Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
June 10, 1921 — April 9, 2021
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II and the longest-serving royal consort in British history — a role that required a man of considerable ego and energy to subordinate himself to his wife for seven decades. He was a decorated World War II naval officer, a bold modernizer willing to offend almost anyone, and the father of four children who would inherit the peculiar burdens of monarchy.
Born into Exile, Destined for Court
Born Philip of Greece and Denmark on June 10, 1921, on the island of Corfu, he was a prince of the royal houses of both Greece and Denmark — though neither gave him a stable home. His family was expelled from Greece when he was eighteen months old, and he grew up largely in France, Germany, and Britain, educated eventually at Gordonstoun in Scotland and then Dartmouth Naval College. He met then-Princess Elizabeth at Dartmouth in 1939, when she was thirteen and he was eighteen. He served with distinction in the Royal Navy during World War II, including at the Battle of Cape Matapan and the Allied landings in Sicily. He married Elizabeth on November 20, 1947, renouncing his Greek and Danish titles and becoming a British citizen.
The Role He Made His Own
When Elizabeth became Queen in 1952, Philip had been a naval commander on career track. He gave it all up and spent the next sixty-five years in official service to a role that had no official definition, no salary, no automatic precedence, and no job description. He created the Duke of Edinburgh's Award in 1956, a youth achievement scheme that has since been adopted by 144 countries. He founded the World Wildlife Fund. He accompanied the Queen on an estimated twenty-two thousand solo engagements. He was famously blunt — his off-the-cuff remarks became a running public feature — and he was a capable painter, a champion polo player, and later a competitive carriage driver. He retired from official public duties in 2017 at age 96, having completed 22,219 engagements.
Did You Know?
Philip was the first member of the British royal family to give a television interview, in 1961. He was also the first member to appear on a documentary about the Royal Family, in 1969. Throughout his life he piloted more than 59 types of aircraft, logging over 5,986 hours of flying time. He received a pilot's license at age 70 and flew solo until his late seventies. The Queen, who outlived him by 17 months, said in a private letter that he was her "strength and stay" for their entire 73-year marriage — the longest of any British monarch.
Death and Legacy
Prince Philip died on April 9, 2021, at Windsor Castle, aged 99 — two months short of his 100th birthday. The nation observed a period of national mourning. Due to COVID restrictions, the Queen sat alone at his funeral at Windsor's St. George's Chapel in an image that became one of the defining photographs of the pandemic. He had expressed a wish for a simple funeral, and it was. He was, in the end, a man of the twentieth century — formed by war and displacement — who served the twenty-first without apology.