The Queen and I
An extraordinary love story
Queen Elizabeth has paid tribute to her “beloved” husband of more than seven decades, after he died on Friday night (NZ time).
“It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty the Queen Has announced the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,” the royal family announced.
The prince was an abiding presence supporter of his wife throughout her reign.
Philip and then-Princess Elizabeth genuinely fell for one another over a courtship that spanned a number of years and a world war. He was a penniless European whose royal lineage included a few too many Germans for many in establishment Britain, and she was the most eligible woman in the world.
The Queen’s cousin, Margaret Rhodes later said: “She never looked at anyone else.”
When war broke out in 1939, Philip was a midshipman in the Navy and went to sea. However, the duo stayed in contact, with teenage Elizabeth regularly putting pen to paper.
On shore leave, Philip would return to the UK where, without a home of his own, he would rely on the generosity of friends and family members to put him up. On that list was the Windsor family.
When Philip came to stay at Windsor Castle for Christmas in 1943, the first stirrings of romance were detected.
After the war, Philip returned to London in 1946 and headed north to the Windsors’ beloved Scottish estate, Balmoral — and proposed. Elizabeth, without her parents’ approval, accepted immediately.
In 1947, having never been given a surname, as was standard for members of royal families, Philip renounced his Greek and Danish titles and adopted the anglicised version of his mother’s name, Battenberg, thus becoming, Philip Mountbatten.
There were indications, even then, that life for Philip as the future Queen’s consort would be complicated: of the 2500 wedding invitations sent, he was given only two.
Lord Mountbatten’s daughter Patricia later said that just before the wedding: “I saw him just after breakfast that morning. We were alone together — we were cousins and we knew each other very well — and I said something about what an exciting day it was and, suddenly, he said to me, ‘Am I being very brave or very foolish?”’
The couple became parents to son Prince Charles in 1948 followed by Princess Anne in 1950. However, tragedy and duty would intervene. On February, 6, 1952 while they were on a royal trip to Kenya, the King died suddenly, transforming 25-year-old Elizabeth into the monarch. It was Philip who broke the devastating news to his wife.
Only six years after their wedding there, the Princess and the Duke returned to Westminster Abbey in 1953 for her coronation during which Philip kissed her and promised to be her “liegeman of life and limb”.
Philip’s place in the hierarchy was much less defined, leaving him — a proud, macho man — to be forced to walk in his wife’s wake. One courtier has said that in the early days, the Duke was “constantly being squashed” by the establishment.
Still, Philip offered the Queen, who found herself insecure when greeted by throngs of cheering subjects, the perfect ballast. She saw royal life as one bound by duty, but he often approached it with bonhomie. He once told his wife, during a tour in Australia when she was faced with the prospect of shaking thousands of hands, “Cheer up, sausage. It is not so bad as all that.”
In the next two decades Elizabeth and Philip would contend with ongoing family dramas: Charles’ disastrous marriage to Diana; the arrival of Sarah Ferguson, and then both couples’ splits.
The greatest test would be in 1997 when Diana was killed. Later, as a new generation of Windsors assumed the spotlight, the Queen and Prince Philip showed no sign of letting age weary them. In 2017, at 96, the Duke retired, a day after he drolly dubbed himself “the world’s most experienced plaque-unveiler”. They were the longest married royal couple in history and their more than seven decade union was the cornerstone of the monarchy.
● Daniela Elser is a royal expert and writer with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.