To the chagrin of my friends or unwarned dinner guests I am cursed with The Three Degrees of Butterflies. It’s like The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing but I could usually find a connection between the circulating topic and leps. Its either that or fishing, take your pick. Since a hot topic right now are the Royals, I am going to double down and connect a butterfly and life saving moth to the Queen of England.

 

The Koh-i-noor butterfly can be found  throughout Asia. They are large brown butterflies with blue bands on their forewings. Its name means ‘Mountain of light.’

One of the most famous gems of all times was the Koh-I-Noor diamond. It was one of the largest cut diamonds in the world weighing in at a hefty, hefty, hefty,105.6 carats. The origins of the diamond are shaky at best. According to some sources it was originally found more than 5000 years ago and at one time it was even owned by Krishna. Yeah, that Krishna. That was until it was stolen while he was sleeping. Come on now, ripping off Krishna, how low can you go. Other parties claim that the diamond was discovered in a river bed in 3200 BCE.

 

Despite its shady origins, its legend strikes true. It was said that anyone who held the diamond would rule the world providing it was not a man. Sho nuff any man who owned the diamond died a horrible death. I think one of the cruelest happened to the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan who was famous for building the Taj Mahal. A center piece inside the Taj was his très chic Peacock throne with the Koh-I-Noor right there smack dab in the middle of the headpiece.

 

After a few years, old MESJ became ill, and his loving son Aurangazeb, imprisoned his ailing father so he could take power and rule the kingdom. Now Aurangazeb was so nasty that legend has it that he had the Koh-i-noor positioned near a window so that jailed father could only see the Taj Mahal by looking at its reflection in the diamond. Cold or what?

Then in 1739, Nasty Nadir Shah the Crazy Persian, sacked Delhi and carried off the Peacock throne. He did get to admire the stone just until his assassination 1747. It goes on and on, dead guy after dead guy until thanks to English colonialism, the stone ended up in the hands of the Queen of England.

 

After arriving in the UK, Queen Victoria first wore the stone in a brooch and after she died  the diamond it was placed in with the crown jewels. Then they were then set in the Crown of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII. It was transferred to the Crown of Queen Mary in 1911 and finally to the crown of Queen Elizabeth in 1937 for her coronation as Queen consort. It was even worn by the Queen Mother on her 100^th birthday party. But oh those royals. Since Queen Victoria left it in her will that the Koh-i-noor should only be worn by a female queen so Queen Elizabeth would not allow Mehgan Markle to wear the diamond for her wedding.

 

Was it Mothra that saved the Queen?

 

The thick fog surrounding the train only lent to make the night seem even darker than usual but Queen Victoria needed to get back to London. It had been raining for days and it had washed out the bridge ahead and along with it went the telegraph lines as well. There was no way to alert the Queen’s train to the disaster that waited ahead. Things weren’t looking that rosy for old Vicky when suddenly ahead, in the middle of the tracks, a figure in a black cloak appeared frantically waving his arms as in an effort to stop the train. The engineer grabbed for the brakes and in a hail of sparks the train ground to a halt.

 

The crew climbed down from the train to question the mysterious figure as to the reason he had stopped them but as much as they searched no one could be found. As they search the tracks the fog reluctantly revealed that the bridge had been washed away and if they had proceeded the train would have plunged into the stream below and the Queen would have met her death.

 

So, as they made their way back to the train, the brakeman noticed that there was a moth stuck to the headlamp of the train frantically flapping its wings in an attempt to free itself from the wet lens of the light. As it did, the headlamp of the train projected the antics of the moth on to the dense fog making it to appear as someone purposely warning the train. And that my friends is the story of how a moth saved the Queen.