LONDON | Two steps back, he faithfully accompanied Queen Elizabeth for more than 73 years. Far from fading away, Prince Philip, who died on Friday shortly before his hundredth birthday, had remained impetuous, despite the sacrifice of his career and the burden of protocol.
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The Duke of Edinburgh, great love of the sovereign, died “peacefully” at Windsor Castle, just weeks after a month’s hospitalization in London for an infection and a pre-existing heart problem.
“My first, second and last job is never to let the queen down,” he explained to his private secretary, Michael Parker, just after his marriage in 1947.
A dedication to which Elizabeth II had paid homage, publicly confiding that he had been her “strength” and her “support”.
And yet, Prince Philip has long clashed with the mysterious mysteries of the British royal family with his authoritarian temperament, but also his dubious jokes, even racist slippages.
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Aborted military career
Philip was born in Corfu on June 10, 1921, with the titles of Prince of Greece and Denmark. At 18 months, his uncle, king of Greece, was forced to abdicate, and his father was banished from the country after the Greco-Turkish war. With his parents and four sisters, Philip flees aboard a British Army ship.
It is the beginning of a lonely and agitated childhood, between France, Germany and the United Kingdom. His depressed mother was hospitalized, then took orders, while his father moved to Monaco.
Philip is finally sent to Scotland to attend an austere boarding school. He will only see his family on rare occasions.
From 1939, he studied in the British Army, at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth (southern England). There he discovered his vocation and met Princess Elisabeth for the first time. He is 18, she is 13 and falls under the spell of the handsome soldier.
He served in the navy during World War II. He quickly distinguished himself and became one of the youngest lieutenants in the Royal Navy, promised a brilliant career.
He becomes engaged after the war to Elisabeth. Philip is viewed with a dim view at first by members of his in-laws. “They considered him brutal, uneducated, and felt that he would probably be unfaithful,” revealed Alan Lascelles, personal secretary to King George VI.
But “Lilibet” adores him and their union is celebrated on November 20, 1947. Philip must give up the titles he had received at birth, but becomes Duke of Edinburgh. He obtained British nationality and adopted the name – anglicized – of his mother, Mountbatten.
In 1952, the death of King George VI propelled Elizabeth to the throne. During the coronation ceremony, he takes an oath to be the queen’s “liege man”, and forever becomes his wife’s second.
He is forced to put an end to his military career, a heartbreak. “It was frustrating, I had just been promoted to commander,” he later admitted. “The most interesting part of my naval career had only just started”.
Pragmatic
“I do not know how long he will last, he is as if repressed,” said the ex-king of Yugoslavia. But animated by a great sense of duty, Prince Philip invests in his new role, until becoming a sponsor of more than 780 organizations, notably assuming the presidency of WWF for fifteen years.
Gladly ironic, he built a reputation for blundering, with racist slippages and dubious jokes.
Head of the family when his wife is head of state, he has a notoriously complicated relationship with the eldest of his four children, Prince Charles, often interpreted as a repercussion of his own childhood, devoid of parental affection.
“Charles is a romantic, I am a pragmatist,” he concedes to his biographer Gyles Brandreth. “It means we see it differently.”
But the royal family is grateful to him for his tireless commitment to the monarchy. “He is incredible. He has been present all these years, he is our rock ”, greeted his granddaughter, Princess Eugenie.
Holder of the record for the longevity of the spouses of sovereigns in the United Kingdom, Prince Philip had publicly retired in 2017, at the age of 96, after honoring his 22,219e and last solo engagement: reviewing a parade of the Royal Marines, of which he was the general-in-chief.
In January 2019, the Land Rover he was driving crashed into another vehicle coming out of a driveway in Sandringham Estate and overturned. Having emerged unscathed from the accident, he had given up driving.