The Queen has given a glimpse of subtle fashion diplomacy by wearing a brooch made of jewels from Germany to meet Angela Merkel.
The monarch, 95, donned the emerald brooch to meet the German chancellor as she visited Britain on Friday.
Her Majesty wore the Cambridge Emerald Brooch during an audience with the world leader and key European Union figurehead.
She paired the dazzling jewels with a blue and green floral dress, black patent leather court shoes, a string of pearls with matching earrings, and bright magenta lipstick.
Merkel is in the UK making farewell trips as she prepares to hand over power after almost 16 years in top job.
She met with Prime Minister Boris Johnson at Chequers then visited Windsor Castle for her last official audience with the Queen.
She had also meet Her Majesty during the G7 summit in Cornwall last month, where the Queen told the German leader: "We are making history."
The monarch was last seen publicly wearing the brooch - which comes with a fascinating history - in March last year at a poetry awards ceremony at Buckingham Palace in the weeks before the UK lockdown began.
She also wore the piece during a welcoming ceremony for then-President Donald Trump and wife Melania in 2019.
The round emerald brooch features an array of stunning emeralds encircled by diamonds, with a dangling pear-drop detachable pendant attached.
According to experts on the Queen's vast jewellery collection, her royal ancestor won the brooch at an auction in Frankfurt.
According to a history of the piece of jewellery by Royal Central, the stones were caught up in a 19th-century love tryst and inheritance squabble before the Queen inherited them.
After Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge wed young German princess Augusta of Hesse-Kassel in 1818, she moved to Britain and became the Duchess of Cambridge.
While paying a visit to Hesse following the marriage, she bought raffle tickets for a state-sponsored charity lottery.
Augusta won and received about 40 cabochon emeralds which she later had crafted into a necklace and earrings.
They came to be known as the Cambridge emeralds and the jewellery and a collection of loose stones were passed down to her daughter Mary Adelaide, the Duchess of Teck.
Mary had the remaining emeralds created into a piece with a dangling pendant to attach to one of her diamond stomachers.
After the Duchess of Teck died, the piece was inherited by her third child, Prince Francis of Teck.
He was a bachelor so he had no wife to wear the stones - but he did have a mistress - Nellie, the Countess of Kilmorey.
The royal family nearly lost the stones after Francis decided to leave them to Nellie.
When he died in 1910, his sister, who would later become Queen Mary, was unhappy that the jewels had been given to an outsider.
Francis' sister, who would later become Queen Mary, got lawyers involved leading to Nellie giving the emeralds back.
Following suggestions Francis may have fathered an illegitimate child, Queen Mary had the will made private to ward off a scandal.
