Beneath gilded portraits and suits of armour in Windsor Castle, 160 guests wined and dined at a lavish banquet to fete US President Donald Trump's unprecedented second state visit to the UK on Wednesday evening.
Along with the impeccable table settings, three-course meal, and custom cocktail, who was there and, just as importantly, who was seated next to whom is carefully planned, since the event is as much about diplomacy as it is about fine dining.
This year's guest list was conspicuously missing screen stars or celebrity faces, with not even royal perennials like Sir David Beckham or Sir Elton John attending.
Instead, the list was mostly royals, tech and finance executives, and politicos from both sides of the Atlantic.
From Trump's seat of honour at the centre of the table, next to his host King Charles III, those up and down the table ranged from lesser-known but influential White House players to professional golfers.
The table leaned towards power, wealth, and influence, including Apple's boss Tim Cook, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman, and still powerful after all these years, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch.
The last is a surprising invitee given the fact Trump is suing one of his newspapers for billions over claims he wrote a note framed by a drawing of a naked woman to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Less surprising, perhaps, is that Murdoch, owner of The Sun and The Times, was sat next to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's chief political spin doctor Morgan McSweeney.
In purely financial terms, however, Murdoch's Newscorp is small fry. The others between them run companies worth nearly 10 trillion dollars - four times the value of the entire UK economy. US business royalty sat down with UK royalty and served up a £150 billion investment into the UK over the coming years.
Over half of that (£90 billion) is coming from private equity giant Blackstone - little wonder that boss Stephen Schwarzman was seated next to Sir Keir.
But what do these benefactors want in return? Abolishing the UK's digital services tax or watering down the online safety act? No and no, insists the government, which says it sees the relationship akin to the one we share on defence and intelligence.
As the Ukraine war has demonstrated, Europe is heavily dependent on the US for those things. Some have described this as an invasion rather than investment, with former Deputy PM and ex-Meta employee Sir Nick Clegg warning that the UK could become a vassal state, creating new dependencies on a handful of US companies.
For a government and country that is in desperate need of investment and growth, you want to be first in line when it's being dished out - and the UK does appear to be at the front of the queue.
A bulk of the table - nearly two dozen seats - were taken up by Trump's camp, including his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and a slew of senior members of his administration covering everything from foreign policy to AI.
Tiffany Trump's husband Michael Boulos also attended. He does not hold a role in the Trump administration, but the president picked his father Massad Boulos as a key advisor, and the younger Boulos was placed in a prominent seat beside the Princess of Wales.
Another apt pairing was David Sacks, the White House's AI and crypto tsar, next to Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of Google's DeepMind, a British-American AI firm.
King Charles was seated next to his guest of honour Trump and Rubio, while the King's daughter-in-law the Princess of Wales was on Trump's opposite side. Queen Camilla was across the table, next to the First Lady.
Other senior royals were seated next to White House powerbrokers, demonstrating the intricate web of relationships forged at this high-stakes diplomatic dinner.
