With Prince Philip’s death, Vanuatu’s island cult is denied a visit from its god

In Vanuatu, someone will have to break the news that the second coming of ‘Man Belong Mrs Queen’ won’t happen.

Locals on the island of Tanna, in Vanuatu, have been worshipping Prince Philip since he and Queen visited Vanuatu in 1974. The locals honestly believe that Philip is the island's ancestral spirit, in human form and is destined to return to Vanuatu one day.

Ten thousand miles from Britain, someone will have to break the news to the village of Younanen that the second coming is not going to happen.

There, in the tiny community on the South Pacific island of Tanna, part of Vanuatu, villagers have for decades revered the Duke of Edinburgh as the son of a local mountain god who would one day return.

People would pray to the duke daily, asking for his blessing on the banana and yam crops. “If he comes one day, the people will not be poor, there will be no sickness, no debt and the garden will grow very well,” Jack Malia, the village chief, said in 2017.

Exactly how the Prince Philip Movement started is shrouded in obscurity.

According to some experts he became a deity in the 1960s when Vanuatu was an Anglo-French colony known as the New Hebrides and villagers would gaze upon portraits of the Queen and Philip in government offices.

Sikor Natuan, the son of the local chief, holds two official portraits of Britain's Prince Philip in front of the chief's hut.

Another version says the cult has its roots in a 1974 visit to the New Hebrides by the Queen and Philip - known there as Man Belong Mrs Queen or, as it is spelled in Bislama, the local tongue, Man Blong Missis Kwin. A warrior from Tanna named Chief Jack Naiva, who died in 2009, travelled 150 miles by sea to the New Hebridean capital, Port Vila, to greet the arrival of the royal yacht Britannia.

He became convinced that Philip was the incarnation of the son of a volcano spirit who travelled abroad to marry a powerful woman. And one day he would return.

Philip was told of the cult by John Champion, the British resident commissioner, who suggested he send them a portrait of himself. In turn, the villagers sent him a traditional pig-killing club, called a nal-nal.

Much to their delight, in the 1980s he sent back a picture of himself at Buckingham Palace, holding the club.

Over the years the villagers kept photos and newspaper clippings relating to the duke in a special shrine.

Chief Jack Naiva with some of his tribe members and his wife holding pictures of their 'god' Prince Philip.

A few years ago an anthropology graduate called Matthew Baylis travelled to Tanna to try to get to the bottom of the Philip cult. He found few answers but had an entertaining time, including an evening during which they told tall tales of Philip’s exploits: how he was variously a captain of a warship, a cowboy and a great sorcerer who seduced a white queen.

World events were linked to the deeds of their mountain god. Philip ensured that a black man became the leader of the US, they said, and used his magic to help him to find Osama bin Laden.

And whatever the outside world thought of their worship of Prince Philip, at least the villagers knew their belief had a sounder basis than the Christianity that was foisted on them by missionaries.

“They’ve been waiting 2,000 years for a sign from Jesus,” Jack Naiva used to say. “But our Philip sends us photographs! And one day he will come.”

He never did. The nearest they came was in 2010 when a gap year student called Marc Rayner stood in for Philip on the day of his 89th birthday. “The prince was here in spirit,” said Siko Nathuan, the island’s chief. “He is shaking the ground. I am so happy.”

When Philip announced his retirement in 2017 the villagers were devastated. Jack Malia showed a Reuters correspondent several photographs they had of the duke, including the one with the club, and said: “We still believe he will come but if he doesn’t, the pictures I am holding . . . it means nothing.”

The Times