Cool Crown

[[caption-width-right:300:Just a few of the many types of crowns.

A sure-fire way to get across that you are important is to wear a Cool Crown. It's the headgear of choice for Kings, Queens and Princesses alike, and no Awesome Moment of Crowning would be complete without it.

Cool Crowns come in many sizes and shapes but a few have distinct associations:

 * Tiaras are the iconic crown of the Princess Classic and heavily associated with fairytales. Perched directly on top of the head, usually with heart or flower designs worked in, they are dainty and sparkly and make great hair accessories. It's almost solely women who wear tiaras, and doesn't even need to be Royalty, although queens and princesses will wear the fanciest ones. Real Life examples tend to be heavily Gem-Encrusted.
 * Frill-like Diadems, often seen being worn by Pageant Queens also tend to have the same connotations as tiaras despite having more robustness, similar to a heavy circlet.
 * Circlets are the staple of Modest Royalty. Who wants to wear a heavy, clunky crown everywhere? These Royals need to be able to move and get things done. The circlet is usually a ribbon-like strand of metal that wraps around the forehead, sometimes with a simple jewel on the front, or a heavier band that perches atop the head that may have other decorations, but no hoops or caps. They are worn by both genders, and Elves seem to like the really thin across-the-forehead kind, for some reason.
 * Hoop Crowns, with arches, jewels and velvety-cloth caps or ermine-edging are the coolest crowns of them all and usually only Kings, and the occasional Queen, get to wear them. They are big and in your face and anyone wearing one is really important, or seems to want you to think he is. Even most Royalty don't like to wear them all the time, though. During everyday royal activities such a crown may be exchanged for a circlet.
 * Laurel Wreaths are associated with the Roman Caesars and despite being simpler than a typical crown (essentially a partial circlet), they tend to indicate someone who is at the top, in terms of importance. Emperors and Greek Gods really like them. The wreath is often gold, but just as often made of actual leaves.
 * Pimped Out Helmets are perhaps the most Badass type of crown of all. These look like war helms, only with extra decorations like golden plating, wings, dragon teeth and the like - stuff that says "a crown, not a grunt's helmet". These crowns are the best choice for Royals Who Actually Do Something of more warlike bent. The hoop crown is in fact a product of evolution of a certain type of pimped-out helmet that lost its practical (protective) function in the process of becoming more pimped-out.

Sub-Trope of Nice Hat and a key piece of Requisite Royal Regalia.

Sometimes combined with it's Sister Trope, Cool Helmet.

General

 * In high school settings, the King and Queen of the Prom (or Homecoming Queen and King) get crowns for the occasion.

Anime and Manga

 * In Bleach, Baraggan Louisenbairn has a bone-like protrusion out of his head that resembles a crown. Fitting, as prior to encountering Aizen, he was the king of Hueco Mundo. His Resurreccion form had a more normal crown on his head, made of gold and encrusted with all sorts of jewels.

Comics

 * When seen in animation, Aquaman, who is king of Atlantis, is rarely to never seen with his crown on. His wife, Mera, however, is rarely to never seen without hers.

Film - Animated

 * In Anastasia, the titular Russian princess wears a very sparkly diadem with her princess dress.
 * Rapunzel has a tiara in Tangled. Her parents have hoop crowns.
 * Princess Aurora from Sleeping Beauty wears a tiara, while her parents and father-in-law wear hoop crowns.
 * Prince John from Robin Hood wears an oversized hoop crown.
 * Arthur "Wart" Pendragon wears a giant crown at the end of The Sword in The Stone.
 * During his introductory scene in Cinderella, the King can be seen throwing his crown out the window.
 * The Evil Queen from Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs apparantly wears a hoop crown over what appears to be a black hood.
 * Jasmine from Aladdin wears a light blue tiara with a sapphire jewel on the front.
 * King Triton, Queen Athena, and half of their daughters (Ariel is an exception) from The Little Mermaid series films all appear to be wearing crowns made from coral.
 * Naveen and his parents from The Princess and The Frog all wear hoop crowns on their heads, while Tiana is first seen wearing a silver tiara, and later on a green tiara made from flowers.
 * Kuzco from The Emperors New Groove wears a gold crown shaped like a semicircle.
 * King Julian from Madagascar wears a crown made from leaves. At the end of the film, he replaces it with a larger crown with a gecko on it.
 * The queens from Atlantis the Lost Empire (such as the unnamed queen seen in the prologue, and her daughter at the end of the film) all appear to be wearing small gold tiaras with large pink and blue feathers coming out of the back on their heads. The kings (such as Kashekhim Nedakh, and his son-in-law at the end of the film) normally do not wear crowns.
 * The Queen of England from Cars 2 is a large blue car wearing royal robes who appears to have a giant hoop crown on her roof. Her hood ornament is also shaped like a crown as well.
 * In another Pixar film, A Bugs Life, both Princess Atta and her mother, the Ant Queen wear crowns made from flowers.
 * And in a soon-to-be third Pixar example, Brave, both King Fergus and Queen Elinor both wear circlets on their head. Subverted with their daughter Princess Merida, however, who is forced to wear a headdress that covers her entire head, but she prefers not to.
 * The Queen and King of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland.
 * And the Red Queen in the live-action adaptation, though she actually stole it from the White Queen.
 * The Emperor of China from Mulan wears a traditional Chinese royal headdress on his head.
 * Esmeralda wore a small gold tiara with emeralds on it (referencing both her name and her eye color) during her pole dance in the song "Topsy Turvy" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Film - Live Action

 * Averted in Star Wars. Despite having royalty, no one ever sports a crown.
 * Queen Amidala wears plenty of ridiculous headdresses in The Phantom Menace. Which one is the formal crown is harder to say.
 * In Robin Hood 2010, King Richard's helmet has a crown built into it.
 * In the Lord of the Rings Film of the Book (specifically Return of the King), the crown of Gondor looks like a circlet, though a fairly large one. Contrary to the book, where it looks like a helm (not exactly hoop crown but close).
 * The elven lord Elrond sports a circlet of the "stock thin elven" type. The elven High King of old, Gil-Galad does, too.
 * In the third The Elusive Avengers movie, appropriately titled The Crown of the Russian Empire, the titular Greater Imperial Crown of Russia was the MacGuffin. (Google it. It's one of the most awesome hoop crowns of Real Life).

Literature

 * In the Heralds of Valdemar series, the Valdemaran royals wear understated circlets to go with their Modest Royalty and indicate they don't think they are better than their subjects. Other royals in neighboring countries either copied them or came up with the idea independently (probably the latter).
 * The Awesome Moment of Crowning scene in The Lion the Witch And The Wardrobe makes a special point of mentioning that the crowns given to the Pevences aren't the heavy, gaudy, over-emblished sort (like the British Crown Jewels) but elegant circlets. The royal lines of Narnia all tend to fall in the Royals Who Actually Do Something camp.
 * The Wheel of Time book A Crown of Swords is named after the Laurel Crown of Illian. The crown is of a laurel wreath design, but between the leaves are tiny daggers alternately pointing up and down; the intention in the design is that the wearer can never wear it comfortably, reminding him of the obligation and danger it represents. After he notices this, Rand gives the Laurel Crown its other name.
 * The crown of the dragons in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles is a heavy circlet made of iron. When, after her first day as King, Kazul exhaustedly hurls it against the wall, Cimorene chides that she shouldn't treat the crown that way. Kazul responds, "Of course I should. It's expected. That's why we made it out of iron and not something soft and pliable like gold."
 * In Lord of the Rings the first crown of Gondor was a war helm that belonged to Isildur, and the second (Aragorn was crowned with it), was a more pimped-up, crown-like helm. And in the other Numenorean kingdom, Arnor, a simple circlet with a single diamond was used. The Arnorian crown also existed in two iterations: the original and the replacement that was made after the original was lost. After LOTR, the original circlet was found, giving Aragorn a total of three cool crowns.
 * In the Deryni works, there's a number of these:
 * The Haldanes have the State Crown of Gwynedd, bejeweled and with intertwined gold leaves and crosses, worn at coronations and state occasions. Even Kelson wears this when duty calls for it, though he prefers a "simpler circlet of gold" like the hammered gold circlet he wears when addressing the bishops at Valoret in The Quest for Saint Camber.
 * Also in The Quest for Saint Camber, Kelson wears "the oldest and plainest of Kelson's official crowns: a band of hammered gold two fingers wide, chased with a design of Celtic interlace and set with small, round cabochon rubies in some of the interstices."
 * Caitrin Quinnell, soi-disant Queen of Meara, has a regal crown of gold set with sapphires and rubies. This one is notably heavy; it creases Caitrin's brow (the marks are visible when she takes it off), Ithel flinches under its weight when Caitrin briefly sets it on his head, and Kelson complains of its weight after wearing it at the surrender ceremony in Laas.
 * Mátyás brings a crown from Torenth's treasury when he comes to Rhemuth to escort Liam-Lajos back for his investiture: "a handsome circlet of beaten gold, nearly the width of a man's three fingers, set round with smoky balas rubies, baroque pearls, and chunky rough-polished emeralds the size of a man's thumbnail." Liam receives a newer traditional Torenthi crown at the ceremony: "a golden diadem studded with rubies and emeralds and pearls, with great jeweled pendants hanging just short of his shoulders at either side.".
 * In Wyrd Sisters Lancre doesn't have a flashy crown, well not compared to the crowns a group of actors have. It's lampshaded by Granny Weatherwax that imitation crowns are always cool and flashy looking, because that is what people expect crowns to be. Real crowns are just an impractical hat and badge of office so aren't that impressive.
 * In the Elenium, the sapphire rose Bhelliom once adorned the Crown of Thalasia, until the loss of both crown and the king who wore it in circumstances very similar to Isildur's loss of the One Ring.
 * The True Crown in Septimus Heap. Made from the gold of the spiders of Aurum, it was withold by Queen Etheldredda from her daughter Esmeralda and only taken back by Princess Jenna five hundred years later.
 * In the Harry Potter series, the Diadem of Ravenclaw is decorated with an eagle motif and the inscription "wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure". It's said to bestow wisdom on the wearer. Sadly, it's been lost for centuries, and.

Live Action TV

 * In The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon and Amy have a fight, and Sheldon gives Amy jewelry as an apology. Amy is chewing Sheldon out for such a shallow gesture, until she sees it's a tiara. She goes into Princess Phase mode and kisses Sheldon in delight.
 * The Corona Aurora of Power Rangers Operation Overdrive. It and its five scattered jewels serve as the MacGuffins that everyone's after, granting incredible power if they're reunited.
 * King Arthur and King Uther go through a couple of crowns on Merlin, and Arthur gets the short end of the stick each time. Whilst Uther wore a simple but respectable looking circlet, Prince Arthur had something that looked like a shiny metal head-band. In a Flash Forward, Arthur was seen wearing Uther's crown, but when he finally became King himself, he switched to a giant gold crown with fleur-de-lis spikes on it, which most people thought looked a little bit like the Burger King crown. Guinevere on the other hand, is lucky enough to wear a very elaborate, but still elegant-looking silver crown adorned with jewels. Since her coronation was filmed twice (first as a Flash Forward, and then in real time) you can see the difference in Arthur's crown here, and here.

Video Games

 * The Super Mario series subverts the association of Princesses with tiaras by giving Princess Peach a heavy gold circlet decked out in sparkly jewels. Her crown is also a treasure in Pikmin Two (the first region, pretty much as far away as you can get from the landing site). Daisy and Rosalina also wear similar crowns as well.
 * In Angry Birds, some of the bigger and tougher Pigs wear crowns. Such attire is usually switched with whatever headgear is appropriate for the level's theme, however.
 * In Super Mario Bros enemy bosses have these, although Bowser, the Koopa King doesn't wear one.
 * Though he does in the cartoon, however.
 * Princess Zelda from The Legend of Zelda series games normally wears a circlet.
 * Slowking from Pokémon has a Shellder (who is normally bivalve-shaped, but becomes gastropod-shaped if evolved with Slowpoke) for a crown.
 * In Kirbys Return to Dream Land
 * The "elemental" abilities (Fire, Ice, Spark, for example) that Kirby obtains generally have a base design of a crown with the element being emitted from the top.
 * The crown of the High King of Skyrim is a prime example of a pimped-out helmet: it's a helmet decorated with dragon's teeth.
 * The crown of Barenziah from the same game is kinda hard to classify. It's technically a circlet but gold wings big enough that it seems to be a helm when looked from the front. Barenziah also never was seen wearing this crown in either Daggerfall or Morrowind where she appeared in person (she wore various circlets and tiaras instead).
 * Also from Morrowind, Almalexia wears a circlet made of some green metal (orichalcum?).
 * Fantasy Quest presents you with the Crown of Destiny, which grants you access to a sword you need.

Webcomics

 * Exiern King Urtica has the circlet (emblazoned with a stylised sun) style of crown, which is in keeping with his status as a hard-working (albeit in a Magnificent Bastard cum Chessmaster kind of way) monarch.

Western Animation

 * In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, Rarity wore a tiara with her dress for the Galloping Gala and Rainbow Dash wore a Laurel Wreath. Twilight also has a tiara-thing that she wears when the ponies must use the Elements of Harmony. Both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna also wear tiaras.
 * All fairies on Fairly Oddparents wear "floaty crowny things".
 * The Fire Lord and his family of the Fire Nation in Avatar: The Last Airbender all have a hair ornaments that stand in as crowns.
 * Let's not forget that big-ass helmet, the Phoenix King's crown.
 * The King of Town from Homestar Runner appears to be wearing a paper crown he bought at Burger King, according to Strong Bad.
 * Starscream wore one of these in Transformers the Movie just right before being melted by Galvatron.