The marriage of the Duke of Kent, George V's fourth son, to Princess Marina of Greece in 1934 was notable for several things, not least the Greek Orthodox service that preceded the wedding at Westminster Abbey. The Duke's elder brother, the future King Edward VIII, "caused a mild furore" at the service, according to his official biographer, "when he not only absent-mindedly pulled out a cigarette but lit it on a candle held by a priest".
But for the bridegroom's 8-year-old niece Princess Elizabeth, who was among the bridesmaids, hindsight would make the wedding rather more memorable - as it was the first time she had set eyes on Marina's handsome 13-year-old cousin, Prince Philip of Greece.
Early impressions
There was a subsequent brief meeting at her father's coronation in 1937 after the abdication of Edward VIII that had sprung Elizabeth into the unexpected and almost certainly unwanted position of being heir to the throne. However, it is doubtful that either of them had given much thought to the other before July 22, 1939, when Prince Philip's crafty uncle Lord Louis "Dickie" Mountbatten attended George VI and his family on a visit to the naval college at Dartmouth and engineered several meetings between Princess Elizabeth and his nephew, by then a cadet there.
"Philip accompanied us and dined on board [the royal yacht Victoria and Albert]," Mountbatten noted in his diary at the end of the first evening. The next day, he recorded: "Philip came back aboard V&A for tea and was a great success with the children."
The "children" - Elizabeth and her younger sister Margaret - were sent to the captain's house to protect them from a combined outbreak of mumps and chickenpox at the college, and Mountbatten arranged for Philip to go along there and entertain them. Their governess, Marion Crawford (Crawfie), later recorded that Elizabeth, then 13, "never took her eyes off him the whole time", and when at the end of the visit the cadets commandeered a flotilla of small craft to send the royal family on their way, Elizabeth watched avidly through binoculars as one solitary blond oarsman eventually remained, still rowing furiously in their wake.
'The one'
After three years of wartime service in the Royal Navy, in 1943 22-year-old Philip went to stay at Windsor Castle for Christmas. By this time Elizabeth, 17, had already let on to her governess that he was "the one" and during that Christmas he seems to have begun to show more interest in her.
After a subsequent visit to Windsor in July he wrote to Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) to say how much he had loved being with the royal family and "the simple enjoyment of family pleasures and amusements and the feeling that I am welcome to share them". It was a hint perhaps that he now yearned to start a family of his own to replace the one he had lost aged 8, when his mother was taken to a secure psychiatric asylum, his father closed down the family home and moved to the South of France to live with his mistress, and his four elder sisters went off to marry German princes.
Not a popular choice
Shortly after the Windsor Christmas, Prince Philip had taken the bold step of asking his cousin King George II of Greece to ask George VI and Queen Elizabeth whether they might consider him as a suitor for their daughter. The King and Queen both had grave misgivings about the idea to begin with. Although the King was beginning to warm to Philip's forthright, joshing humour, he still found it hard to believe that his daughter had fallen in love with virtually the first man she had met. And he can hardly have relished the prospect of his tight-knit family - "Us four", as he called them - being broken up so soon after the war.
Several senior courtiers were also opposed, deeming Philip "rather unpolished", his background and behaviour too Teutonic, and his education by Kurt Hahn at Gordonstoun dangerously cranky and progressive.
"The kind of people who didn't like Prince Philip were the kind of people who didn't like Mountbatten," said one. "It was all bound up in a single word: 'German'." The Queen was heard privately referring to Philip as "the Hun" and she made it known that she would prefer her daughter to marry someone from the higher flights of the British aristocracy rather than a foreign prince.
Philip scarcely went out of his way to ingratiate himself with his detractors, his turbulent childhood having helped shape his defiant character. But his disinclination to kowtow was a big part of why the young Princess Elizabeth fell for him, accustomed as she had been all her life to the fawning deference of palace servants. As one of her friends later remarked: "Nothing makes a woman less happy than being able to get away with everything".
Having more royal blood in his veins than she did, he was never going to be dazzled by her status, still less deferential. "He was not all over her," remembered one courtier, "and she found that very attractive." He was also a dashing war hero, forthright and funny, and extremely good-looking - "a blond Greek Apollo", as the Sunday Pictorial described him, "as handsome as any film star".
Love is in the air
After Prince Philip returned from the Far East in 1946, Crawfie recalled often seeing his MG sports car roar into the Buckingham Palace forecourt, the prince getting out "hatless" and "always in a hurry to see Lilibet". Elizabeth, meanwhile, began to take more trouble with her appearance and to play the tune People Will Say We're In Love from the musical Oklahoma! According to Crawfie, "Everyone in the household was by now aware of what was in the air".
That summer Philip went to Balmoral for three weeks and most historians agree that it was during this holiday that he proposed, the Princess accepted, and they told her parents. His thank-you letter this time to the Queen bordered on the euphoric. "I am sure I do not deserve all the good things that have happened to me," he wrote. "To have been spared in the war and seen victory, to have been given the chance to rest and readjust myself, to have fallen in love completely and unreservedly, makes all one's personal and even the world's troubles seem small and petty."
After their marriage in November 1947, and Princess Elizabeth's far earlier than expected accession to the throne in 1952, Prince Philip would go on to become Britain's longest-serving royal consort, surpassing the record previously held by George III's Queen Charlotte by eight years by the time he eventually stepped down from royal duties in 2017.
Her strength and stay
His ability to inject levity into official occasions with colourful asides was only the most publicised part of a job that he did for so many years with complete devotion and considerable flair. Less widely appreciated was how much he did to help the Queen conquer her shyness, in much the same way that the Queen Mother had with the stammering King George VI.
If he occasionally outshone his wife - as on their first overseas tour of Canada in 1951 - for the most part he stayed deliberately in her shadow, playing the supporting role, bolstering her confidence in private and acting as back-up in public. In 1957, Time magazine credited him "for the fact that his mousy, slightly frumpy and occasionally frosty bride has blossomed into a self-confidently stylish and often radiantly warm" young woman.
Indeed, her transformation owed much to the strength and sense of stability and contentment that she derived from their marriage, although those who did not know them better were sometimes taken aback by the cross words that passed between them. "How bloody stupid!" or "Don't talk such rubbish!" the Duke might say if he disagreed with something his wife had said.
A fireball of masculine energy, he was never going to be a natural second fiddle, yet after his wife's accession he addressed her as "Ma'am" in public and bowed whenever she entered a room. Perhaps the harshest blow to his male pride came when he was prevented from passing on his adopted surname of Mountbatten to his children. Unlike Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's "uncrowned king", he was barred from taking any part in constitutional affairs or expressing any political opinions - although by nature he was always inclined to say what he thought, and there seems little doubt that in private the Queen relied heavily on his advice throughout her reign, as she did for his energetic and often highly innovative running of the various royal estates.
Enduring love and support
At royal functions, meanwhile, he remained an invaluable foil. In the early part of her reign in particular, the Queen was not especially good at putting people at their ease, her conversational openers often too stiff and her smile too forced to be encouraging. Yet whenever there loomed the awkward possibility of silence in her presence, Prince Philip was adept at sauntering up and saying something to defuse the tension.
His breezy irreverence was also evident at formal dinners at Buckingham Palace, when he was apt to examine a menu written in elaborate French and declare loudly to the guests: "Ah, good. Fish and chips again." In many other ways his character perfectly complemented hers. The Queen was never confrontational, having inherited the emollient character of her mother. Prince Philip, on the other hand, was rarely one to shy away from an argument and, when a stand needed to be taken, he could give her the impetus to take it.
It is hard to think of anyone else who could have done the job better than he did. Like Prince Albert, Prince Philip is sure to be greatly admired by posterity for his energetic promotion of science and technology, and for the numerous social projects that he worked so hard to establish. But above all, he will be remembered for the enduring support he gave to the Queen, enabling her to reign over so many years in the remarkable way that she did. "He had a very wholesome effect on her," said one diplomat. "She had a protective shell around her and he brought her out of it. He helped to make her what she has become."
