Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, later Philip Mountbatten; 10 June 1921 – 9 April 2021) was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. As such, he served as the consort of the British monarch from Elizabeth's accession as queen on 6 February 1952 until his death in 2021, making him the longest-serving royal consort in history.

Philip was born in Greece, into the Greek and Danish royal families; his family was exiled from the country when he was eighteen months old. After being educated in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, he joined the Royal Navy in 1939, when he was 18 years old. In July 1939, he began corresponding with the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth, the elder daughter and heir presumptive of King George VI. Philip had first met her in 1934. During the Second World War, he served with distinction in the British Mediterranean and Pacific fleets.

In the summer of 1946, the King granted Philip permission to marry Elizabeth. Before the official announcement of their engagement in July 1947, Philip relinquished his Greek and Danish royal titles and styles, became a naturalised British subject, and adopted his maternal grandparents' surname Mountbatten. He married Elizabeth on 20 November 1947. The day prior to their wedding, the King granted Philip the style '' His Royal Highness''. On the day of their wedding, he was additionally created Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich. Philip left active military service when Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1952, having reached the rank of commander. In 1957, he was created a British prince. Philip had four children with Elizabeth: Charles, Anne, Andrew, and Edward. In 1960, the Queen issued a British Order in Council, which declared that her and Philip's descendants who do not bear royal titles or styles may use the surname Mountbatten-Windsor, which has since also been used by titled members.

A sports enthusiast, Philip helped develop the equestrian event of carriage driving. He was a patron, president, or member of over 780 organisations, including the World Wide Fund for Nature, and served as chairman of The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, a youth awards program for people aged 14 to 24. Philip is the longest-lived male member of the British royal family. He retired from his royal duties on 2 August 2017, aged 96, having completed 22,219 solo engagements and 5,493 speeches from 1952. Philip died in April 2021 at Windsor Castle, at the age of 99.

Early life and education

Prince Philip ( el, Φίλιππος, translit=Fílippos) of Greece and Denmark was born on the dining room table in Mon Repos, a villa on the Greek island of Corfu, on 10 June 1921. He was the only son and fifth and final child of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. A member of the House of Glücksburg, the ruling house of Denmark, he was a prince of both Greece and Denmark by virtue of his patrilineal descent from King George I of Greece and King Christian IX of Denmark; he was from birth in the line of succession to both thrones. Philip's four elder sisters were Margarita, Theodora, Cecilie, and Sophie. He was baptised in the Greek Orthodox rite at St. George's Church in the Old Fortress in Corfu. His godparents were his grandmother Queen Olga of Greece, his cousin Crown Prince George of Greece, his uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten, and the mayor of Corfu, Alexandros Kokotos.

Shortly after Philip's birth, his maternal grandfather Prince Louis of Battenberg, then known as Louis Mountbatten, Marquess of Milford Haven, died in London. Louis was a naturalised British subject who, after a career in the Royal Navy, had renounced his German titles and adopted the surname Mountbatten – an Anglicised version of Battenberg – during the First World War, owing to anti-German sentiment in the United Kingdom. After visiting London for his grandfather's memorial service, Philip and his mother returned to Greece, where Prince Andrew had remained to command a Greek Army division embroiled in the Greco-Turkish War.

Greece suffered great losses in the war, and the Turks made large gains. Philip's uncle and high commander of the Greek expeditionary force, King Constantine I, was blamed for the defeat and was forced to abdicate on 27 September 1922. The new military government arrested Prince Andrew, along with others. The commanding officer of the army, General Georgios Hatzianestis, and five senior politicians were arrested, tried, and executed in the Trial of the Six. Prince Andrew's life was also believed to be in danger, and Princess Alice was under surveillance. Finally, in December, a revolutionary court banished Prince Andrew from Greece for life. The British naval vessel evacuated Andrew's family, with Philip carried to safety in a fruit box.

Philip's family went to France, where they settled in the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud in a house lent to them by his wealthy aunt, Princess George of Greece and Denmark. During his time there, Philip was first educated at The Elms, an American school in Paris run by Donald MacJannet, who described Philip as a "know it all smarty person, but always remarkably polite". In 1930, Philip was sent to the United Kingdom, living with his maternal grandmother, Victoria Mountbatten, Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven, at Kensington Palace and his uncle, George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, at Lynden Manor in Bray, Berkshire. He was then enrolled at Cheam School. Over the next three years, his four sisters married German princes and moved to Germany, his mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and placed in an asylum, and his father took up residence in Monte Carlo. Philip had little contact with his mother for the remainder of his childhood.

In 1933, he was sent to Schule Schloss Salem in Germany, which had the "advantage of saving school fees", because it was owned by the family of his brother-in-law, Berthold, Margrave of Baden. With the rise of Nazism in Germany, Salem's Jewish founder, Kurt Hahn, fled persecution and founded Gordonstoun School in Scotland, to which Philip moved after two terms at Salem. In 1937, his sister Cecilie, her husband Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse, her two young sons Ludwig and Alexander, her newborn infant, and her mother-in-law, Princess Eleonore of Solms-Hohensolms-Lich, were killed in an air crash at Ostend; Philip, then 16 years old, attended the funeral in Darmstadt. Both Cecilie and her husband were members of the Nazi Party. The following year, his uncle and guardian Lord Milford Haven died of bone marrow cancer. Milford Haven's younger brother Lord Louis took parental responsibility for Philip for the remainder of his youth.

Because Philip left Greece as an infant, he did not speak Greek. In 1992, he said that he "could understand a certain amount". Philip stated that he thought of himself as Danish, and his family spoke English, French, and German. Philip was raised as a Greek Orthodox Christian. As a teenager, he was involved with German Protestantism. Known for his charm in his youth, Philip was linked to a number of women, including Osla Benning.

Naval and wartime service

After leaving Gordonstoun in early 1939, Philip completed a term as a cadet at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, then repatriated to Greece, living with his mother in Athens for a month in mid-1939. At the behest of the Greek king, George II (his first cousin), he returned to Britain in September to resume training for the Royal Navy. He graduated from Dartmouth the next year as the best cadet in his course. During the Second World War, he continued to serve in the British forces, while two of his brothers-in-law, Prince Christoph of Hesse and Berthold, Margrave of Baden, fought on the opposing German side. Philip was appointed as a midshipman in January 1940. He spent four months on the battleship , protecting convoys of the Australian Expeditionary Force in the Indian Ocean, followed by shorter postings on , on , and in British Ceylon. After the invasion of Greece by Italy in October 1940, he was transferred from the Indian Ocean to the battleship in the Mediterranean Fleet.

On 1 February 1941, Philip was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant after a series of courses at Portsmouth, in which he gained the top grade in four out of five sections of the qualifying examination. Among other engagements, he was involved in the Battle of Crete and was mentioned in dispatches for his service during the Battle of Cape Matapan, in which he controlled the battleship's searchlights. He was also awarded the Greek War Cross. In June 1942, he was appointed to the destroyer , which was involved in convoy escort tasks on the east coast of Britain, as well as the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Promotion to lieutenant followed on 16 July 1942. In October of the same year, aged 21, Philip became first lieutenant of HMS ''Wallace''. He was one of the youngest first lieutenants in the Royal Navy. During the invasion of Sicily, in July 1943, as second in command of ''Wallace'', he saved his ship from a night bomber attack. He devised a plan to launch a raft with smoke floats that successfully distracted the bombers, allowing the ship to slip away unnoticed. In 1944, he moved on to the new destroyer, , where he saw service with the British Pacific Fleet in the 27th Destroyer Flotilla. He was present in Tokyo Bay when the instrument of Japanese surrender was signed. Philip returned to the United Kingdom on the ''Whelp'' in January 1946 and was posted as an instructor at , the Petty Officers' School in Corsham, Wiltshire.

Marriage

In 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth toured the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. During the visit, the Queen and Lord Mountbatten asked his nephew Philip to escort the King's two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, who were Philip's third cousins through Queen Victoria, and second cousins once removed through King Christian IX of Denmark.Alexandra of Yugoslavia quoted in Elizabeth fell in love with Philip, and they began to exchange letters when she was 13.

Eventually, in the summer of 1946, Philip asked the King for his daughter's hand in marriage. The King granted his request, provided that any formal engagement be delayed until Elizabeth's 21st birthday the following April. By March 1947, Philip had abandoned his Greek and Danish royal titles, had adopted the surname Mountbatten from his mother's family, and had become a naturalised British subject. The engagement was announced to the public on 9 July 1947.

The engagement attracted some controversy. Philip had no financial standing, was foreign-born, and had sisters who had married German noblemen with Nazi links. Marion Crawford wrote, "Some of the King's advisors did not think him good enough for her. He was a prince without a home or kingdom. Some of the papers played long and loud tunes on the string of Philip's foreign origin." Later biographies reported that Elizabeth's mother had reservations about the union initially, and teased Philip as " the Hun". In later life, however, she told the biographer Tim Heald that Philip was "an English gentleman".

Though Philip appeared "always to have regarded himself as an Anglican", and he had attended Anglican services with his classmates and relations in England and throughout his Royal Navy days, he had been baptised in the Greek Orthodox Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, wanted to "regularise" Philip's position by officially receiving him into the Church of England, which he did in October 1947.

The day before the wedding, King George VI bestowed the style of ''Royal Highness'' on Philip, and, on the morning of the wedding, 20 November 1947, he was made the Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich of Greenwich in the County of London. Consequently, being already a Knight of the Garter, between 19 and 20 November 1947, he bore the unusual style Lieutenant His Royal Highness Sir Philip Mountbatten and is so described in the Letters Patent of 20 November 1947.

Philip and Elizabeth were married in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey, recorded and broadcast by BBC
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