Princess Anne Hosted A Special Ceremony For The First Time Since The Queen Died

Twice a year — for the new year and for the monarch's birthday — the Cabinet Office in the UK releases a list of people who have received an honour. It's a practice that dates back hundreds of years, and you can nominate people for volunteer work, gallantry, and enterprise, and the awards are reserved for those who have "made achievements in public life" and "committed themselves to serving and helping Britain." It will take a year to a year and a half to find out if a nomination has gone through. The lists also include those who have been made knights or dames — for example, Olivia Newton-John became a dame in the 2020 New Years Honours List, per The Gazette. Once you've been announced as an honour award recipient, you can look forward to going to an investiture ceremony and getting your insignia or medal, as applicable, given to you by a member of the royal family, often in the Buckingham Palace ballroom. Basically, it's a pretty big deal. There are usually 30 investitures through the year, and there hasn't been in over a month.

For the first time since the death of Queen Elizabeth, Princess Anne — one of the hardest working royals – has hosted a group investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace, per People. The Royal Family Twitter account posted pictures of the honorees from the ceremony and said "Over the coming months members of The Royal Family will continue to present awards to those recognized in the late Queen's Birthday and New Year's Honours Lists."

Princess Anne gave honours to 73 people, and she wore her Navy uniform, and included Esmeralda Devlin, who designed the 2012 London Olympics closing ceremony set; Jonathan Rea, a Northern Irish champion motorcycle racer; Maisie Summers-Newton, a champion Paralympic swimmer; and Charles Sabine, journalist, per the Daily Mail. Autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen was the only one awarded with a knighthood.

While other royals presented awards in recent years in place of the queen, one of the queen's last public investiture ceremonies where she personally gave the award was in 2022 at Windsor Castle where she presented the George Cross to the UK's National Health Service in 2022 and two years before, she knighted Captain Sir Thomas Moore for raising more than $40 million for the NHS, per People.