Rest in Peace HRH The Prince Philip, Prince of United Kingdom, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich. Husband and consort of Queen Elizabeth II of UK. He was two months short of being 100 years old.
He was the son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg in Germany. He was grandson of King George I of Greece and Olga Constantinovna of Russia. He was a patrilineal great grandson of King Christian IX of Denmark and matrilineal great great grandson of Queen Victoria of England. He was a first cousin of the late King Paul of Greece, father of Constantine II of Greece and Queen Sophia of Spain.
With the royal struggles in Greece, Princess Alice fought for her son, Prince Philip, to be the King of Greece, but her brother Louis Mountbatten, the 1st Earl of Burma and last Viceroy of India, dismissed the idea. (Louis’s and Alice’s parents Prince Louis Alexander of Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, became British subjects and anglicized their surname to Mountbatten.) The earl told the young Prince Philip to forget their royal houses in Greece, Denmark and Germany. The only royal house that he should be interested in was the House of Windsor. He told his nephew that his mission was to win the heart of young Princess Elizabeth., daughter of King George VI, the second cousin of Philip’s mother and uncle. And he did that quite easily. And so the young Prince and Princess got married and later became Queen and Prince Consort and lived heppily ever after…
Technically speaking, Philip was not of the House of Battenberg. His mother was a Battenberg but his father Prince Andrew came from the House of Glücksburg, the ruling house of Denmark. Thus, the present British royal heirs are not from the House of Windsor (another made-up name) or from Mountbatten, but from the House of Glücksburg.
The House of Glucksburg is a much older and respectable name than Windsor or Mountbatten. At present, it includes Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, King Harald V of Norway, former king of Greece Constantine II, former Queen Anne-Marie of Greece, Queen Sofía of Spain, Prince Philip and his eldest son and heir to the British throne Charles, Prince of Wales, who are all patrilineal members of cadet branches of the Glücksburg dynasty. (from wikipedia)
Queen Elizabeth II is, technically, of the House of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha. The British people have been continuously ruled by German royal houses since King George I of the House of Hanover in 1714.
I saw Prince Philip when he visted our university twice in the late 1970s. While the Queen was regal and quite stiff, he was elegant and debonaire but casual, relaxed and curious about his surroundings.
He was the glue that kept the British Royal Family together. HM the Queen must really feel so alone now — without her mother, her sister and now her husband.
The Queen said that the Prince was her “rock and stay”. As shown in The Crown, he was supposed to have told the Queen that her job is “to continue breathing.” Without her rock and stay, the Queen might find it difficult to go on breathing. Once the Queen stops breathing, the British monarchy might come to its end…
Postprandial Musings, 2.0 