An ‘amoeba’, a god, and an expert at unveiling plaques
The Duke of Edinburgh had been a high-profile member of the British royal family since 1947.
He was born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark on June 10, 1921, on the Greek island of Corfu, the son of Princess Alice of Battenburg and Prince Andrew of Greece.
After his family were exiled from Greece, Prince Philip grew up in France and Germany. He was later sent to live in Britain with his maternal grandmother, Victoria Mountbatten, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
In 1939, aged 18, he joined the Royal Navy. He met his future wife, Elizabeth – his third cousin – that same year when the royal family toured his naval college.
She was 13 at the time and reportedly fell in love with him almost immediately.
The pair began writing letters to each other – the beginning of a long courtship that continued as Prince Philip served in the navy during World War II, including on battleships in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
In 1946, Prince Philip asked for Elizabeth’s hand in marriage, and they wed the following year. She was 21, he was 26.
His three sisters, all of whom had married German princes, were barred from attending the wedding at Westminster Abbey, because of post-World War II tensions.
Prince Philip abandoned his Greek and Danish royal titles and adopted his grandmother’s surname, Mountbatten. Before the wedding, he was given the title Duke of Edinburgh.
When Elizabeth took the throne in 1952, Prince Philip gave up his naval career to accompany her on royal duties.
Accompanying her on tours across the globe, he visited New Zealand 11 times between 1953 and 2002.
He once described himself as ‘‘the world’s most experienced plaque-unveiler’’ – and he was not wrong. He attended 22,000 solo public engagements and delivered more than 5000 speeches.
Prince Philip and the Queen had four children: Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. Their oldest grandchild, Prince William, is second in line to the throne, after Prince Charles.
In total, they have eight grandchildren and eight greatgrandchildren, the youngest being Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s son Archie Mountbatten-Windsor.
Prince Philip complained about his children being given the surname Windsor (though it was later changed to MountbattenWindsor), saying: ‘‘I am nothing but a bloody amoeba. I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children.’’
That episode, and several other tense moments during the royal marriage, were the focus of the hit television show The Crown , in which the prince was portrayed as an impolite lout, a womaniser, a whiner and a sore sport.
Throughout his lifetime, the Duke of Edinburgh repeatedly courted controversy with outlandish comments and offensive remarks about several countries and their cultures, world leaders, women and deaf children.
Since at least the 1960s, he was revered as a god by a religious sect on the Vanuatu island of Tanna, where villagers believed he embodied a legend about the son of a mountain spirit who crossed the world to marry a powerful woman.
When he learned of the socalled Prince Philip Movement, he sent the group portraits, and several members travelled to Britain to meet him.
In 2017, the prince, then aged 95, announced he would be stepping down from his royal duties, after years of suffering from heart disease and other ailments.
In April 2018, he had hip replacement surgery and was subsequently largely absent from public life, including missing the christening of his great-grandson, Prince Louis, the third child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. But he did attend the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in Windsor in May of that year.
In January 2019, the 97-year-old was driving a Range Rover and was turning out of an intersection when he collided with a Kia carrying three people, causing minor injuries to two of them. He gave up driving after the accident.