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Queen Elizabeth II is shown smiling warmly at a palace aide who famously scrapped with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in a new Platinum Jubilee portrait.
The previously unseen image shows the 96-year-old monarch against a black background sharing a joke with Angela Kelly, her dresser and close confidante (who is not pictured).
The image dates back to 2004 and went on show for the first time at London hotel 45 Park Lane on Tuesday to mark celebrations this year of the 70th anniversary of Elizabeth's reign.
The key role played by Kelly in the image shows how significant she is to the queen at a time when debates over the spat with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are still ongoing.
In April, Tina Brown's biography, The Palace Papers, shed new light on the incident, in which Meghan tried to organize a hair trial with the tiara she was due to wear at her 2018 royal wedding.
When she felt Kelly was obstructing access to the treasured jewellery, Harry took up her cause and a heated argument ensued.
According to Brown's book: "Meghan did not—or could not—perceive the difference between the Queen's personal aide and a contract stylist at NBC Universal.
"A blow-up occurred when when Kelly wilfully—as Meghan and, therefore, Harry saw it—denied the bride-to-be access to the Queen Mary Bandeau Tiara, on loan from the Queen, that Meghan would be wearing for the wedding."
Bestselling biography Finding Freedom reported that Kensington Palace spent weeks trying to arrange the appointment.
Authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand wrote: "Harry, while obviously familiar with Palace protocol, didn't believe that Angela was truly unavailable. Instead, he thought she was purposefully ignoring Meghan."
The queen's 2004 portrait also involved a difficulty over access to a headpiece, this time the Diamond Diadem, most famous as the crown Elizabeth wears in the photos on British stamps and coins.
In that case, however, artist Chris Levine had a rather more powerful ally in his efforts to get the jewellery he wanted for the images.
His own account is included in Kelly's own book, The Other Side of the Coin, and details how the presence of a U.S. president had complicated the situation.
He wrote: "On the day of the shoot, I got a call from one of the offices in the Palace to ask whether the crown was essential for the shoot.
"The President of the United States was staying at the time, so security was tight and the logistics of getting the Diadem to the shoot would be tricky.
"Something in me held firm. Yes, it was important. So Angela brought the piece over herself and told me that Her Majesty had said that if Chris wanted the Diadem, he must have the Diadem. Thank you, Your Majesty."
The original shoot was used to create a 3-D hologram of the queen. However, the previously published images differed significantly in that Elizabeth was wearing an Ermine cape
Levine wrote: "Until the day I die, I will never forget the moment The Queen put it on—I felt I was somehow channelling the work. Her Majesty looked sensational—just beautiful—and the images we captured have become historic.
"I'm proud of what we created together that day and I still have to pinch myself sometimes to remind myself that it wasn't a dream."
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About the writer
Jack Royston is Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent based in London, U.K. He reports on the British royal family—including King Charles ... Read more