How Prince Philip was always in Queen Elizabeth II’s corner
PRINCE Philip had a rocky start when he was smuggled as a toddler. But then this life changed forever when he married his true love — Queen Elizabeth II.
HE was born the prince of Greece, but taken into exile in an orange crate when he was just 18 months old.
His mother spent time in a mental institution, while his father ran off with his French mistress, leaving him to be raised by his British relatives.
He became a decorated navy man in World War II, and gave up his religion, his name and his Greek citizenship to marry the person who would become the most famous woman in the world, Queen Elizabeth II of England.
Nothing about his 95 years of life has been ordinary. So if anyone deserves to enjoy their retirement, it’s His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, who has decided to step back from public life.
After almost seven decades of public service — attending thousands of events by the Queen’s side (actually three paces behind, as dictated by royal protocol) and carrying out 22,191 solo engagements, giving 5493 speeches, making 637 solo trips overseas, the Queen’s husband has called time.
Buckingham Palace made the announcement on Thursday morning, confirming the Duke had decided that, from August, he will no longer carry out public engagements.
From now on, he will support the Queen in private, while other members of the royal family, such as Prince Charles and Prince William, will take a more visible role supporting Her Majesty.
“In taking this decision, the Duke has the full support of the Queen,’’ Buckingham Palace said.
The Queen is the longest-serving monarch in the world and several generations of Australians have grown up knowing the blunt-talking Duke as well as they do their Queen. To some, he is considered rude. Others love him for giving voice to what they were thinking.
The love affair between Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten and Elizabeth Windsor stretches back more than 7 decades, and started in 1939, when they first met as teenagers and became friends.
On November 20 this year, they will celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary.
Former Buckingham Palace press secretary Dickie Arbiter said the Queen had made known several times how important Prince Philip had been in her life.
“(It was) made clear she couldn’t have done the job without his support and wise counsel,’’ Mr Arbiter told News Corp.
“He’s not let her down.
“Their marriage is a true love story — there are not many of those about today.’’
Majesty Magazine managing editor Joe Little agreed, and told News Corp the Queen couldn’t have done everything she had in her extraordinary career without the support of Prince Philip.
“She couldn’t really have done it without him,’’ he said.
“They have their moments but one most definitely needs the other.’’
Mr Little said Prince Philip had not caused the Queen any real problems during their long union, despite the semi-regular upsets he causes when speaking his mind.
“As he gets older he cares a bit less about what people think,’’ Mr Little said.
“At times he is rude and has been all his life and that’s not going to change now.’’
As for Prince Philip’s famous gaffes — such as telling British students that if they stayed in China too long they’d get “slitty eyes” — Mr Little and Mr Arbiter both believe less offence had been caused than the media coverage would suggest.
“A lot of it is Philip’s way of relaxing people,’’ Mr Little said.
“When the Queen is appearing at an event a lot of people get very nervous. He will say something to lighten the mood.’’
Mr Arbiter agreed, saying most people saw the funny side in his comments.
He said the 1986 comments to the students in China had been “laughed off’’ by China, who “couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.’’
Princess Elizabeth of England and Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark first met as children but met again in 1939 when Philip, a cadet at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, was dispatched to entertain the then-13-year-old princess with a game of croquet when she accompanied her father King George VI to the college.
They exchanged letters and their friendship developed until, in 1946, Prince Philip asked King George for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
The King agreed on the proviso they kept it a secret until the princess turned 21 the next year, and on July 9, 1947, their engagement was announced to the world.
Philip gave up everything he loved — his Greek citizenship, the Greek orthodox religion and his Greek and Danish titles, along with cigarettes — ahead of the wedding, and later gave up his decorated navy career.
He also took on his British family’s name, Mountbatten, instead of using his father’s family name of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.
They married in an extravagant ceremony at Westminster Abbey and the first years of married life were blissful, with the pair stationed on Malta where the Prince continued his military career.
They produced an heir to the throne, Prince Charles, in 1948, and a spare, Princess Anne, in 1950.
Two more princes, Andrew (1960) and Edward (1964) arrived some years later.
The prince was blond, handsome and athletic — an excellent sailor, polo player and cricketer, and an accurate shot with a rifle.
But on February 9, 1952, everything changed when the ailing King died in his sleep.
Elizabeth and Philip were in Kenya on their way to Australia, representing the King.
The young Princess returned to England a Queen, and everything in Philip’s life changed.
A proud and forceful personality, Prince Philip often chafed under the restrictions placed upon him by royal life.
His early life had not been easy. Born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark on Corfu on June 10, 1921 to Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenburg, he was forced to flee to France with his family when a coup erupted.
The Queen’s grandfather, George V, had ordered a Royal navy cruiser to evacuate the family and Philip was quietly removed from Greece in an orange box fashioned into a crib when he was just 18 months old.
He was raised by his British relatives after his parent split, with his mother entering an institution for those with mental illness and his father starting a new life with his French mistress.
He fought for the Allies in the war and served with distinction but after the war ended and his wife became Queen, he became a fulltime Queen’s consort, travelling the world as she carried out her duties as head of state across the Commonwealth.
Along the way he started supporting charities and by the time he announced his retirement this week, was member, patron or president of a staggering 780 organisations.
As his profile rose, so did his reputation for speaking his mind — often offending people along the way.
Some of his more infamous gaffes include commenting that people in Papua New Guinea had survived cannibals, “British women can’t cook’’, and asking how driving instructors kept the Scottish “natives’’ off the booze long enough to pass their driving tests.
In Canada in 1969, he concluded a speech with: “”I declare this thing open, whatever it is” and commented on the 1981 British recession by saying: “”Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.’’
He also noted: “If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.’’
While he was often infuriated by his reduced role in the household, he nonetheless continued his public work, while behind the scenes pursued private interests, getting his RAF pilot’s licence, helicopter licence and commercial flying licence and become an accomplished four-in-hand carriage driver, continuing the dangerous sport of driving a team of four horses at high speeds until he was 85 years old.
He also used to sneak out of Buckingham Palace and drive himself around London in an old decommissioned taxi.
There was one controversy that dogged Prince Philip and the Queen in the early years of their relationship, and that was the perception of links to the Nazi party.
This related to family links and not through any sentiments expressed by the Prince himself: indeed, he fought for the Allies against the Nazis during the war.
Mr Little said of the so-called Nazi link, “if you can call it that, (it) was that his sisters were married to German princes, some of the princes had been members of the Nazi parties to various degrees.
“When they were married in 1947 his sisters were not able to attend the wedding, it was too soon after World War II.’’
Prince Philip had four older sisters, and three of them, Cecile, Sophie and Margarita, were married to members of the German royal family who were high-ranking members of the Nazi Party.
The royals got through this controversy as they did all later ones, with a British stiff upper lip and a refusal to talk about it.
The Duke supported the Queen through the scandals and breakdowns of the marriages of three of their four children — Prince Charles and Diana, Princess Anne and Mark Phillips and Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson — and again through the firestorm when Princess Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris in 1997.
In 2002, he was there again supporting her when both her mother, Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and her sister, Princess Margaret, passed away,
The Prince became, in 2009, the longest-serving monarch’s consort in British history and is the world’s oldest living consort.
As his first private secretary, old Navy chum Michael Parker revealed. “He told me the first day he offered me my job that his job, first, second and last, was never to let her down.’’
Originally published as How Prince Philip was always in Queen Elizabeth II’s corner