This is what everyone’s missing about Margot Robbie’s necklace

On the red carpet at the premiere of Wuthering Heights – Australian actress Margot Robbie, when asked about her stunning necklace made two glaringly inaccurate statements.

Firstly, Robbie legitimises the ownership of the jewel to Hollywood:

It’s Elizabeth Taylor’s necklace. It is the Taj Mahal diamond that Richard Burton gave it to her… there is something kind of Cathy and Heathcliff about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in my mind.

Then, reaching for an older origin, she called the history of the necklace “amazing,” musing that it belonged to “the woman whose grave is the Taj Mahal” — pointing not toward the powerful Empress Nur Jahan (1577–1645) who actually owned it, but to her more romantically memorialised stepdaughter, Mumtaz Mahal, who is indeed buried there.

The film has been accused of whitewashing Heathcliff — erasing his possible Romani or Black identity from the book to fit a palatable Hollywood romance.

While the BBC is busy rescuing the film’s image by explaining away the backlash as passionate fandom or bold reinterpretation; maybe it’s time to stop watering down these criticisms.

Margot Robbie — whitewashing the Origin Story

Margot Robbie’s reply about the necklace shows just how successful Operation Legacy was.

Declassified British files reveal that Operation Legacy was the systematic, state-ordered destruction of thousands of “dirty” colonial documents in the 1950s and 60s. Lorries carried files to incinerators; crates of secrets were sunk at sea. In the words of a 2013 report, officials were desperate to consign atrocities and their paper trails to history, leaving successors and subjects in the dark.

It is not a stretch to imply that the history of the imperial loot of the diamond was buried with Operation Legacy.

The exact path of how the necklace left colonial India and entered the vaults of Cartier remains unclear, a gap in the record that itself speaks to the opaque channels of colonial extraction.

After being acquitted by Cartier in 1972, the jewel entered the orbit of Elizabeth Taylor through her then husband. It was later sold at auction in 2011 for a record $8.8 million to an anonymous bidder.

Again, Christie’s auction house narrative also conveniently omits the Western acquisition, whilst exoticising the Mughal past.

An academic study of 19^th century British press notes that:

Throughout imperial rule, both textual and illustrated newspapers produced reports and cultural representations of India, and more specifically its rulers, that highlighted exoticism and promoted a sense of cultural difference from British readers, subsequently creating an overall image of India that was stereotyped.

Christie’s and Robbie have done the same thing: Romanticising the Mughal past but staying silent about the colonial loot.

Let’s de-exoticise Nur Jahan.

Nur Jahan was politically one of the most important figures of the Mughal Dynasty. Historical and art history research reveals a formidable co-ruler: a skilled hunter depicted loading a musket in androgynous attire. A political strategist who issued coins in her name, and an economic strategist who commanded trade fleets and negotiated with European merchants .

According to a paper:

Maharani Nur Jahan, wife of Emperor Jahangir, was famed for her political intelligence and military skill and played an unrivalled role in ruling the Mughal Era. The Mughals were ardent supporters of art and culture, as seen by their exquisite buildings and distinctive handwriting

Nur Jahan’s stepson, Shah Jahan, would later become famous for building the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, in memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

But what’s less well-known is that the beautiful white-marble tomb he created was actually inspired by an earlier gem in Agra: the mausoleum Nur Jahan commissioned for her own father, Itimad-ud-Daulah. Often called the “Baby Taj,” her design pioneered the intricate marble inlay and graceful proportions that would define the Taj Mahal itself.

Nur Jahan died in 1645 and is buried in Lahore, a city she helped beautify, alongside her husband Jahangir.

Nur Jahan’s legacy is still alive today across both India and Pakistan — in Lahore, where she’s buried, and in Agra where she first set marble and gems into poetry.

That shared history deserves better than the watered-down, exotic story we’ve been handed. It’s time for both countries to reclaim her — not as some romantic side character, but as the powerhouse she truly was a ruler, a hunter, and a builder.

Other Loot

It’s the same story playing out on a larger scale in British establishments.

The Koh-i-Noor diamond — seized by the British East India Company from a 10-year-old Punjabi Maharaja in 1849 — still sits in the Imperial State Crown, glittering in the Tower of London.

The swords and jewels of Tipu Sultan, looted after he was killed defending his fortress of Srirangapatna in 1799, still lie behind glass at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

So, while the Indian government made diplomatic noise in 2023 about getting the loot back, the reality in London hasn’t budged. This highlights the colonial dynamic that is still at play.

What Margot Robbie’s comments reveal is a familiar colonial reflex — one Hollywood knows all too well — of laundering imperial theft through re-angling the narrative.

Until colonial extraction is called THEFT, and not just “amazing history,” empire remains alive and well.

Featured image via the Canary