The Three Brothers (also known as the Three Brethren; German: Drei Brüder; French: Les Trois Frères) was a piece of jewellery created in the late 14th century, which consisted of three rectangular red spinels arranged around a central diamond.

Charles commanded one of the most powerful armies of his time, and travelled to battles with an array of priceless artefacts as talismans, including carpets having belonged to Alexander the Great, the bones of saints, the Sancy diamond, and the Three Brothers.

[9][10]: 53  In his conflict with the Old Swiss Confederacy during the Burgundian Wars, Charles suffered a catastrophic rout in March 1476, when he was attacked outside the village of Concise in the Battle of Grandson.

Forced to flee in haste, Charles left behind his artillery and an immense booty, including his silver bath, the ducal seal, and the Brothers, all of which were looted from his tent by the confederate army.

The city also commissioned a watercolour miniature painting at a scale of 1:1 to aid with an eventual sale, which provides the earliest visual record of the Brothers (as of 2022 in the Basel Historical Museum).

[2] The jewel disappeared from view during the next years, as the magistrates feared that the House of Habsburg, inheritors of the Duchy of Burgundy, would reclaim goods that they considered as having been stolen from Charles.

The Basel sale included the Brothers and three other pieces of jewellery from Charles' hoard—the Federlin (little feather), the Gürtelin (little garter) and the White Rose—for a total price of 40,200 florins,[12] which at the time was enough to pay 3,300 common labourers for a year.

[10]: 79  While this constituted a significant expense, Fugger made many such transactions over the years, and the price pales in comparison to his total assets, which reached more than 2 million guilders at his death in 1525.

He first unsuccessfully offered the Brothers to King Ferdinand I and Emperor Charles V, while a bid from the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent was refused because Anton did not want the jewel to fall into non-Christian hands.

At the time of Mary's accession, German historian Peter Lambeck—grandson of Johann Jakob Fugger—wrote of his hope that her marriage to Philip II of Spain would bring the Three Brothers back into possession of the Habsburgs and to the continent, but this did not come to pass.

Much like her father Henry VIII, Elizabeth knew when and how to use ostentatious displays of wealth[18] and evidently liked the showy red-and-white piece of jewellery with the unusual triangular arrangement.

First, in the Ermine Portrait (c. 1585, today in Hatfield House) attributed to William Segar or George Gower, in which the Brothers appear suspended from a massive, pearl-studded carcanet or necklace, dramatically offset against a black dress.

[19][21] And second, on the lesser known Elizabeth I of England holding an olive branch (c. 1587) by an unknown painter, originally given to the Navarrese diplomat François de Civille, where the pendant takes pride of place as the only significant piece of jewellery worn against a richly decorated white dress.

Elizabeth died in 1603 at the end of a 45-year reign, by which time the jewel had become so tied to her persona that when a marble monument to her was erected in Westminster Abbey in 1606, a replica of the Brothers was made part of her tomb effigy; the element was fully restored in 1975.

[24] A portrait of James produced around 1605 by court painter John de Critz shows the Brothers in great detail as the King wore it with a pearl-studded band on a black hat.

[34] The Queen arrived in The Hague on 11 March 1642 despite the protestations of Parliament that she had taken with her "Treasure, in Jewels, Plate, and ready Money" that was likely to "impoverish the State" and be used to forment unrest in Britain.

[35] However, Henrietta found that potential buyers were hesitant to touch important pieces such as the Three Brothers, writing to her husband: "The money is not ready, for on your jewels, they will lend nothing.

Cletcher, who would later become court jeweller to Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, had already been involved in the pawning of the Mirror of Great Britain in 1625 and would therefore have been familiar to Charles and Henrietta.