A surprising must-wear for European monarchs? Weasels.

What’s small, furry, and a fashion must-have for any self-respecting king, emperor, or tsar? Weasels.

The tiny, wily creatures are increasingly rare—and for centuries, they’ve represented royal dignity, power, and pomp as ermine, a white, black-flecked fur long prized by monarchs and aristocrats.

But how—and why—did weasel fur become a royal must-have in the first place?

What is ermine?

The weasel species M. erminea, found in North America and Eurasia, is also called an ermine, short-tailed weasel, or a stoat, depending on its location. They may be cute, but weasels in general aren’t exactly known for their propriety. The crafty animals are shrewd thieves with a carnivorous diet, a protective sense of territory, and the ability to ward off would-be predators with pungent odors and shriek-like sounds.

But their elusiveness—and their natural cold-weather adaptations—has only added to the creatures’ cachet. In cold regions, stoats shed their dull brown coat for a silky white one during wintertime. That snowy pelt—with a striking, black-tipped tail—long held a special allure to high-ranking Europeans, who even incorporated it into their family coats of arms. Though it is unclear how long European royals have been wearing ermine, the practice is thought to date back to before the Middle Ages, by which time they were already a royal must.

A rare reputation

The furs’ limited availability also influenced their reputation as rare and royal, says Jacqueline Musacchio, an art historian at Wellesley University who specializes in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art.

“Ermine initially required hunting and trapping in distant reaches of Europe and Asia and as a result their pelts were expensive,” says Musacchio. “And these are rather small animals, so you needed quite a lot of them to trim a cape or line a jacket.”

The animals’ pelts also figured heavily in Renaissance artwork, even after their supply fell off in the 1500s due to the Ottoman Empire’s seizure of Constantinople, a critical trade center for the pelts of winter-white weasels from Siberia. Musacchio’s research has revealed why: For Renaissance viewers, the weasel was likely a protective symbol indicating pregnancy and childbirth.

The magic of weasels

Take Leonardo da Vinci’s famous portrait “Lady with an Ermine,” which depicts Italian noblewoman Cecilia Gallerani holding a white-coated weasel. “With their powerful jaws, non-retractile claws, and pungent anal scent glands, weasels would not have served as suitable pets for court ladies,” writes Musacchio. Instead, she believes the presence of the unlikely lap animal represented Gallerani’s pregnancy. The animal pelts’ presence in a variety of women’s portraits, Musacchio notes, is likely due to a prevailing myth of the era that weasels conceive through the ear and give birth through the mouth, or vice versa.

Renaissance women would have tied the mystery of weasel reproduction to their own desires to survive pregnancy and childbirth—risky ventures at the time—with a bit of divine intervention. As a result, high-ranking Renaissance-era women were often given metalwork weasel heads that they wore around their waist, along with pricey weasel pelts.

A monarchical must-have

Weasels as fertile fashion statements eventually went out of style, but ermine stayed in vogue in royal circles, and robes and gowns trimmed or lined with the fur became ceremonial must-haves for the monarchs of France, England, Sweden, Russia, and other European powers. The dramatic, furry accents of long velvet robes favored by these sovereigns would have deeply impressed their subjects, who would have assumed that the robes conferred “dignity, honor, and authority” to their wearer, writes art historian Paola Rapelli.

“It's telling that many ceremonial robes of state worn by royalty are still lined or trimmed with ermine, or with what looks like ermine,” says Musacchio.

We may no longer believe that ermine offers some kind of divine protection to its wearer, but it’s still an integral part of royal regalia—so important that even longstanding environmental champion Charles III used it during his 2023 coronation ceremony. In a nod to tradition, he did don royal garments created and preserved by Ede and Ravenscroft, London’s oldest tailor and the House of Windsor’s official robemaker. Celebrated as an “eco-friendly” move, the decision to wear two ermine robes made for his grandfather, George VI, during the coronation festivities proves that even a sovereign isn’t above a fashionable hand-me-down—or a nod to longstanding critter customs.