How Princess Diana 'forced' the Royal Family to change its traditional ways

Princess Diana will forever be remembered as a royal icon and her impact on the Royal Family continues to be felt to this day. After decades of things being done a certain way, expert and woman&home correspondent Emily Andrews believes that Diana "forced" the royals to break with tradition and modernise in a way they hadn't before.

She and her co-host Reverend Richard Coles discussed this on their Catching Up With The Royals podcast, with him dubbing Diana "the second most significant person in this game" next to Queen Elizabeth. In his view, she "completely changed the way we looked to royalty."

Emily agreed with him and explained that the way Princess Diana "lived her personal life kind of publicly - or at least seemed to" and her parenting of William and Harry made a huge difference.

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"The public narrative of her as a very hands-on mother, which I think was true - I don't think that was fake, it felt very authentic - taking them on the tube, the fairground rides, the holidays, the very hands-on parenting was so different to how royals had parented before," she said.

Royal fans will remember the pictures of Diana, William and Harry looking like they were all having the time of their lives on a trip to Thorpe Park in 1992. The late Princess also treated her sons to McDonalds, trips to the cinema and eating in front of the TV.

All of this might sound quite ordinary to many of us, but she was breaking new ground as a royal mother. Emily reflected, "It did make, I think, maybe forced, the royals to become more hands-on with the general public, so to speak."

In the same discussion in the 23rd April episode, Richard also noted that Princess Diana was a "very potent figure" who "drove" change. He thinks she's one of the reasons why the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign was "so different" to the beginning.

Princess Diana's warmth and down-to-earth nature as a mother and a royal captured the nations' hearts and broke down some invisible barriers between the Royal Family and the public. When the Prince and Princess of Wales are at engagements they're happy to take selfies with people, get down to children's eye height and give occasional hugs.

Decades ago this would be unimaginably personal and yet it's now become the norm for them. They're also equally hands-on as parents, collecting and dropping off Prince George, Charlotte and Louis at school themselves and taking school holidays off as much as possible.

Although royal duties aren't 9-5, Prince William said on The Reluctant Traveler that "getting the balance of work and family life right is really important" because "the most important thing in [his] life is family". He and Kate are adapting their royal roles around this like Princess Diana did and it's apparently the "first thing" the mum-of-three thinks of when trips are planned.

"She likes to do the school run and all those things," royal commentator Katie Nicholl has claimed. "From my conversations with aides, once a royal trip or engagement is planned, the first thing they ask before looking at the itinerary is, 'How does this work for us as a family?'"

The Royal Family has definitely changed over the years and perhaps Emily and Richard do have a point that this is partly down to Princess Diana and her enduring legacy.