Always second fiddle: How The Crown made us feel for Philip the man

In the very first scene of The Crown, Prince Philip (Matt Smith) is put in his place – which is, to be clear, second place.

“His Royal Highness Prince Philip of Greece and of Denmark renounces his Greek nationality and all foreign titles,” a master of ceremonies intones. “From henceforth he will be known as Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten.”

Always in the background: Prince Philip (Matt Smith) reluctantly learns he must always play second fiddle to Queen Elizabeth (Claire Foy) in The Crown.Credit: Netflix

Never mind that just moments later he is knighted by King George VI (Jared Harris) and granted the title Duke of Edinburgh in preparation for his wedding to Princess Elizabeth (Clare Foy) the next day. The point is made: becoming husband to the future Queen means renouncing his past self.

Throughout its four seasons (so far), that has been one of the recurring themes of The Crown. Being part of “the firm”, as Philip called it, was indeed a job – and at times a chore. And it was a role he performed variously with dash, with reluctance, with childish anger and with grace and humour.

The Crown is fiction, of course, but it is convincing fiction. This all adds up to a complex and compelling portrait of a man we might otherwise have seen in simpler terms: as an old-fashioned boor.

The burnishing of Philip’s image has been helped immeasurably by the fact he has been played by two superb actors who have imbued the character with a range of complex emotions and motivations, while managing to look dashing in tailored suits.

As the younger Philip, Matt Smith conveyed a sense of restless athleticism, prowling sexuality and stunted ambition. As the middle-aged Philip, Tobias Menzies brought a more measured forbearance, and a sense of dignified resignation to the role a royal marriage had assigned him. With Jonathan Pryce to step into the role next, the fate of Philip’s image appears to be in good hands.

"I believe Philip is very emotional", says Tobias Menzies of his character in The Crown.Credit: Netflix

Before The Crown, Philip was arguably best known for two things: an award program and a tendency to stick his foot in his mouth.

The Duke of Edinburgh scheme is open to young people across the Commonwealth, regardless of gender, class, religion or sexuality. But the actual Duke of Edinburgh managed to offend people from across the Commonwealth on pretty much all of those same grounds. From his reported comments, many people concluded he was a curmudgeon, a racist, a chauvinist. A right royal bigot, in fact.

The picture of him that emerged from The Crown, however, was far more sympathetic. He may have been irascible, a philanderer, a party animal, but these were traits born of understandable frustration. In the series he was a man of libido and action – a former naval officer and pilot – who found himself distanced from his wife and strait-jacketed by the endless official duties and glad-handing that defined his existence.

He may have lacked what we would now call emotional intelligence, but his background – shunted around from an early age from relative to relative, country to country, boarding school to boarding school, and ultimately estranged from his family – went a long way to explaining that. And while he might have lacked empathy, he really did try as a parent (even if the show emphasised that Charles got the short straw and Anne was clearly his favourite).

Nor was he as intellectually incurious as we might have been led to believe. The middle-aged Philip (Tobias Menzies) had put away childish things, but still craved adventure. Only now he sought it in the stars, or rather in the experiences of NASA’s astronauts (who turned out to be a bunch of robotic boys sadly lacking in wonder) or in a religious tolerance forged out of a crisis of faith.

Above all, The Crown showed us a Philip who grew into his role as second fiddle, finally coming to understand and to accept that his guiding light was not ambition but duty, the bedrock of his relationship to Elizabeth not love or libido but loyalty.

“Everyone in this system is a lost, lonely, irrelevant outsider, apart from the one person, the only person, that matters,” he snarlingly tells Diana (Emma Corrin) at the end of season four as she struggles to grasp the same hard-won lesson.

How much of this was representative of the real Philip we will probably never know. But it feels real, because it feels so relatable.

Before The Crown, we only knew Philip the functionary. Now we are left with a sense, accurate or not, of Philip the man.

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