On Friday, at Windsor Castle in England, the Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, father of Prince Charles, and patriarch of a tumultuous royal dynasty he worked to ensure would not be Britain’s last, passed away. He was 99.
Buckingham Palace says he died peacefully and announced his passing.
The palace announced in February that Philip had been hospitalized for the fourth time in recent years.
His passing coincided with further turbulence at Buckingham Palace following Oprah Winfrey’s dramatic televised interview with Philip’s grandson Prince Harry and Harry’s wife, Meghan, last month. In their California exile, the couple claimed that members of the royal family were racist and nasty.
Philip, as “the first gentleman in the kingdom,” attempted to lead a monarchy encrusted with the trappings of the 19th century into the 20th. But as controversy overshadowed spectacle and royal weddings were followed by dramatic divorces, his aim shifted. The crown needed protection now more than ever.
However, the goal was and always had been to safeguard Britain, the throne, and centuries of custom. On November 20, 1947, at the age of 26 and 21 respectively, a tall, handsome prince wed the young crown princess, Elizabeth. At the time, a battered Britain was still recovering from World War II, the sun had all but set on its empire, and the abdication of Edward VIII over his love for Wallis Simpson, a divorced American, was still resonating.
With majestic horse-drawn coaches gilded in gold and a throng of loving people along the path between Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey, the royal wedding offered reassurance that the monarchy, like the nation, would survive.
It was also an emotional pairing. King George VI learned from Elizabeth that Philip was the one man she could love.
As the husband of a queen whose powers were essentially ceremonial, Philip found himself in an unusual position internationally. He was a figurehead in her court, accompanying her on royal travels and sometimes filling in for her.
However, he accepted being king as a duty he must fulfill. We must “make this monarchy thing” work, he reportedly remarked.
He continued doing this until he announced his retirement from the public eye in May 2017, at the age of 95, and made his last solo performance three months later.
However, he did not completely disappear from view. In May of 2018, William emerged during the sun-drenched splendor of Harry and Meghan’s wedding, where he waved to onlookers from the back of a limousine with the queen by his side before strutting up the stairs of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle in a neat morning suit.
After the success of “The Crown,” a costume drama on Netflix that chronicles postwar Britain through the lens of his stormy royal marriage, he became something of a pop-culture phenomenon once more. (When the prince was younger, he was portrayed by Matt Smith, and when he was older, he was portrayed by Tobias Menzies.)
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Public and Private Faces
Philip’s public persona frequently featured him decked up in full military garb, a symbol of his high-ranking positions in the armed services and a nod to both his fighting experience during World War II and his martial ancestry (he was the nephew of war leader Lord Mountbatten).
Many people had an impression of Philip as an emotionally distant public figure who periodically let his guard down and said things that were perceived as disrespectful or even cruel. And what exotic region of the world do you come from?” he reportedly asked a Black British politician. ”
Slowly but surely, word spread that Philip was a cold, bossy, and demanding private person and that he and his emotionally distant wife did nothing to foster a loving and nurturing home environment for their children.
Additionally, as many Britons began to view the royal family as increasingly dysfunctional, Philip was seen as a not-insignificant actor in a situation that had many questioning the stability of the monarchy, which he and Elizabeth had been elevated to secure.
Philip was unprepared for the kind of public scrutiny that came with the times when the tabloid press made a habit of airing everyone’s dirty laundry (including the queen’s).
The marriage and subsequent divorce of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer made headlines like no other. However, Philip felt the harsh gaze of the media when the royal family was criticized for their lukewarm reaction to Britain’s outpouring of grief following Diana’s death in a car disaster in Paris in 1997.
Also upsetting for Philip was learning that his eldest son, Prince Charles, had spoken publicly about how his father’s repeated public humiliations of him as a kid had left him with lasting emotional scars.
While Philip tolerated Princess Anne’s “sometimes boisterous and obstreperous behavior,” he openly despised his son, whom he considered “a bit of a wimp,” according to Jonathan Dimbleby’s 1994 biography “The Prince of Wales,” written with the collaboration of Prince Charles.
Mr. Dimbleby writes that Charles “was cowed by his father,” who Charles believed had forced him into an “awful mismatch” with Diana.
Philip lived a life of luxury as a member of the British royal family. He sailed yachts, played polo, and flew planes, albeit the splendor he had experienced was mostly reflected. And he put his prominence to good use by supporting causes like saving endangered species and constructing playgrounds for British kids.
A second example is how Philip and Elizabeth’s ancestor, George III, made use of the space at Buckingham Palace more efficiently by installing modern conveniences like intercoms that eliminated the need for messengers.
At home, he demonstrated a common touch, at least by royal standards. He answered the phone himself as a true king would. One day he even let the queen know that he had purchased a washing machine for her. He told the footmen, “I have arms. I’ll make my drinks. I’ll unlock my doors. I’m not completely defenseless.
Instead of having his children schooled at home, as was the royal norm, he enrolled them in school. To provide his children with typical home life, he reportedly installed a kitchen in the family suite, where he fried eggs for breakfast while the queen prepared tea.
For example, in April 2009 and again in May 2011, Prince Philip greeted President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at Buckingham Palace. The Queen did not need a passport. (He missed the queen’s meeting with Donald J. Trump in London in December 2019 though.) He also attended many high-profile royal events, such as the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in April 2011, which was broadcast around the world, and Queen Elizabeth’s historic visit to the Irish Republic the following month.
In 1973, Philip led a British equestrian team to the Soviet Union as the first member of the royal family to visit the country.
Philip enjoyed speeding away from the court and would often force his valet to ride shotgun. When the queen was a passenger in one of his cars, a little mishap made national news. After a car accident in which his Land Rover injured two people and crashed near the royal family’s Norfolk estate of Sandringham in 2019, at the age of 97, Charles decided to give up driving.
He frequently flew his aircraft and once narrowly avoided colliding with a commercial airliner. To pass the time when escorting the queen to her favorite spectator activity, horse racing, he was reported to have such little patience that he had a radio installed in his top hat so that he could listen to cricket matches instead.
When he first became famous, everyone listened to every wacky thing he said. After hearing a man declare of his Ph.D.-holding wife, “She’s much more important than I am,” Philip said, “We have the same problem in our family.”
Deep Roots in Royalty
The Greek island of Corfu is where Philip, a member of the royal house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, was born on June 10th, 1921. His birth name was Philippos. He was the only son of King Constantine of Greece’s brother, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark. His father was the second son of the first Marquess of Milford Haven, Prince Louis of Battenberg, who changed the family name to Mountbatten during World War I. His mother was the former Princess Alice.
Rather than being native Greeks, Philip’s dynasty was derived from a Danish royal house that had been installed by European powers on the throne of Greece in the nineteenth century. Philip was the sixth in line to the throne of Greece, despite his inability to speak the language.
By the same maternal line that makes Elizabeth a great-great-granddaughter of the queen, Philip is a great-great-grandson of the monarch as well. Both shared ancestry with George III, the British monarch responsible for the loss of the American colonies.
Philip’s birth year also coincided with the defeat of King Constantine’s troops by the Turks in what is now the Asian portion of Turkey. Philip’s father, Prince Andrew, was exiled by a revolutionary Greek junta because he commanded a military unit in the defeated Greek armies.
According to “Prince Philip: The Turbulent Early Life of the Man Who Married Queen Elizabeth II,” written by British author Philip Eade in 2011, Philip was smuggled out of Greece in a fruit box as his father fled the country to Paris to avoid execution. The family lived in abject poverty there.
There was a rumor that Philip Sr. was a die-hard fan of the British monarchy. The boy’s British nanny was responsible for teaching him English as his first language. As he matured, he reached 6 feet 1 inch in height, his Nordic heritage reflected in his blue eyes and blond hair.
After his parents divorced, Philip moved in with his grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. He attended the Cheam School in England for four years, an institution to toughen children from affluent backgrounds, and then transferred to the Gordonstoun School in Scotland, an even more severe environment that encouraged a rigorous schedule of hard work, cold showers, and hard beds. He said that no one from his family had visited him in five years.
Philip still followed his example and enrolled Charles in both institutions.
Philip fell in love with the ocean while attending Gordonstoun, where he volunteered as a coast guardsman and learned the skills of seamanship and boatbuilding. As with his other Mountbatten uncles, he seemed destined for a career in the British Navy.
In 1937, while he was stationed in Gordonstoun, he received news that his pregnant sister Cecilie and her husband, a German aristocrat and important member of the Nazi Party, had perished in a plane crash. Philip, being just 16 years old, made the trip to Germany for the funeral and was photographed marching alongside men in Nazi uniforms. (Three of his four older sisters wed into the German aristocracy, and another of their husbands became an SS commander; the surviving sister was not invited to his wedding to Elizabeth.)
In 1939, Philip enrolled in Dartmouth’s Britannia Royal Naval College, where he quickly rose through the ranks to become the school’s top cadet. The following year, with Britain at war, Philip joined the Mediterranean fleet as a sublieutenant on the battleship Ramillies. He was eventually moved aboard the battleship Valiant.
A squadron of Italian warships was ambushed by the British fleet and sunk with the assistance of the Royal Air Force off the coast of Cape Matapan in Greece on March 28, 1941. Philip was there and he was in charge of a searchlight during the battle. His captain credited him with the destruction of two eight-inch-gun Italian cruisers, writing, “Thanks to his awareness and appreciation of the situation.”
In June of 1942, Philip was promoted to lieutenant, and he subsequently participated in the Allied invasions in Sicily in July of that same year before setting ship for the Pacific theatre. His uncle Louis, Lord Mountbatten, was the supreme allied commander in Southeast Asia at the time, and Philip was stationed nearby on the destroyer H.M.S. Whelp on September 2, 1945, when the Japanese formally surrendered on board the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. (In 1979, the Irish Republican Army bombed the royal residence of Lord Mountbatten, claiming his life.)
It is unknown when or where Philip first met Elizabeth, although it is known that he was asked to dine on the royal boat when Elizabeth was 13 or 14 and that he also stayed at Windsor Castle at this time when on leave from the Navy. There were rumors that he had spent the weekend with the royal family at their Scottish home, Balmoral, and that by Monday morning, Elizabeth had decided that the dashing young naval commander was “the one man I could ever love.”
Prince George of Great Britain was unsure. He took her on a royal tour of South Africa, advised her to be patient, and even wrote to Queen Mary, his mother.
George stated, “My brother and I both agree that she is too young right now to be interested in dating younger men. He continued, however: “I like Philip. He’s bright, funny, and has an excellent head for business.
While in South Africa, Elizabeth reportedly wrote Philip at least thrice weekly. Before she returned to England, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark had given up his foreign titles and become Lt. Philip Mountbatten, a British subject. It was a nice way to win over his prospective father-in-law. The couple made their engagement official on July 10, 1947.
Reports of food and coal shortages were buried by articles about the upcoming wedding. Even the royal family had to tighten their belts, so shop workers sent the princess ration coupons so she could buy new clothes. The House of Commons voted to give her 100 more vouchers to go on clothing. Lieutenant Mountbatten was promoted to the rank of duke on the night of his wedding in 1947. He has also bestowed the titles of the earl of Merioneth and baron of Greenwich.
One of the First Gents
Elizabeth gave birth to their first child, Charles Philip Arthur George, at Buckingham Palace on November 14, 1948, exactly one year later. After Charles, Princess Anne was born in 1950, Prince Andrew after Elizabeth became queen in 1960, and Prince Edward in 1964. Prince Philip leaves behind the Queen, his four children, eight grandchildren, and ten great-grandchildren.
Prince Philip, newlywed, assumed command of the frigate Magpie at Malta. However, when King George VI’s lung cancer progressed, it was stated that Philip would accept no further naval assignments. They were in Kenya on February 6, 1952, the first day of their tour of the commonwealth, when they received the news that the king had died.
In this case, Philip was the one responsible for telling his wife the bad news.
In 1952, after Philip presided over the Coronation Commission, the new queen declared that he should be the “first gentleman in the land,” giving him “a place of pre-eminence and precedence next to Her Majesty.” If not for this designation, Prince Charles, who was named Duke of Cornwall and later Prince of Wales, the title traditionally given to the heir to the throne, would have ranked above his father.
The highest military positions were given to Philip, including admiral of the fleet, field marshal, and marshal of the Royal Air Force. He served in these capacities for free.
Philip, then 35, sailed for four months and 36,000 miles around the world in 1956. Though ostensibly traveling to Melbourne, Australia for the start of the Olympic Games, stories surfaced of his carousing with buddies at London bachelor parties before his departure.
The monarch officially recognized Philip as a prince upon his return. Elizabeth officially adopted her husband’s surname into the royal family by issuing a warrant requiring all of their children, except Prince Charles, to use the surname Mountbatten-Windsor.
There were murmurings of marital strife, and angry exchanges were said to have taken place in the royal hallways. A rift between the parents was obscured by their children’s marriage problems. The divorces of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York (often known as “Fergie”) in 1996 and Princess Anne and Mark Phillips’s 1992 split made for juicy tabloid reading.
But none of those separations compared to what Charles and Diana had to endure. And Philip, the watchful defender of royal decorum (he famously lamented that Henry VIII, whom he considered a “great military strategist,” was remembered primarily for his six marriages), was hardly a bystander in the melodrama. Charles allegedly told Diana that his father “had agreed that if, after five years, his marriage was not working, he could go back to his bachelor habits,” as reported by Andrew Morton in “Diana: Her True Story,” published with Diana’s participation.
However, as their disagreements became public, Philip showed his dislike of Diana by ignoring her at the Royal Ascot horse race. James Cromwell played Philip opposite Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth in the 2006 film “The Queen,” and the character was characterized as unyielding and chilly for the royal family’s decision to stay hidden away at Balmoral in the wake of Diana’s death in 1997.
Philip, during his life, attained the status of national gadfly and occasional source of embarrassment. He was rumored to have written his speeches and his practice of speaking exactly what was on his mind gave him a fantastic copy when he blasted British industry as a haven for “the arrogant and the stick-in-the-mud” in 1961.
In 1995, he inquired of a driving teacher in Scotland, “How do you keep the natives off the liquor long enough to pass the test?”
When he met an Aboriginal leader during his 2002 trip to Australia, he said, “Do you still throw spears at each other?
And in 1998, when he was talking to a mother who had lost two kids in a fire, he said this about smoke alarms: “They’re a damn inconvenience. Every time I take a shower or a bath, the steam triggers it.
The remarks provoked derision. He told a group of students, “I know all about freedom of expression because I get kicked in the teeth often enough for speaking stuff.”
It’s safe to say that Philip was an athlete. He led the Windsor Park polo team as captain and was a key player on the squad. After turning 50, arthritic pain and liver issues forced him to reduce his playing and instead focus on carriage racing. In addition, he started doing paintings.
Philip said in a 1965 radio interview for BBC that he missed “simply being free to stroll into a film or go out to a disco or go to a pub,” but he was eager to point out the positives.
A lot of my other benefits outweigh that, he remarked.
Correction: April 9, 2021
Earlier versions of this obituary misstated the year when the Danish house from which Philip’s family descended was installed on the throne of Greece. The year was not at the end of the 19th century, but rather the middle.
Correction: April 9, 2021
The number of Philip’s great-grandchildren still alive was incorrect in a previous version of this obituary. The correct number is 10, not 8. Philip was not George III’s great-great-great-grandson, as indicated in the original edition, but rather George’s great-great-great-grandson.
Correction: April 12, 2021
The ship Philip was on when the Japanese surrendered in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, was incorrectly named in a previous version of this obituary. The ceremony was held not on the American battleship Missouri but the British destroyer H.M.S. Whelp.
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