On Friday, Prince Philip, the longest serving royal companion in British history and the father of Royal Hirer Prince Charles and a constant companion to Queen Elizabeth II during her 74 years of marriage, died. He was nine hundred and nine.
“It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen has announced the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,” Buckingham Palace announced on Twitter Friday.
“His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle.”
The Duke of Edinburgh was a tireless advocate of the monarchy, the preservation of wilderness and sciences, a proponents of athletic mixture with scholarship, known for his easy humour, dapper wardrobe and sometime startling openness.
Since 1952 he has also held over 22,000 public solo commitments.
Philip, the oldest man in the British royal family, was seldom seen publicly after he retired in August 2017 from his public office.
Yet in May 2018, Prince Harry to Meghan Markle, princess Eugenie to the Jack Brooksbank and Princess Beatrice to the Edoardo Mozzi in July20, he was still with his wife on their grandchildren’s marriages.
His latest public event was a Buckingham Palace military ceremony in July 2020.
The Duke played a significant part behind closed doors, while never being a king, and supported his wife during times of tumult for seven decades.
“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,” Elizabeth said during her Diamond Jubilee address in 2012.
Initially in 1934, in a wedding of Philip’s cousin and Elisabeth’s uncle, Elizabeth and Philip, who had Greek, German and Netherlands royal blood running through his veins. It was Queen Victoria’s third cousin.
Five years later—at the age of 13 and 18—their relationship was only blossoming when the two met again at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth.
Philipp was invited to escort Princess Margaret and her sister, Princess Elizabeth, during a visit to her mother and dad — King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
They fell in love immediately and started letters exchange.
The King agreed, but wished to make all formal announcing postpone, until his daughter turned the next 21 April, as he asked his dad for his hand in the marriage in 1946.
The ceremony was recorded and broadcast to 200 million people around the world on BBC radio. Elizabeth and Philip were married to Westminsters Abbey on 20 Nov. 1947.
The couple lived normal lives, stationed in Malta for a couple of years, during Philip’s service in the Royal Navy, and before Elizabeth became queen.
Yet they changed their lives forever when, on February 6, 1952, Elizabeth’s dad died when Philip and she toured Kenya.
Philip swore his allegiance to her after her coronation in June 1953, becoming her “living and limb man.”
During their official ceremonies, the Duke was constantly on her side, attending state dinner, meeting world leaders and long trips abroad – although according to the Order of Precedence protocol, he remained behind for some steps. But he grew awkward at times when He was the uncrowned king in Windsor’s Queen’s House.
“I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his children. I’m nothing but a bloody amoeba,” Philip once told a friend.
Philip always recognizes that he is constantly under scrutiny but still expresses his views and speaks openly, even though he is prone to hilarious gaffes and sometimes to gross remarks.
“Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, a science which I have practiced for a good many years,” he was quoted as saying in 1960.
A year later, Philip would tell the Scottish Women’s Institute that “British women can’t cook.”
Once upon a time, he said to a group of deaf children gathered near a steel band in the Caribbean “Deaf? No wonder you’re deaf if you’re near there.” And when a British maritime cadet told him that in 2009, she worked at a nightclub, he asked, “Is that a strip club?”
For decades and even on trips outside of the world, he went on to comment on how he was asked, ‘Do you still throw spear against each other?,’ a group of indigenous Australians in 2002 and to tell the president of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional robes.
In 1957, during their meeting with President Dwight Eisenhower in Washington, DC, and afterwards in New York City, the Royal couple traveled extensively and made their first visit to the United States.
The Seventh Regiment Armory at Park Avenue feededed Elizabeth at a gala.
She and Philip also attended a state dinner with President Gerald Ford and New York City shows at the 200th American Declaration of Indépendance from Britain in 1976.
The royal couple had four children.
In November 1948, they were first parents when Prince Charles, the trono’s heir, was born. In August 1950, then Anne arrived, in February 1960, and in March 1964 came to Edward.
According to reports and accounts from several publications, Philip played a key role after Princess Diana died a year after her divorce from the Royal Family, especially the Queen.
The Royals, including Diana’s sons, William, and Harry, were at the Balmoral Castle of their family in Scotland when Diana was killed and stayed out of sight for days in a Paris car crash.
