Self-deprecation, steadfastness, and – after 22,191 engagements – weariness

As he completed his 22,191st solo public engagement as a senior royal by opening a new stand at Lord’s Cricket Ground on Wednesday, the Duke of Edinburgh completed the formalities by trotting out one of his favourite lines. As he parted a pair of velvet curtains, he said: “You see now the world’s most experienced plaque unveiler.”

The position of numero uno cord puller, tree planter and plaque unveiler in the Windsor household will now come down to the younger royals. But Prince Philip’s quip speaks volumes about a man who has spent the best part of seven decades reconciling the surrender of his own ambitions to the requirements of his marriage. In so doing, he has carved out a persona torn between selfdeprecation and tetchiness; steadfastness and, in recent years, a certain weariness.

Though the announcement caused a global flurry of consternation as the entire Royal Household was summoned to a morning meeting at Buckingham Palace of uncertain purpose, the substance of what was revealed cannot have been a surprise.

On his 90th birthday in 2011, the Duke told the BBC: “I reckon I’ve done my bit so I want to enjoy myself a bit now, with less responsibility… less trying to think of something to say.”

That Britain’s longest stand- 0 The Queen and Prince Philip on their wedding day in 1947 ing royal consort continued for another six years before putting those words into action, is testimony to the prince’s dedication and obduracy – both character traits which go to the heart of the man who made a life out of supporting, at one pace behind, the sovereign and yet who is very much the patriarch in his own family.

On the eve of his wedding in 1947 to Princess Elizabeth, the prince – who had been hastily bestowed with a scattering of British titles to replace those from his Danish and Greek royal lineage which he had helpfully renounced – reputedly asked: “Am I being very brave or very foolish?”

Here after all was an officer in the Royal Navy whose wartime service had seen him mentioned in dispatches for his actions in battle as well as gaining a qualification as a boiler stoker, and who was tipped to rise to the rank of First Sea Lord.

His reason for trading in this promising career was simple. In 1946, he wrote to his future mother-in-law: “To have fallen in love completely and unreservedly makes all one’s personal troubles and even the world’s seem small and petty.”

But even after overcoming the concerns of some courtiers that the dashing naval officer – who as a baby was rescued in an orange box when the family fled after his uncle was forced from the Greek throne following a coup – was not a suitable match, the far greater battle for the Duke of defining his role was only just beginning.

In public, he has been his wife’s match, if not superior, in patronage of charities, workload and, in the spheres of nature conservation and investment in youth, setting the agenda.

Domestically, it is said that the Queen has long deferred to her husband’s desire to act as head of the family while she fulfills the role of head of state, though her insistence that their children carry the surname Windsor rather than Mountbatten is said to have caused genuine hurt and fury. He is said to have shouted: “I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his children. I’m nothing but a bloody amoeba.”

Eventually he made a peace of sorts with his role, informed by his long-standing belief that there is no virtue in dwelling on the shifting sands of royal fate. As he put it: “That’s life. You have to compromise.”