A royal love story, spanning nearly 74 years
Their courtship initially ruffled feathers, but Philip rose to the role of supporting the queen.
From their courtship to their royal wedding and their almost 74-year marriage, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s love story spanned decades and garnered public interest.
British historians and commentators often say Philip was one of the keys to the queen’s enduring success as a monarch. She famously described him as her “strength and stay” at the couple’s golden wedding anniversary in 1997.
“He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments, but he has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years,” she said in her speech.
The couple’s foundation had humble beginnings as a young budding romance when they met when the queen was 13. Philip’s uncle, the ambitious Lord Louis “Dickie” Mountbatten, was close to the royal family and sought to introduce his handsome, dashing nephew to Princess Elizabeth, the future queen. Elizabeth never looked at another man, biographers of both say.
After eight years of courting Elizabeth and Royal Navy Lt. Philip Mountbatten got engaged in July 1947. Four months later they wed in a royal ceremony at Westminster Abbey on Nov. 20, 1947, a day they would go on to celebrate for more than 70 years.
Though there was an initial flurry of disapproval that Elizabeth was marrying a foreigner, Philip’s athletic skills, good looks and straight talk lent a distinct glamour to the royal family. Elizabeth beamed in his presence, and they had a son and daughter while she was still free of the obligations of serving as monarch. They shared four children, eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren with one more on the way. Their children are Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales; Prince Andrew, the Duke of York; Princess Anne and Prince Edward Earl of Wessex. Andrew and Edward were born after Elizabeth took the throne.
Philip became Elizabeth’s stalwart companion, though he gave up many things, including part of his identity and religion, to get married. Philip, born on the Greek island of Corfu, renounced his Greek citizenship and church and became British, Anglican and a royal duke.
It wasn’t until 1952 that his wife became the queen of a nation, almost five years after they married. The queen’s father, King George VI, died at 56. Elizabeth was jolted to the throne, becoming the monarch and head of state at 27. Phillip left behind his beloved naval career and took on the job of supporting her, raising their family, managing her palaces and always walking a few paces behind her in public.
Philip Eade, one of the prince’s biographers, wrote in The Telegraph that “a great deal of the credit for her achievement as probably the finest constitutional monarch in British history should go to her husband, Britain’s longestserving royal consort.”
“Within the house, and whatever we did, it was together,” Philip told biographer Basil Boothroyd of the years before Elizabeth became queen. “People used to come to me and ask me what to do. In 1952, the whole thing changed, very, very considerably.”
To mark each year of the couple’s union, Buckingham Palace has celebrated with the public by sharing snapshots of their romance or releasing stamps. “I don’t know that anyone had invented the term ‘platinum’ for a 70th wedding anniversary when I was born. You weren’t expected to be around that long,” the queen said in her 2017 Christmas speech.