Philip, the dutiful husband but not so nurturing father
The Duke of Edinburgh will be remembered for his highly successful and enduring marriage rather that his tricky relationship with Charles, writes David McKittrick
Prince Philip’s career will be judged on the three sets of relationships which dominated his life – with the monarchy as a whole, with Charles, his son and the heir to the throne, and above all, his relationship with the Queen.
Looking back, the judgement will probably be that he had a highly successful and enduring marriage characterised by more than seven decades of complete loyalty to the Queen in a reign studded with crises.
He was also a pillar of the monarchy as an institution, even if his characteristic “gaffes” frequently got him into scrapes. Compared to the succession of various royal catastrophes, these were essentially trivial episodes which sparked no major emergencies and inflicted no lasting damage. Many will consider, in fact, that Philip, who began his royal role as a high-spirited naval officer, exercised an unusual degree of discipline in his cramped and constricted position as Queen’s consort.
To Philip his marriage brought hugely enhanced status with both job and financial security after an early life without much money. But part of the deal was the strict understanding that he would live a life avoiding controversy.
Many of his gaffes may have been a way of giving vent to the frustration at the required repression of his emotions. In one outburst he is said to have exclaimed, “I’m just a bloody amoeba – that’s all.”
On another occasion he grumbled that his opinions on art were disregarded. “The art world thinks of me as an uncultured polo-playing clot,” he complained. “The people concerned with our collections view me with horror and suspicion.”
But although he held strong views on many subjects, such venting was a rarity during his decades in Buckingham Palace. After an initial period in which reports of infidelities were rumoured, he knuckled down to a self-discipline which put him almost in the same league as his legendarily dutiful wife.
He did what the Queen, and the monarchy as an institution, required of him, keeping up appearances and lending generally silent support. The impression is that he knew his place.
But it seemed his counsel did not count for much, and that his wife was very much the senior partner in almost every aspect of their lives. There was little sign that he played any important part in dealing with the crises that afflicted the monarchy in modern times. Although he was obviously a high-level courtier he was not a vital element in royal decision-making processes.
“I’ve no idea what goes on,” he once confided. When asked for an example of his activities he replied: “I tried to find useful things to do. I did my best. I introduced a footman training programme.”
Yet his wife must have been grateful that he did not contribute to her many familial problems as the monarchy was buffeted by more than one horrible year.
But if their marriage was long-lasting and not in any sense tempestuous, the Queen and the prince had many problems with their son Charles, neither of them managing to persuade him to follow the Windsor tradition of public reticence. Philip in particular was never on the same wavelength as his son, with widely differing views on the role of the monarchy and the world in general. As one of Charles’s biographers put it, “Charles embraced spiritual values so alien to the less reflective Philip.”
The Duke quietly mocked his son’s reservations about modern technology. Helicopters should be banned, he once wrote, so that “we shall be able to hold our heads high as we march steadily back towards the caves our ancestors so foolishly vacated such a long time ago.”
In complete contrast to his father, Charles advertised his frustrations about not having “a proper job”. He abandoned the family tact, broadcasting personal opinions in a way which must have appalled his mother and father.
Philip must have complained to Charles about his outspokenness on many occasions, but with no obvious effect. From Charles’s point of view, his often distant father and mother had since his childhood been “unable or unwilling” to show him affection.
One well-informed biographer summed up Charles’s view of Philip as “a bullying father whom he blamed for pushing him into his luckless marriage and whose wrathful disapproval could still, even as he approached 50, reduce him to tears.”
A public indication of their relationship came in 2001 with a report that Philip had referred to Charles as “precious, extravagant and lacking in the dedication and discipline he will need if he is to make a good king.”
Although Philip denied using these words, many assumed they accurately reflected his view that his son was something of a gadfly. During the difficulties of Charles’s marriage to Diana, Philip is said to have made constructive efforts to help out, but to no avail. The conclusion will probably be that Philip had a much more successful record as a husband than as a father.