A modernising royalist
Considering the circumstances the world finds itself in now, only 30 members of the British royal family will attend the service for Prince Philip on Saturday. If not for Covid-protocol restrictions, half of Britain would have liked to turn up at the royal consort’s funeral when he will be wheeled in a Land Rover hearse. So beloved a royal was he for his nation that an outpouring of grief over his passing, when just short of a century, is understandable. His ceremonial presence was a feature of over 22,000 public events besides any number of occasions on which he willingly walked two steps behind his wife, the long reigning monarch Queen Elizabeth II. He symbolised selfless public service while also making 5,496 speeches and undertaking 637 solo trips abroad.
To paraphrase his enormous contribution to a largely dysfunctional family that was beset with more than a fair share of scandals, induced mostly by extramarital love and marriage trouble, he modernised the British royal family while shepherding it into the modern age. And then, in the face of the latest public outrage over charges of racism made by one of their own — Prince Harry and his wife Meghan in an interview with Oprah Winfrey — the prince was busy trying to help keep together the anachronism that is royalty. A royal consort who knelt and swore to be his wife’s “liege man of life and limb” at her coronation in 1952, was more than true to his word in holding steadfast to his own marriage for a good 73 years.
The time of his passing lends itself easily to hagiographical references.The unsentimental would, however, also see him as the gadfly that he was who often shocked the world as the prince of gaffes with his often slanderous, extempore remarks. To Indians he seemed racist for the extent to which he could be dismissive of them — “Some Indian must have put it there” was his snooty reference to a shoddily patched-up electrical connection. Just as Britain needed in war time a Winston Churchill, with all his faults, its royalty sorely needed Prince Philip to deal with peace time turbulence.