As it was for billions across the globe, 2020 was a year of upheaval and uncertainty for Britain's royal family.
The year kicked off in dramatic fashion with the declaration by Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, that they intended to step down as senior royals and forge a new life for themselves unconstrained by royal duties.
The announcement took the palace by surprise but Queen Elizabeth II moved quickly to take back control, summoning her son and heir Prince Charles and grandsons Prince William and Harry to a crisis meeting to sort things out.
By the time the Sussexes officially stepped down as senior royals in late March, many of the thorny legal and financial issues had been resolved and what could have been a major constitutional crisis, averted.
But just as the royal family's latest internal saga seemed to be drawing to a close, a new threat was engulfing the planet: the coronavirus.
Back in early March, William appeared to joke about the spread of the virus as he spoke to emergency workers at a reception hosted by Britain's Ambassador to Ireland in Dublin's Guinness Storehouse.
The prince was heard saying: "I bet everyone's like, 'I've got coronavirus', and you're like, 'no you've just got a cough.' It does seem quite dramatic about the coronavirus. A little bit hyped up at the minute?'"
Just two days after the UK went into a national lockdown on March 23, his father, Charles, announced he had tested positive for the virus.
The prince – who was 71 at the time – said he experienced a mild form of the disease, which he rode out while self-isolating at a royal estate in Scotland. On April 3, he opened London's Nightingale Hospital – a vast temporary hospital for Covid-19 patients at the capital's ExCel conference center – via video link.
Two days later, the queen delivered a rare address to the nation, offering a message of hope and promising the country that it would rise to the challenge and overcome the outbreak.
Drawing upon wisdom from her decades as Britain's head of state, Queen Elizabeth II said the UK would "join with all nations across the globe in a common endeavour, using the great advances of science and our instinctive compassion to heal."
The monarch also invoked the words of World War II-era song "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn, that offered hope to many a soldier sent to fight, promising that loved ones would be reunited in the end.
"We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again," the queen said.
And as restrictions put in place to help prevent the spread of the virus forced people across the globe to adapt to a new way of life, the royal family also began working remotely and communicating via video conferencing apps.
In April, Prince William opened the Nightingale Hospital in Birmingham remotely while his wife Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, joined her husband to talk with frontline workers over video call.
The couple's Royal Foundation Covid-19 Response Fund also awarded almost 1.8 million pounds (NZ$3.38 million) to support the mental health of frontline workers and others affected by the pandemic.
In June, the queen took part in her first public video conference to chat to four carers about the challenges they were experiencing through the pandemic.
William also revealed that he had been anonymously helping out on crisis helpline Shout 85258, while Catherine took part in "check in and chat" calls with people who were self-isolating or vulnerable.
On June 16th, Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall made their first public appearance since the UK's lockdown at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, while a couple of days later, Catherine visited a garden center in Norfolk.
It wasn't all good press for the royal family in June, however.
Epstein's former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell is due in court this week, accused of recruiting underage girls for sexual abuse.
Prince Andrew's connection with US sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was once again thrust into the spotlight when US prosecutors and attorneys for the prince sniped at one another across the Atlantic, each saying the other side was to blame for the duke's failure to participate in the Epstein sex trafficking probe.
One of the women who was sexually abused by Epstein as a teenager, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, has claimed that the financier flew her around the world on private planes to have sex with powerful men, and that she had sexual encounters with Andrew in London and New York, starting when she was 17.
Andrew denies the allegation.
The prince's lawyers said the prince had offered three times to give information to investigators, though on a condition that his statements be confidential.
The US attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, countered that Andrew's lawyers were misleading the public about his willingness to cooperate.
The following month, on July 17, Andrew's elder daughter Princess Beatrice married Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi in a private ceremony at The Royal Chapel of All Saints at Royal Lodge, Windsor. The queen, Prince Phillip and other close family members attended.
Beatrice, 31, wore a vintage ivory taffeta dress by Norman Hartnell and a diamond tiara that was worn by the queen on her own wedding day in 1947.
Prince Andrew does not appear in the two wedding photos released by the palace.
On the same day as the wedding, the queen knighted Captain Sir Tom Moore – a 100-year-old former British Army officer who captivated the nation by walking 100 laps of his garden in England and raising 33 million pounds (NZ$62 million) for the National Health Service in April.
The ceremony was staged at Windsor Castle, with Moore later revealing that he and the monarch spoke about their respective ages - slightly breaking the protocol of not revealing a private conversation with the queen.
In August, Princess Anne – the queen's only daughter - celebrated her 70th birthday. As part of the occasion, Anne - born on the 15th August 1950 - has been the subject of an ITV television documentary, more than a year in the making.
Also in August, the Cambridges visited a care home in Cardiff, Wales.
The trip was like any other in their calendar – until the prince was brought down a peg or two by 87-year-old pensioner Joan Drew-Smith.
William and Catherine had first met the staff and residents of the care home back in May via video link. On that occasion, the couple had read out the numbers for the home's weekly bingo session with Drew-Smith stating at the time that the game "wasn't as good as it should have been."
Asking if she remembered the incident during their in-person visit, William was reprimanded by the elderly resident who said he'd done "a bloody s****y job."
The royal couple erupted into laughter.
In September, Barbados - the former British colony once known as "Little England" - announced it plans to replace Queen Elizabeth II with its own head of state in time for next year's 55th independence anniversary.
The same month, disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was stripped of an honor recognizing his contribution to the UK film industry.
Weinstein was given the honor in 2004. The former Hollywood producer was convicted earlier this year of rape and sexual assault against two women and sentenced to 23 years in prison.
In more positive news, Buckingham Palace announced in late September that Princess Eugenie and her husband, Jack Brooksbank, are expecting a child in 2021.
And as the month drew to a close, veteran broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough gave Prince George a giant shark tooth fossil after a private viewing of his new documentary at Kensington Palace.
Attenborough, 94, presented the 7-year-old prince with the tooth from a carcharocles megalodon, a species that lived more than 3 million years ago and was three times the size of modern great white sharks. Attenborough found the tooth during a family vacation to Malta in the late 1960s.
The incident wasn't without controversy. Maltese Culture Minister Jose Herrera announced his intention to reclaim the fossil but dropped the matter after facing a backlash.
In October, the queen carried out her first public engagement outside of a royal residence since early March. The monarch was joined by Prince William at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down near Salisbury, in southern England, and met with scientists battling the coronavirus.
In November, the BBC reported that William had tested positive for Covid-19 in April, around the same time as his father, Prince Charles.
The report cited unidentified palace sources and The Sun newspaper, which said William kept his telephone and video engagements without revealing his diagnosis because he didn't want to worry anyone.
The newspaper said William was treated by palace doctors and followed government guidelines by isolating at the family home, Anmer Hall.
A few days later, the queen wore a face mask in public for the first time during the pandemic, when attending a brief ceremony at Westminster Abbey to mark the centenary of the burial of the Unknown Warrior – an unidentified British soldier who died during World War I.
Wearing a black mask edged with white, the queen left a bouquet of orchids and myrtle at the grave.
Also in November, Prince William "tentatively welcomed" an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding a BBC interview in 1995 with his mother, Princess Diana.
The BBC announced it has appointed a retired senior judge to lead an investigation after Diana's brother, Charles Spencer, made renewed complaints that journalist Martin Bashir used false documents and other dishonest tactics to convince Diana to agree to the interview.
The investigation will consider if the steps taken by the broadcaster and Bashir were appropriate, and whether those actions influenced Diana's decision to give the interview. It will also look into how much the BBC knew about the "mocked-up bank statements" that Charles Spencer claimed Bashir produced, purporting to show payments made to staff working for Spencer and the royal family.
The 1995 interview, in which Diana famously said "there were three of us in this marriage" — referring to Prince Charles' relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles — was watched by millions of people and sent shockwaves through the monarchy.
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