred to in reporting as Complainant 5 because she has a lifelong right to anonymity, gave evidence from behind a screen. Her two-hour 2024 police interview was played to the jury, and she was then cross-examined.
She said she met Brand at a Hammersmith Apollo stand-up show in early 2009, went to his dressing room and performed oral sex on him, despite having a boyfriend at the time. She told officers she made clear she did not want penetrative sex that night. Days later, after repeated messages from Brand, she agreed to go to his home in Hampstead, north London, expecting vaginal sex.
According to her account, an associate let her in and told her Brand was on the phone to America. When he came downstairs, she said, he told her: “This is the best decision you’ve ever made.” She said he then told her to shower because “your hair smells funny”, and the BBC reported she also said he made her brush her teeth.
She said the first part of the encounter was consensual vaginal sex with a condom. She then alleged Brand turned her onto her front and anally raped her, ignoring her requests to stop, and that she realised afterwards he had removed the condom. She alleged he said: “I want you to feel my cum.” After it was over, she said, he looked “absolutely horrified” and told her: “You need to clean up the mess that you’ve made.”
She told police the pain was severe enough that she sat on an ice cube tray, that she was later told she had an anal tear, and that she was tested for HIV, which came back negative. She said she struggled with alcohol and went to rehab in 2023.
The Cross-Examination At The Heart Of The Russell Brand Trial
Ian Winter KC, defending, put it to her repeatedly that she had consented and regretted it afterwards. He noted she had gone to Brand’s house knowing she would have sex with him, that she knew his reputation, and that he had won The Sun newspaper’s “Shagger of the Year” award three years running.
She accepted she had been a “massive fan”, that she had made “a huge mistake” with her boyfriend, and that she went willingly. She rejected the suggestion that willingness to attend amounted to consent to what followed.
“We’re not here to discuss my morality. We’re here to discuss criminality,” she told the court. “I thought I was going to have penetrative vaginal sex.” She added: “Just because you go somewhere willingly, that does not mean the outcome at the end is [necessarily] consensual.”
Winter also suggested Brand asked her to shower because he disliked the smell of alcohol, citing what the BBC reported as his “soberism”, rather than her hair.
The Text Exchange Both Sides Accept
A text exchange months after the alleged assault is not in dispute. She said she ran into Brand at the Edinburgh Festival and he messaged her out of the blue; she asked why he was writing.
“Because you’re dirty and I want to push you further,” she said he replied. She told the court she responded: “I think you’ve pushed me far enough, you treated me like an animal.” Brand apologised immediately, she said.
Winter suggested the messages showed Brand had pushed and degraded her but had not raped her. She replied: “I didn’t consent.”
At one point she described carrying “a lot of burden” and said she felt guilt because she went to the house willingly: “I carried that feeling of guilt and shame … for exactly the reason that you are doing right here, making me feel like I brought it on myself.”
The Record So Far, And What It Does Not Show
The prosecution has said all six complainants came forward after Channel 4’s Russell Brand: In Plain Sight documentary, and that none of the women know each other. The court has been told Brand declined to answer questions when interviewed by police. His defence is expected to be set out later in the trial.
No verdict exists. Charges are accusations, not findings, and none of the allegations reported here has been proved. The account above reflects sworn testimony and recorded police interviews played or given in open court.
For readers outside the UK, the procedure matters as much as the testimony. Complainants in English sexual-offence cases can give evidence from behind a screen and retain anonymity for life — arrangements that differ sharply between jurisdictions, which is why cross-border coverage of this case often omits the safeguards built into the London proceedings.
The complainants’ evidence is now complete. The court returns on Thursday to hear other witnesses.
What To Watch
The question for the jury is narrow: whether the prosecution proved an absence of consent to a specific act, not whether the complainant behaved wisely beforehand. The defence has built its case on the gap between willingness to travel to Hampstead and consent to anal sex — a distinction the law treats as decisive but which cross-examination is designed to blur.
Watch for the defence case, the remaining witnesses, and the judge’s eventual directions on consent. Until then, the Russell Brand trial remains a proceeding, not a conclusion.
Frequently Asked Questions (Russell Brand trial)
What charges does Russell Brand face in the trial?
Three charges of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault, based on allegations from six women covering 1999 to 2009. He denies all charges and has pleaded not guilty.
Has any verdict been reached in the Russell Brand trial?
No. The complainants’ evidence has concluded and the court returns on Thursday to hear other witnesses. Brand’s defence is expected to be set out later in the trial. Charges are accusations, not findings.
Why is the complainant not named in reports?
She has a lifelong right to anonymity under English court procedure and gave evidence from behind a screen. She is referred to in reporting as Complainant 5.
World News
SpaceX’s Starfall Capsule Flies Again, Still No Manifest
SpaceX flew its Starfall capsule again on Bandwagon-5, with 32 payloads and no declared cargo. The disk-shaped vehicle can return 2,200 pounds.
Starfall flew for the second time on Tuesday morning, and SpaceX still has not said what it carried.
A Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida at 7:04 a.m. ET on the Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission with 32 payloads aboard, according to Teslarati. The first stage, flying for the 19th time, landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas about nine minutes later. The Starfall capsule was scheduled to separate last, 2 hours and 48 minutes after liftoff, well after the final customer satellite came off the upper stage at roughly one hour and nine minutes. SpaceX later posted that the payload deployment sequence was complete.
That long gap in the timeline is the story. Nearly everything confirmed about Starfall comes from regulatory filings, a mission timeline and one line on a mission page, not from a payload manifest.
At liftoff, SpaceX said the vehicle “enables affordable, routine access to a microgravity environment, providing unique opportunities for on-orbit manufacturing, scientific research, and testing.” Spaceflight Now noted that the company has still not said what, if anything, is aboard this Starfall capsule.
What The Second Starfall Capsule Flight Confirmed, And What It Did Not
Confirmed: the launch, the booster recovery, the 32-payload count, and the company’s statement that deployment finished. Confirmed also, from the FAA’s May environmental assessment, is the hardware itself. It is a disk about 10.2 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall, weighing roughly 4,600 pounds, able to bring 2,200 pounds of payload back to Earth.
Confirmed further is a change in posture. When Teslarati reported on the first Starfall flight, planned for Tuesday, June 23, SpaceX had made no public announcement of the vehicle at all; nearly everything known came from FAA and FCC filings. This time Starfall is an item name on the official mission page, listed beside paying rideshare customers.
Not confirmed: where it comes down and how. A preview published in June described a Pacific Ocean recovery, with a heat shield that jettisons just before splashdown so recovery teams can retrieve capsule and shield separately. SpaceX has not said whether this flight follows the same plan.
Why SpaceX Built A Disk Instead Of A Cone
Dragon and every other operational cargo return capsule use a cone. Starfall does not. The flat disk geometry maximizes structural efficiency and payload volume relative to mass, which matters when the product being returned is not people but manufactured material: pharmaceuticals, protein crystals, semiconductors and optical fibre that cannot be made in the presence of gravity.
The FAA documents go further than the launch commentary. They describe Starfall’s long-term purpose as building a “self-sustaining commercial in-space manufacturing market,” and as a potential successor to the industrial capabilities of the International Space Station, which is due to retire in the late 2020s. Military rapid global cargo delivery is a parallel application under active discussion with the Pentagon. Starfall is designed to be mass-produced and launched on either Falcon 9 or Starship.
What The Starfall Capsule Reveals About SpaceX’s Business Model
The same rocket that carried Starfall also carried a competitor’s hardware. Varda Space Industries flew its W-Series 7 capsule on Bandwagon-5, a spacecraft about three times smaller, to test whether microgravity improves the solubility of a cancer drug called Protac. It is Varda’s ninth reentry capsule; W-8 and W-9 launched earlier this month on Transporter-18. SpaceX has been Varda’s launch provider since the company’s first Falcon 9 rideshare contract in 2021.
SpaceX controls launch access, which makes it the landlord for every competitor in orbital return. Starfall converts that position into ownership of the return service itself. Teslarati’s earlier reporting put Starfall’s specification at roughly 30 times more payload per mission than the standalone competitors SpaceX currently flies.
For operators outside the United States, including Earth-observation and communications programmes in Africa that buy Falcon 9 rideshare slots, the relevant question is contractual rather than technical. When the launch provider also sells the downmass service, it sets both the schedule and the terms. That is an assessment of published structure, not a claim about any announced pricing or policy.
The launch came hours before SpaceX posted third-quarter results after markets closed. The company reported revenue of $14.58 billion, up 161 percent year over year, with its Super Intelligence segment the largest at $7.56 billion. On the same call, chief executive Elon Musk said SpaceX and Tesla have each formed special committees of independent directors to study a possible merger at shareholder request, and that he cannot sit on them because he is a conflicted party. “Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes,” he said, while adding that treating a merger as certain “would be overstating it.”
The Starfall Capsule’s Legacy Depends On The Next Flight
Two FAA-approved demonstration flights were the plan. If Tuesday’s reentry, parachute sequence and recovery went as intended, the second follows. A successful pair would position SpaceX to offer Starfall as a commercial service, likely to pharmaceutical and materials science customers first, before scaling toward military and broader manufacturing use.
Until then, the record stays thin: a disk, a mass budget, a launch timeline, and a company that has learned it can fly hardware nobody has described. The Starfall capsule is now a public item on a public mission page. It is still not a public programme.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is SpaceX’s Starfall capsule?
It is a disk-shaped reentry capsule. The FAA’s May environmental assessment describes a vehicle about 10.2 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall, weighing roughly 4,600 pounds and able to return up to 2,200 pounds of payload from orbit. It flew for the second time on the Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission.
Did SpaceX say what the Starfall capsule carried on this flight?
No. SpaceX has not said what, if anything, was aboard. The company described Starfall only in general terms, as enabling access to a microgravity environment for on-orbit manufacturing, research and testing.
Where will the Starfall capsule land?
SpaceX has not published where or how this Starfall comes down. A June preview described a Pacific Ocean recovery with the heat shield jettisoning before splashdown, but the company has not confirmed whether this flight used the same plan.
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World News
US Intelligence Sharing With Ukraine Resumes, Zelensky Says
Zelensky says US intelligence sharing with Ukraine works again after a three-day gap. Rubio denies any pause. What is confirmed, what is disputed.
Ukraine’s president said on Tuesday that US intelligence sharing with Ukraine was functioning again, after what he described as a three-day gap in warnings about incoming Russian ballistic missiles. Speaking in Oslo after talks with Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: “Now it works. It’s great.”
The remark, reported by The Guardian, appears to close the sharpest public rupture between Washington and Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. It does not settle what actually happened, who ordered it, or on what terms it ended.
A Pause Denied And A Pause Described

On Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters during a visit to Uzbekistan: “There has been no pause.” He said Zelenskyy should focus on “bringing an end to this war.”
A day earlier, Zelenskyy told NBC’s Meet the Press that the flow of warnings had been “blocked for some period of time” and then “deblocked by the American side”. He said only the United States holds the intelligence needed to warn Ukraine when Russia launches ballistic missiles, and that Ukraine went without it “during ballistic attacks during three days”.
The two accounts cannot both be complete. Neither government has published an order, a notification or a technical log showing a suspension or a restoration. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, asked about the episode on the same programme, called Zelenskyy’s suggestion that Washington engineered a slowdown “very reckless” and said nobody in the administration did it, but according to Euronews he offered no alternative explanation. Elon Musk said any disruption to Starshield, the military-grade version of Starlink, would be the US government’s responsibility.
What is confirmed is narrower than either political claim. Ukraine says it lost early warning for several days. Washington denies ordering any cut. Unconfirmed is the mechanism, the authority behind it, and whether the restoration came with new conditions attached.
Ballistic Warning As A Single Point Of Failure
Ukraine relies on US intelligence, delivered through Starshield, to detect the fast-moving ballistic missiles Russia fires at its cities. Patriot interceptors are the only effective weapon against those missiles, and the Pentagon has blocked delivery of Patriots paid for by other countries, leaving Kyiv more exposed to air attack.
Rubio said interceptors were in short supply and needed elsewhere, including for US defence. “There has not been some deliberate political directive to go out and harm Ukraine,” he said.
The human cost is documented in fragments. Overnight into Monday, a Russian missile attack killed a woman and wounded several people in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The State Emergency Service reported damage to a metro station, a medical facility, an educational institution and a non-residential building.
On Tuesday, BBC News reported that Ukrainian officials counted at least 10 dead: four in Kyiv and the surrounding region, four in the eastern Donetsk region and two in the central city of Dnipro. The Guardian put the Tuesday toll at least nine, including three people killed when a drone struck two vehicles on the Kyiv-Odesa highway. One of those killed was the driver of a shuttle bus travelling from the capital to a military cemetery.
Differing casualty counts from the same day are routine in an active war. Both figures originate with Ukrainian authorities, not independent monitors.
What The Oslo Meeting Produced
The Tuesday talks brought together Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law and envoy Jared Kushner by video link, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and EU and British security officials. Witkoff did not appear at the joint press conference.
Stubb said “genuine progress” was made on proposals to achieve peace, gave no details and warned patience would be needed. A US official described the talks as “very productive and constructive”, citing “strong alignment at the working level” among the US, Ukraine and Europe on next steps. Witkoff was due in St Petersburg on Wednesday to present the proposals to Vladimir Putin, who has not commented publicly. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Kremlin would listen while ruling out “any political concessions”.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas questioned whether US negotiators had been honest brokers, noting Witkoff has held numerous meetings with Putin in Moscow and visited Kyiv once. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz spoke of “mixed pictures and messages” from Washington. Vice-President JD Vance said Kyiv was “certainly a partner in some ways” but that “we don’t have a formal alliance as far as I know with Ukraine”.
Trump has temporarily waived sanctions on Russian diesel to push down global fuel prices before the November 3 midterm elections, and has accused Ukraine of deliberately striking Russian refineries to damage his party. He said he asked Putin to release Stephen Hubbard, an American held by Russian forces. Zelenskyy said he offered to halt long-range strikes on refineries if the US supplies Patriot interceptors, and rejected a floated Trump-Putin-Xi summit: “There can be nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”
Why The Dispute Travels Beyond Europe
For governments outside the transatlantic bloc, the episode is a case study in the terms of a security relationship that is not a treaty. Ukraine’s early warning runs through a US-controlled satellite pipeline and a US administration that publicly describes its partner’s interests as sometimes divergent. The interruption, whatever its cause, was resolved without any published document explaining the rules.
There is also a fuel dimension. Trump’s diesel waiver was explicitly aimed at lowering global fuel prices, which feed directly into import bills for net fuel-importing economies, including across Africa. The source material does not quantify that effect, and no estimate should be assumed.
What remains missing is equally notable: no Kremlin readout, no Pentagon explanation of the Patriot block, and no independent verification of the reported Starshield speed restrictions beyond Ukrainian military reports and a bipartisan group of US senators calling for an investigation.
Prospects For Peace
The immediate test sits in St Petersburg on Wednesday, when Witkoff presents proposals that Kyiv and European capitals say Russia must now answer. Moscow has signalled it will talk and has ruled out concessions, a combination that has stalled every previous round.
The dispute over US intelligence sharing with Ukraine matters beyond the missile warnings themselves. It shows that the practical terms of American support can shift faster than any announced policy, and that a partner with no formal alliance has little leverage over the pipeline it depends on. Zelenskyy’s own framing, that Ukraine is “not losing this war, but we are losing people”, sets the stakes for whichever meeting comes next.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did the US actually pause intelligence sharing with Ukraine?
The two governments give different accounts. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said warnings were blocked for three days and then restored, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on 19 October 2026 that “there has been no pause”. Neither side has published a document confirming or denying an order, so the underlying disruption is acknowledged by Kyiv but the official characterisation is disputed.
What intelligence does the US provide to Ukraine?
According to the reporting, Ukraine relies on US intelligence delivered through Starshield, the military-grade version of Starlink, to detect the fast-moving ballistic missiles Russia fires at Ukrainian cities. Zelenskyy has said only the United States holds this specific early-warning capability.
What happened at the Oslo meeting on 20 October 2026?
Zelenskyy met US envoy Steve Witkoff, with Jared Kushner joining by video, alongside Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and EU and British security officials. Stubb reported “genuine progress” on peace proposals without giving details. Witkoff was then due to take the proposals to Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg.
World News
Kate Middleton’s Lover’s Knot Tiara at Oman State Banquet
Kate Middleton wore the Lover’s Knot tiara with a yellow Elie Saab gown at the Oman state banquet, the first Omani state visit to Britain since 1982.
Kate Middleton wore Queen Mary’s Lover’s Knot tiara to the Oman state banquet at Windsor Castle on Oct. 20, 2026, pairing it with a lemon-yellow Elie Saab gown from the label’s Spring/Summer 2025 ready-to-wear collection.
The dinner closed the first night of a three-day state visit by Sultan Haitham bin Tarik of Oman. It is the first visit by an Omani head of state to the United Kingdom since Queen Elizabeth II hosted Sultan Qaboos bin Said in March 1982, Town & Country reports.
That 44-year gap is the fact that gives the evening its weight. Everything else — the headpiece, the cape gown, the 480 forks — is protocol built on top of it.
A State Visit Measured In Cutlery And Protocol
State visits are coordinated between the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Royal Household, and their stated purpose is strengthening ties between countries. The banquet is the ceremonial layer of that work, and the Palace releases the detail on the record.
St. George’s Hall held 160 guests at a 50-metre table laid with 480 knives, 480 forks and 160 spoons, according to PEOPLE. Buckingham Palace is the traditional venue but is undergoing renovation, which is why recent visits have been staged at Windsor.
The menu carried the symbolism. Following Omani tradition, an Omani Kahwa — Arabic coffee lightly spiced with cardamom and rose water — was prepared in the royal kitchens and served at the start of the evening. Three teas closed the meal: an Earl Grey iced tea, a mint iced tea in rose water, and a warm cardamom-spiced tea. Alcohol was served, but the Sultan did not drink it for the toast. The salt dishes carried a new touch this year: a light imprint of the King’s royal cypher.
At the table, the Sultan sat between King Charles and the Princess of Wales. Prince William was seated opposite, between Crown Prince Sayyid Theyazin bin Haitham Al Said and Dina Macki, an Omani chef and cookery blogger. A dragon candelabra commissioned in 1833 by King William IV formed the centrepiece, its base ringed with pomegranates picked from a tree Prince Philip planted on the castle’s East Terrace about 50 years ago. “It fruited heavily this year because of the warm summer,” a royal aide said.
Earlier in the day, Kate wore an emerald-green Alexander McQueen coatdress over a lacy black blouse for the ceremonial welcome on the East Terrace and the carriage procession — green being one of the colours on Oman’s flag, a nod the Palace did not need to explain.
Charles, in his banquet speech, said: “It is always a treasured moment to receive such dear and old friends on a special visit such as this.” He then switched to Arabic: “Welcome to a visitor of whom one never tires.”
Why the Lover’s Knot Tiara Keeps Returning To State Banquets
The piece Kate chose is a replica. Queen Mary commissioned it from the House of Garrard, modelled on a tiara owned by her grandmother, Princess Augusta, Duchess of Cambridge. According to the Court Jeweller, Mary “sacrificed a tiara from her own jewelry collection, the Ladies of England tiara, to make it,” using pearls and diamonds her family already owned. The original Cambridge Lover’s Knot is believed to sit in an unidentified private collection.
Mary left the piece to her granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, who wore it and then lent it to Princess Diana in 1981. It was one of only two tiaras Diana was ever photographed wearing — the other being the Spencer tiara, now held by her brother Charles Spencer. After the 1996 divorce, the Lover’s Knot tiara returned to the Queen. Kate debuted it in 2015 and has worn it repeatedly since, including the French state banquet with a red Givenchy gown, a Dutch royal visit in icy blue Alexander McQueen, and the Nigerian state banquet in March 2025 with a green Andrew Gn dress — the same evening that brought President Bola Tinubu and first lady Oluremi Tinubu to Windsor.
“Kate is wearing what I like to call her ‘old faithful,’” royal commentator Amanda Matta told Fox News Digital. “Paired with a new beautiful gown for the formal occasion, a repeat tiara keeps the entire look from overshadowing the visiting Sultan of Oman and the true hosts of the evening: King Charles and Queen Camilla.”
That is the working logic of royal dressing at a state banquet: the guest is the subject, the host is the host, and the Lover’s Knot tiara is a fixed variable that keeps the frame stable. Kate has worn five different tiaras since her 2011 wedding. Queen Camilla chose the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara, which she first wore in 2023. Princess Anne wore the Meander tiara; the Duchess of Gloucester the Honeysuckle.
Where The Record Gets Fuzzy
Precision matters here, and the sourcing does not fully agree. Harper’s Bazaar dates the Garrard commission to 1913; Town & Country dates it to 1914. Both agree on the maker, the Queen Mary provenance and the sacrificed Ladies of England tiara. The defensible position is that the year is contested in the secondary record and would need the Royal Collection’s own files to settle.
The name of the visiting head of state also varies between outlets — “Haitham bin Tariq al Said” in one account, “Haitham bin Tarik” in others. That is transliteration, not a disagreement about who travelled.
Confirmed: the Sultan arrived for three days; the state banquet fell on the first night; the visit is the first of its kind in more than four decades; Charles visited Oman four times as Prince of Wales, most recently in January 2020 to offer condolences after Sultan Qaboos’s death, and received Sultan Haitham for tea and a private meeting at Windsor last July.
The Reaction And What Comes Next
For Kate, the evening is another step in a phased return. She announced in September 2024 that she had completed chemotherapy and said in January 2025 that she was in remission. She attended three state banquets in 2025 alone.
“It is a huge amount of pressure for Kate to always deliver this fashion moment at these big state events, but it’s all part of the package,” Bethan Holt, fashion director at The Telegraph, told PEOPLE.
What to watch: whether the Lover’s Knot tiara reappears at the next inbound state visit, which will again be staged at Windsor while Buckingham Palace is renovated; whether follow-on agreements emerge from the Oman talks, since the banquet is the photograph and the meetings are the substance; and whether Kate’s schedule holds at its current tempo through the next diplomatic season. The tiara will take the headlines. The three-day programme is the part that will still matter in 2032.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which tiara did Kate Middleton wear to the Oman state banquet?
She wore Queen Mary’s Lover’s Knot tiara, the headpiece she has favoured since first wearing it in 2015. It was made by the House of Garrard for Queen Mary as a replica of an earlier Cambridge Lover’s Knot tiara and was later lent to Princess Diana in 1981.
Why was the Oman state visit significant?
It was the first state visit by an Omani head of state to the United Kingdom since Queen Elizabeth II hosted Sultan Qaboos bin Said in March 1982. The banquet was held at St. George’s Hall in Windsor Castle because Buckingham Palace is undergoing renovation.
Is the date the tiara was made confirmed?
No. Harper’s Bazaar reports the Garrard commission dates to 1913, while Town & Country reports 1914. The maker, the Queen Mary provenance and the use of stones from the Ladies of England tiara are consistent across sources.
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