**As the queen's husband, Philip gave up his last name, gave up his inheritance to the Greek royal family, changed his religion, left his beloved navy, and even allowed his children to inherit his last name.

As the queen's husband, Philip gave up his last name, gave up his inheritance to the Greek royal family, changed his religion, left his beloved navy, and even could not allow his children to inherit his last name. He was not without complaints about all this, but he never changed his "problem" of telling jokes because of depression in his life. It is said that he always makes the queen laugh.

text ✎ Huang Fangshi

edit ✎ Xiangrong

Prince Philip is old. On May 4, during the Buckingham Palace event, he joked that he had "can't stand for too long".

As the husband of Queen Elizabeth II of , he has now attended 22,191 events on behalf of the British royal family and has conducted 637 overseas visits alone. Even in 2016, the 95-year-old Duke of Edinburgh still attended public events for 110 days.

Now, he decided to stop.

was born in Greece, but devoted his life to the UK. This noble prince with noble blood had a pretty face and blue eyes when he was young, which made the 13-year-old British princess Elizabeth fall in love with him at first sight. Later, he appeared on various occasions as the queen's spouse to protect her until he became the longest-reigning monarch spouse in British history.

But this is not a simple modern fairy tale of princes and princesses.

Down and out Prince

Prince Philip is not the ideal husband of the British princess, so what the royal family members thought at least 70 years ago.

My father was a distressed prince who was expelled from Greece and lived in France with his mistress; his mother was a British nobleman born in Windsor Castle and was sent to a nursing home in Switzerland due to schizophrenia. As the couple's youngest son, Philippe has the title of aristocratic, has no territory, and no money.

During the Greek Revolution, Prince Philip, who was 18 months old, was put into a box originally used to hold oranges and sent to a ship sent by the British government, and began his exile in Europe. He spent his childhood at a British relative's house and went to school in Germany, and was always unfamiliar with family life. At the age of 16, the only sister who was close to him died in an air crash.

People remember that at the funeral of my sister, Prince Philip was wearing a black coat that was not fit, which made his almost pure white blonde hair look particularly dazzling.

Later in a letter to her mother-in-law Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip wrote-"In my world, Lily White (the nickname of Elizabeth II ) is the only and conclusive 'thing'."

▵Prince Philip

When he was young

When compared with the elegant British aristocrats, Prince Philip looked charming, energetic, and confident, and was also rough, reckless, and worried. He is a suspicious poor boy who breaks into the royal life without knowing the height of the world.

Princess Elizabeth cares about art, and he is passionate about hunting and sports. His grades at school were a mess when he was a child.

He is regarded as an outsider, "German". In fact, Philip couldn't tell where he was. "If you have to find a sense of identity, I think I am a Scandinavian, especially Danes. We speak English at home, and everyone else at home has learned Greek, and I can understand some of it. However, as we speak, the conversation will become French, and sometimes it will become German, because we have many German cousins. If there is a word that suddenly cannot remember, then I will change my language."

Perhaps only in the army can such people be regarded as promising new stars.

In 1939, Philip joined the British Navy and studied at the Royal Naval Academy in Dartmouth. In this year, King George VI came to inspect, and Philip, a highly respected young officer, was selected to accompany Princess Elizabeth to visit the school. According to people who have seen young Philip, he had dazzling blonde hair and extremely blue eyes. In the military academy, he had excellent grades in every subject—except for a mess of spelling of words.

"Since then, she never looked at anyone else." One of Princess Elizabeth's cousins ​​later said.

The Love of Princess

Many years later, biographers look back at the past and infer that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip should have met twice before: the first time was when Elizabeth was 8 years old, they attended the same wedding; the second time was at the coronation ceremony of Elizabeth's father, King George VI.

In 1946, the outside world noticed Prince Philip for the first time, and was at another wedding - he was described as a character who "basically never heard of the British public."

This handsome young man attended the maid's wedding with Princess Elizabeth. They were cautious in public and did not even dance together. But in private, Prince Philip frequently went to and from Buckingham Palace, and had to apologize to the then queen and Elizabeth's mother for his uninvited come: "No matter how regretful I feel, there is always a small voice saying to me: If you don't take risks, you won't get anything. And when I took risks, I really had a wonderful time."

That summer, Philip proposed to Elizabeth. The princess, who has been well protected since childhood and has always been a mature and polite, agreed without asking her parents. After the news spread, George VI's minister opposed the princess' choice of such a husband.

▵Prince Philip had traveled to many places before he proposed to the UK Queen Elizabeth II. He arrived in Ceylon, Mumbai, , Solomon Islands, and witnessed the surrender of Japanese troops in Tokyo Bay. When the war first began, no one wanted the descendants of the Greek royal family to die on the battlefield for no reason, so Prince Philip's main job on the ship was to make cocoa, help organize documents, and record the nautical diary of the warship (and often have misspellings). Later, the war spread to Greece, and the prince had the opportunity to make achievements legitimately. His warship participated in a battle to destroy the Italian navy.

is also in the fire of war. In London, which was bombed into rubble, there is always a photo of Prince Philip on Princess Elizabeth's dressing table.

After the war, the love between the two people quickly heated up.

letters show that after the proposal, Philip once asked himself: Is he worthy of "all these good things that happened to me"? Are you really worthy of committing yourself to love completely and unrestrainedly?

Prince Philip has nothing but military merits. His beliefs are different from those of the British royal family, with typical foreign surnames. The ministers couldn't stand his recklessness and shamelessness. Fortunately, George VI quite appreciated the kid's straightforwardness and sense of humor, and believed that he was "thinking things with the right way of thinking."

When the war is coming to an end, Prince Philip's father dies in a downfall. The legacy he left to his only son was daily necessities: clothes, cufflinks, ivory cleansing brushes, and a stamp ring that Prince Philip had worn for his whole life.

They both failed to meet for the last time.

After the war, Philip's mother returned to Greece and became a nun. His sisters were both married to Germans and did not attend his wedding.

Elizabeth ended his exile, gave him a stable family, and gave him a motherland that would never change.

▵Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II of England and the children of England

"It seems like there is an unwritten treaty between them: she helped him bury all the restlessness of his youth. In return, he gave her all his support without thinking." The British Independent made this conclusion in the report.

As the queen's husband, Philip gave up his last name, gave up his inheritance to the Greek royal family, changed his religion, left his beloved navy, and even allowed his children to inherit his last name. He was not without complaints about all this, but he never changed his "problem" of telling jokes because of depression in his life. It is said that he always makes the queen laugh.

At the coronation ceremony of Elizabeth II, he swore allegiance and became the first subject to kneel down to the new queen.

" Wangfu "

Prince Philip is the "wangfu" who fully supports his wife and protects the family for the queen, and is also the old man who is famous for "macho".

"For the past seventy years, among the countless dinners, ceremonies and other obligations held by the Queen of England and the obligations required by other British monarchs," the New York Times described, "Prince Philip, who looks abrupt, loving, and famous for his speech too bluntly, has always been a formidable existence around her."

As the queen's spouse, the Duke of Edinburgh has served as a "sponsor" or "honoral chairman" in 780 organizations of all kinds over the years. He became what he called "professional unveiling ceremony". once said at an event in Canada: "I announce the opening of this thing, no matter what it is."

Until his old age, he was still complaining: "My goal is not to be the chairman of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee, and I don't want to be the chairman of the World Fund for Nature. I was asked to do so."

In the eyes of the outside world, one of his most successful achievements was the "Duke of Edinburgh Award" established in 1956. This award has widely inspired young people from all over the UK to join the society and live actively. But when he was 90 years old, he seemed to feel that all this was not his credit.

"Its actual operator is not me. What reason to be proud of this? I can only say that fortunately, the direction we set at that time worked. That's it."

"Everyone should have a sense of responsibility." He later said in an interview, "It is responsible to society and to our own family."

He helped charities raise funds and carry out activities. It is said that he has strong action ability, is not able to tolerate failure, has high requirements for himself or his staff, and is extremely merciless in criticizing others. Mean words even appear when the secretary asks him for a glass of ice water: "If I want to complain (the water is not cold enough), I will complain myself. Thank you."

People guess that this personality comes from his childhood. "He was emotionally ignored and never got the kind of continuous love that children should have."

"Prince Philip is extremely sensitive inside," a relative once described that this sensitivity was hidden under a strong shell. "Only when the shell is hard can he survive."

His temper was always bad, and he often reached agreement with the queen on major events and then quarreled in details. He doesn't care about using Chinese civilization and often swears. And the Queen also knows how to deal with his irritability.

, the personality of British aristocrats, has become a behind-the-scenes celebrating that British journalists are interested in. The "awesome existence" once asked a car driving instructor in Scotland: "How do you keep locals from drinking for a long time and long enough to pass the driver's license test?" When visiting China, he told a group of British students, "If you live here for a long time, you will all become squinting." Another time, he asked a Kenyan woman who handed him a statue: "You are a woman, right?"

At a Wildlife Fund meeting in 1986, the Duke of Edinburgh said, "Guangdong people eat everything, four-legged ones eat all but stools, winged ones eat all but airplanes, and those swimming in the water eat all but submarines." Environmentalists solemnly protested that he was the chairman of the Wildlife Conservation Organization.

Even marriage is the object of his joke, even if the person who married him is Queen of England : "If a man opens the car door for his wife, then either the car is new or the wife is new."

tabloids are keen on guessing the prince's romantic affairs. Some people say that Prince Philip’s girlfriend is too many to count on one hand. Some people also say that he is "shopping in the window, only looking at it but not buying it." There are also reports that the prince would tell some not very civilized jokes on some private occasions, "very much like a German."

But his daughter Princess Anne recalled that many nights, the father read the story to sleep with himself.

Many years later, his alumnus Terrence Lewin of the Royal Naval Academy said: "Prince Philip is a very talented seaman. If it weren't for the responsibility he assumed, then it must be him who is the First Secretary of the United Kingdom, not me."

However, in the end, his life was condensed on an old blue British passport, which registered his profession as "the prince of the royal family."

In most palaces, the queen and the prince each have their own bedrooms, but in the eyes of others, their alliance is always firm. A private secretary of Prince Philip once said, "In a sense, his life is very simple, which is to give the queen 100% support."

The actual impact of this soldier on the country may be linked to the queen:

He persuaded the queen to meet civilians, accept the public's curiosity about the royal family, and make the royal family reform step by step and modernize;

He promoted and promoted the development of British engineering. In 2015, he said that Britain was "poor and indifferent" after World War II, and to recover could only rely on engineering;

He was the first person to install a computer into Buckingham Palace.

▵On March 13, 2015, local time, in London, England, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip attended the commemoration ceremony of the fallen soldiers in Afghanistan

Princess Kate took him as an example and was determined to become Prince William's solid backing like Philip supported the Queen. William commented on his grandfather: "He put his career aside and fully supported the queen. He never stole the spotlight and never crossed the line."

Some historians commented on him: "I think he will be a general of the navy all his life. This is what the navy general is. He must do it well and never give up."

In 1997, when Elizabeth II delivered a golden wedding speech, he made a summary, "Simply put, for so many years, he has been the force for me to persevere. He gave me and this entire family, far more support than he had expressed verbally, or what we had known in the past."

At least in public, the prince proved this sentence with his own life.

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