‘My strength and stay all these years’
The Duke of Edinburgh, the stalwart husband of Queen Elizabeth II, was a steady presence behind her at thousands of public events since 1952.
Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, the occasionally irascible but always stalwart husband of Queen Elizabeth II and Britain’s oldest and longest-serving royal spouse in 10 centuries, died Friday. He was 99. • “It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen announces the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,” the statement read. “His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle.”
His death is a personal loss to the monarch and to his family, and a substantial one: Most British historians and commentators believe Philip was one of the keys to the queen’s enduring (69 years and counting) success as a monarch. The queen herself famously described him as her “strength and stay.”
“Irreplaceable,” as one of his admirers summed up in a recent documentary, “The Real Prince Philip.”
Philip, who turned 99 in June 2020, had been in isolation with the queen at Windsor Castle, at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, or at Wood Farm at Sandringham since March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yet he was photographed in public twice in July 2020: He appeared with the queen at the private wedding of their granddaughter, Princess Beatrice, on July 17 on the Windsor Castle estate, and he appeared on the castle Quadrangle for a ceremonial hand-over of his role as Colonel in Chief of The Rifles mil
itary regiment.
Both he and the queen received their COVID-19 vaccines in January.
Married to the queen for more than 70 years, Philip was a steady presence behind her at thousands of public events, becoming as familiar to the British people as the queen if not always as beloved.
He gave an estimated 5,000 speeches, according to Buckingham Palace, and carried out about 32,000 solo engagements between 1952 and 2017. But he also became famous, and infamous, for making funny, sharp, insensitive, or even racially offensive remarks in public.
The royal household had been planning celebrations to mark Philip’s 100th birthday on June 10, assuming coronavirus lockdown restrictions allowed it.
Philip’s death comes as the royal family is in the midst of another damaging crisis, after his grandson, Prince Harry, and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, spoke to Oprah Winfrey for an interview aired on CBS on March 7. The couple shocked the world when they said they gave up their royal roles in 2020 and fled to America because of racism in the family and the media, and because the palace refused to help Meghan, a biracial American, deal with suicidal thoughts when she became depressed by the pressure.
Winfrey later clarified that Harry said that neither the queen nor Philip were the close relative they described as expressing concerns when she was pregnant about how dark her baby’s skin color would be. But they have declined to say who it was.
The queen issued a statement two days later saying the family would deal with the uproar privately within the family, and that “some recollections may vary” about who said what to whom.
The signs of an approaching end already were visible for Philip.
The prince was admitted to London’s King Edward VII Hospital on Feb. 16 after feeling unwell. Buckingham Palace said it was a precautionary measure and noted he was expected to remain there for a few days of observation, rest and treatment of an infection. He was transferred to another hospital, St Bartholomew’s, for a successful heart procedure, and then returned to King Edward VII’s hospital. He was released and returned to Windsor Castle on March 16. It was the longest hospitalization of his life.
The last time he was hospitalized, in December 2019, it was for “observation and treatment” as a “precautionary measure” to treat a pre-existing condition.
On Jan. 17, 2019, he emerged unscathed from a car wreck near the royal Sandringham estate. He decided to give up his license after the crash, in which two women in the other car were injured, but not seriously.
Retired from public life, he attended the wedding of his grandson Harry to the former actress Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle in May 2018, about a month after he was hospitalized for successful hip replacement surgery. He also was seen at the wedding of granddaughter Princess Eugenie in October 2018.
Philip departs the royal stage at a time when his family is in another paroxysm over the role of one of its most beloved members, Harry, younger son of Princess Diana, who died in 1997.
Harry, 36, and Meghan, 39, announced in January 2020 that they were giving up their royal roles and moving with their baby son Archie to North America in search of more freedom, privacy and financial independence.
In November 1997, when the queen and Philip celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, the queen gave a speech in which she described the debt she and the country owe Philip.
“He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments but he has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I, and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know,” she said.
By the time of his 90th birthday, Philip still was doing public events, including on his actual birthday, but he told the country that he would cut back. He acknowledged in a television interview that he was nearing his “sell-by date.”
“I reckon I’ve done my bit. I want to enjoy myself for a bit now. With less responsibility, less rushing about, less preparation, less trying to think of something to say,” he said. “Yes, I’m just sort of winding down.”