HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, R.I.P.

Friday morning of last week came with the sad news that His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh had passed away.   Just as Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, is the longest reigning monarch in the long history of that ancient, time-honoured, and trustworthy institution, so her husband the Duke had been the longest to serve in the role of royal consort.   He was ninety-nine years old and was just two months minus a day short of having reached his centennial.

 

Prince Philip was born into the House of Glücksburg (Mountbatten, the surname he adopted upon becoming a British citizen, is the Anglicized form of his mother’s family name).   This is still the reigning House of Denmark and at the time of his birth also reigned over his native Greece.   His uncle, King Constantine I was forced to abdicate when the Greco-Turkish war ended in Turkish victory and revolutionary elements within the Greek army forced the king to take the blame for the defeat.   This happened when Prince Philip was one year old.   The entire family was sent into exile and so the prince was raised in France and the United Kingdom.   In 1939, while training for the Royal Navy, he met Princess Elizabeth.   They fell in love and corresponded throughout the Second World War in which he served in the Royal Navy with valour and distinction.  The year after the war ended he asked King George VI for her hand in marriage.  The engagement was officially announced the following year and the two were wed in November of 1947 at Westminster Abbey.   The same day, he was made the Duke of Edinburgh.   He continued in the Royal Navy until 1952 when he was called to a higher duty.   The royal couple had just embarked on a tour of Commonwealth when word reached them that King George had passed away.   They returned to London, where Elizabeth was crowned Queen and Philip pledged to be her “liege man of life and limb”.

 

The Duke kept that oath faithfully all of his life.  He aided and assisted the Queen in her ceremonial duties of state and provided her with strength and support in their family life.    As she herself put it he was her “constant strength and guide”.    The two complemented each other so well that it is as difficult – impossible, really -  to imagine what the reign of Elizabeth II would have looked like without Prince Philip by her side as it is to imagine what the reign of the first Elizabeth might have looked like had she had a consort.

 

Prince Philip understood the institution that the Queen embodies and serves as well as she does herself.   In a visit to this Dominion in 1969 he said “It is a complete misconception to imagine that the monarchy exists in the interests of the monarch.   It doesn’t.   It exists in the interests of the people.”    What the Prince did not say on this occasion, but which is just as true, is that this is something which pure democracies and republics, for all their talk about government “of the people, for the people, and by the people” can never provide.  Pure democracies and republics can only give a country government by elected politicians, and elected politicians are by definition office-seekers who are in it primarily for their own selfish interests rather than those of the public.   Only monarchy can give a country the kind of devoted, dutiful, service that the Queen, with Prince Philip by her side, has provided to the Commonwealth Realms for sixty-nine years.   Prince Philip did not say any of this, of course, but rather spoke graciously of the alternatives, because had it been said in this context by anyone in his position it would have undermined his statement about monarchy existing in the interests of the people.   What this statement means is that monarchy is all about duty and service, something that Prince Philip exemplified in his own life, as has the Queen.  

 

We Her Majesty’s loyal subjects, throughout the Dominion of Canada and the other Realms of the Commonwealth as well as the United Kingdom, join with her and the Royal Family, in mourning the loss of Prince Philip.

 

May he rest in peace.