Royal commentators will remember 2020 as an 'unprecedented time in the Queen's reign'

Well, it's been a rollercoaster of a year for everyone right across the globe but undoubtedly 2020 has been a historic one for the British Royal Family.

From two heirs-to-the-throne battling the potentially deadly coronavirus to the Queen getting onto video calls and of course Megxit, there have been a lot of changes both in front and behind-the-scenes of The Firm.

And it's made for a year royal commentators are calling "an unprecedented time in the Queen's reign".

The unrivalled year saw the royals doing a number of things we never expected them to — starting with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle quitting their working roles within the family.

"The year started with such division and such a dramatic departure of the Sussexes," Katie Nicholl tells 9Honey, before addressing how things changed in the months that followed as the pandemic took hold.

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"It was extraordinary with COVID, we saw the royal family evolve and change in a way that would usually take years.

"Overnight almost they adapted, they adjusted, they embraced video technology, the digital medium as a means of communicating with the public. So change that usually takes months or years happened almost overnight.

"There was an extraordinary shift and a lot of hard work behind-the-scenes in order to make that new way of working possible."

Not only were the royals constantly keeping in touch with their charities and frontline workers via numerous video calls but the Queen made sure to say visible as well.

"It was quite remarkable to hear from the Queen, twice, in those incredible speeches," Nicholl says.

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"To hear and see the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall at home in isolation at Birkhall. To see the Cambridges broadcasting messages of support for NHS frontline workers from their home, talking about home-schooling, then to discover it wasn't just Charles, William too who suffered from COVID - quite extraordinary the heir apparent and the heir both down with this deadly illness.

"When you put it all together, it's been an absolutely extraordinary year."

Nicholl tells 9Honey the year could have gone one of two ways for the royals — and one of those ways would not have done them any favours in the eyes of the public.

"I think the royals could have isolated in their ivory towers and really just disappeared from public life but actually, I think what this has shown is that this is a monarchy that knows the importance of supporting it's people during a crisis, which of course this has been and re-inventing the wheel.

"Changing in order to do what they do best and I think they've shown they can move with the times, they can reinvent themselves, they prove to be incredibly important, relevant and in-touch, during an unprecedented time in the Queen's reign".

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In the new year we're likely to see even more changes in how the royal machine operates, with rumours there will be just eight senior royals in a new slimmed down version of The Firm.

We'll be set to see more crossover from Prince Charles, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William, Kate Middleton, Prince Edward, Countess of Wessex, Princess Anne and the Queen as they all get out and about as soon as it's safe to do so in 2021.