The last royal farewell
End of an era as the Queen’s consort is laid to rest
Britain bid a last farewell yesterday to the man who had thieved the heart of the nation’s soon- to- be crowned jewel 73 years ago, as his mortal remains were laid to rest in the vault beneath the quire at St. George’s Chapel set in the royal grounds of Windsor Castle.
Prince Phillip’s death last Friday, at the age of 99, marked the end of an era for Britain’s monarchy; and a nationwide 41 gun salute sounded in tribute on Saturday from the Tower of London, from Edinburg, Cardiff and Belfast, and from Royal Navy warships at sea to signal his demise.
Certainly, for the queen it marks the end of a long marital partnership, a unique union that endured the vicissitudes of life and withstood the exacting test of time: a period of undimmed grief, a time of the deepest sorrow when she finds in the winter of life, she is left bereft of the man she loved and wed in her blossoming spring; and who, throughout the changing hues of the seasons that see the bud, the bloom, the fall turn dust, had remained her anchor, her imposing tower of strength, her rock of Gibraltar in the best of times and the worst of times.
And as the pall thickens and wraps around the castle walls in mournful gloom, the widowed queen, no doubt, dwells on the memories that rise from the newly closed crypt that entombs the love of her life.
The year is 1939. She is 13 and is with her parents, King George VI and mother Queen Elizabeth and kid sister Margaret. The royal family is visiting the Dartmouth naval college where Phillip, a lad of 18, is studying. He is an exile from Greece. As the college’s best cadet, he is given the task of escorting the young princesses.
And something else happens to create a lasting impression in Elizabeth’s mind.
Cadets in rowing boats escort the royal yacht, the Victoria and Albert, when it sails from Dartmouth. But Philip continues rowing in its wake long after the others had dropped out, turning round only when ordered to by the increasingly exasperated King, who refers to him as "a bloody fool".
Meeting him for the first time, she had been reserved, she had been shy but is now smitten by his zest for life and adventure. Infatuation starts to brew. And when World War II breaks out and Phillip is serving aboard ship, and fighting for king and country, the king’s daughter and he start exchanging letters.
"Philip enjoys driving and does it fast!" she writes in a letter to author Betty Shew that was auctioned off in 2016. "He has his own tiny M.G. which he is very proud of. He has taken me about in it, once up to London, which was great fun." After the courtship of over a year, the couple eventually marry in 1947 on 24th November, an occasion which, despite the surrounding austerity following a triumphant but devastating war, calls for national celebrations. Elizabeth is only 21. Phillip 26.
As the fire crackles in the Windsor hearth warming her fond reminisces, the queen recalls the countless times she had often wondered on the mysterious part destiny had played in landing this young handsome, homeless Greek on Britain’s shores and eventually leading the exiled prince find home and bed in her royal chambers. What quirk of fate altered the ordained plans of sires and kings to bring this roving refugee, thousand six hundred miles away from home, to her sceptred bedstead to seed the womb of royal kings?
Now the chequered, colorful life of Phillip, the Prince of Greece and Denmark comes vividly to life. He is born on a dining table in a villa on the Greek island of Corfu on 10 June 1921. He is the youngest child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg.
Though he is in line to the succession of the thrones of Greece and Demark, a cruel twist of fate robs him of the chance to be monarch in his own right twice over, when the fierce war raging between Greece and Turkey ends in a disastrous defeat for Greece. His father is court martialled and sent to exile.
Eighteen month old infant Phillip is bundled and asleep in a converted orange crate making do as a makeshift bassinet while the family is forced to take sudden flight across the Adriatic Sea on a British warship to Italy. Andrew is helped by first cousin England’s King George V.
France is the final port of call and eventually the family settles down on the outskirts of Paris.
Philip is sent to a small day school nearby, but in 1930 his world is once again torn apart. His beloved mother, Alice suffers a serious mental breakdown.
In the years immediately after the family's flight from Greece, her behaviour had grown disturbingly strange. One doctor who saw her, diagnosed her as a paranoid schizophrenic who believed that she was the only woman on Earth, and married to Christ. Gradually Alice’s mother comes to terms with her daughter’s condition and bows to the advice of psychiatrists who decree she should be committed to a mental asylum.
One day, when the children are away from home, Alice is forcibly sedated and bundled into a car and driven off to a clinic near Lake Constance. The day – May 2, 1930 marks the end of Phillip’s family
Eighteen month old infant Phillip is bundled and asleep in a converted orange crate making do as a makeshift bassinet while the family is forced to take sudden flight across the Adriatic Sea on a British warship to Italy. Andrew is helped by first cousin England’s King George V.
life. But when they return home to find their mother gone, neither he nor his sisters have any inkling it will be the last day they will spend under one roof together as siblings. He is only 8 years old.
Phillip’s father is a changed man, for the worse. He sees Phillip on and off when he comes home for the school holidays or else Phillip is rather left to the care of his mother’s family in England. Within 18 months of the family break- up, Philip's sisters are all married to German princelings, so the absence of both parents are far less felt by the sisters than it is to Phillip, the only son in the family not even a teenager yet.
Now in London, he lives with his mother’s mother at Kensington Place before moving in with his mother’s elder brother George who, for the next 8 years, acts as his guardian at school functions. From 1932 to early 1937, he neither sees his mother not does he hear from her even though she had recovered from her mental breakdown and would soon become a nun on the island of Tinos.
Years later, it didn’t come easy for him to understand this period of his life. With his nature reluctant to overstate the effect of these traumatic growing up years, all he could say to a biographer was: ’I had to get on with it. You do. One does.’’
Prince Phillip was a man of no regrets, who lived life to the brim and drank its nectar to the dregs. He called a spade a spade and cared not a tuppence if anyone got offended by it, which may explain away many of his social gaffes before world leaders.
Seventy three years after stealing Elizabeth’s heart, he stayed the marital course to the end, and had, till death made him depart, cherished the heart he thieved.
Though he had no regrets during his life, one he may have harboured shortly after his death at 99, may have been kicking the bucket two months before reaching 100 and missing by a beat or two, the privilege of receiving the traditional congratulatory letter, with selfie portrait and all, the Queen sends to all her subjects who become centenarians.