The Duke of Edinburgh was born on June 10, 1921, the only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, and the youngest of their five children — a family that included sisters Cecilie, Sophie, Margarita and Theodora.
As a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Philip was part of both the Greek and Danish royal families. But despite his apparently gilded heritage, his childhood was turbulent from a young age. His father was exiled from Greece in 1922 and his mother battled ongoing psychiatric issues.
With no immediate parental care, Philip was taken in by a guardian and surrogate father for seven years, George, second Marquess of Milford Haven, and his wife, Nadejda, the great-granddaughter of famous Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.
His teen years were no easier, however. Tragedy struck Philip’s family on November 16, 1937, when his heavily pregnant sister, Cecilie, died in a plane crash, alongside her husband, George Donatus, their sons aged six and four, and George’s widowed mother. A police inquiry after the crash found Cecile went into labour prematurely on-board the plane, before the crash happened. The body of an infant was found next to her corpse.
Having been ferried between France, Germany and the UK throughout his youth, Philip joined the British Royal Navy in 1939, aged 18. That same year, he began communicating more with his second cousin once removed, the then-Princess Elizabeth, having met the princess and her sister Princess Margaret when she toured the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth where he was a naval cadet.
Philip, witnesses of the tour told the BBC, showed off terribly in front of the young princesses as their host during the college tour. But he left the college at the top of his class in 1940 as an outstanding military prospect and by 1942 was one of the youngest first lieutenants in the Royal Navy.
Following World War II, he was granted permission by King George VI to marry Princess Elizabeth, the future queen. That was despite some members of high society judging him too ‘rough’ for her hand. As the BBC reported, the young princess was very much in love.
Philip later dropped his Greek and Danish royal titles and became a British subject, before adopting the surname Mountbatten from his maternal grandparents.
Philip married Princess Elizabeth on November 20, 1947, when she was just 21 and he 26, and was awarded the official title of Duke of Edinburgh. He left active military service following the Queen’s coronation in 1952, at the rank of commander.
The couple went on to have four children, Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward, then eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
In public, Philip’s notoriously dry humour and politically incorrect comments during royal outings became one of his most popular — and controversial — attributes, endearing him to many while infuriating many others.
He was famously overheard asking a driving instructor in Scotland, “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?”, and once quipped, “When a man opens a car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife”.
Although he and the Queen kept most details about their marriage private, the Monarch gave a rare glimpse into their relationship in a speech marking the couple’s 50th wedding anniversary in 1997.
Speaking about Philip’s commitment to his duties, she said: “He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments but he has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years”.
To celebrate her consort’s 90th birthday, the Queen appointed Prince Philip the Lord High Admiral of the Royal Navy — the highest title in the military organisation.
Then, on their 70th wedding anniversary in 2017, she appointed him Knight Grand Cross (GCVO) of the Royal Victorian Order, making him the first British national since his late uncle, the first Earl Mountbatten of Burma, entitled to wear the breast stars of four orders of chivalry in the UK.
Prince Philip officially retired from public duties in 2017, but the palace said at the time that his decision to step back from official royal duties wasn’t related to ill-health, and he carried on attending events with the Queen at his leisure.
At the time of his retirement, Philip had attended a total of 22,219 solo engagements since 1952, when his wife ascended the throne, and thousands more by the Queen’s side.
He undertook his final official public engagement in 2017, when he met Royal Marines at Buckingham Palace. Shortly after announcing his retirement, he joined the Queen at St James’s Palace for a service and lunch for the Order of Merit.
At the lunch, he characteristically joked with guests about his decision to retire. When the mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah told him, “I’m sorry to hear you’re standing down,” Philip shot back, “Well I can’t stand up much longer”.
Prince Philip battled a range of health issues in recent years, however. He was admitted to hospital in April 2018, for a routine operation on his hip, which had forced him to miss the royal Easter church services just days before. In 2021, he underwent an operation for a heart condition and spent almost a month in hospital before being released in March.
Looking back at his role in the royal family, Prince Philip once told the BBC, “I’ve just done what I think was my best … I can’t suddenly change my whole way of doing things, I can’t change my interests or the way I react to things. That’s just my style.”