Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom at each Investiture. The Queen usually conducts the investitures, although the Prince of Wales, The Princess Royal or, more recently, the Duke of Cambridge also hold some investitures on behalf of the Queen. During the ceremony, the Queen enters the ballroom of Buckingham Palace attended by two Gurkha orderly officers, a tradition begun in 1876 by Queen Victoria. On duty on the dais are five members of the Queen's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard, which was created in 1485 by Henry VII; they are the oldest, but not most senior, military corps in the United Kingdom. Four
Private Apartments of the Winter Palace the Tsaritsa's opinion: "Saint Petersburg is a rotten town, and not one atom Russian." Under her influence, gradually the great court receptions and balls at the Winter Palace, which humoured and cultivated the powerful nobility, came to an end, to be briefly replaced by theatricals held in the Hermitage which "no one enjoyed." Then even the theatricals ceased. The Silver and Empire Drawing Rooms were part of the suite of rooms reserved for the private use of the Tsaritsa. They form an enfilade which culminates in the Malachite Drawing Room, which served as the Tsaritsa's State Drawing Room, where she