Despite his position as the patriarch of the world's most famous family, Prince Philip
remained something of an enigma.
But there are a few things we do know about the Duke of Edinburgh's life.
This is the untold truth of Prince Philip.
Prince Philip was born in 1921 on the Greek island of Corfu — and his family was basically
a who's who of European royalty.
For example, he is directly descended from Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, while his great
grandfather was Christian IX of Denmark.
Despite being born on an island paradise as sixth in line to the Greek throne, the young
prince's childhood was anything but easy.
When his grandfather, King George I, was assassinated, his uncle became king in his place — but
was then forced to abdicate after the Greco-Turkish war.
Philip's father was subsequently accused of treason and fled to Paris, with his son passed
from relative to relative, rarely seeing his parents.
His mother, Princess Alice, experienced a nervous breakdown in 1931 and was institutionalized;
Philip, just 10 at the time, wouldn't see or hear from her for the next several years.
While his father developed a reputation as a degenerate gambler in exile in the south
of France, Philip's aunts and uncles arranged to send him to boarding school in Scotland.
The prince's first private secretary, Michael Parker, later told The Independent:
"When he needed a father, there just wasn't anybody there."
Princess Elizabeth Windsor was just eight years old the first time she met her future
spouse, when they were both in attendance for the wedding of her uncle and his cousin.
It wasn't until five years later, however, that royal sparks flew — when the two met
again while he was attending the Royal Naval College.
Elizabeth and Philip soon began writing to each other, launching a courtship that continued
until 1946, when he asked her father, King George VI, for his daughter's hand in marriage.
The king agreed, but insisted the formal announcement of the engagement be delayed until the following
year, when she turned 21.
There were a few other conditions attached to the king's assent, too.
Anti-German sentiment in Britain after the end of World War II was rampant, and the fact
that both Philip's sisters had wed Nazis wasn't exactly going to endear him to the British
populace.
Philip's Germanic surname, Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, wouldn't help either.
So Philip renounced his right to the thrones of both Greece and Denmark and became a naturalized
British citizen, taking on his mother's surname, Mountbatten, in the process.
Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip were married in Westminster Abbey in 1947.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the nature of European royalty, Prince Philip and Queen
Elizabeth weren't just husband and wife — they were blood relatives, too.
In fact, a closer look at the royal bloodlines of Europe will show that any given royal is
probably related to any other royal, and the queen and her husband were no exception.
Like Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip was a member of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,
which was renamed to the more British-sounding Windsor in 1917.
They also share a common ancestor: Queen Victoria, who is great-great-grandmother to them both.
In Elizabeth's case, her father, King George VI, was the son of King George V, whose father
was King Edward VII, Victoria's eldest son.
Meanwhile, Philip's mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, was born to Victoria's granddaughter,
Princess Victoria of Battenberg, whose mother was Victoria's second daughter, Alice, Grand
Duchess of Hesse.
So that made Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth third cousins — which, historically speaking,
isn't even all that close for a royal husband and wife.
It's a testament to Prince Philip's relatively quiet nature that the full extent of his wartime
antics didn't come to light until six decades after the end of the Second World War.
"And it took me all the way from Scapa Flow to Tokyo and back again."
Harry Hargreaves, who served alongside the 21-year-old prince aboard the HMS Wallace,
later related the tale to The Guardian.
Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten was "second-in-command" of the Royal Navy vessel when a German bomber
flew overhead during the Allied invasion of Sicily.
As Hargreaves recalled, it was the middle of the night, and while the bomber pilot hadn't
been able to land a direct hit, they felt it was "inevitable" that the ship would be
bombed and sunk.
And so Lieutenant Mountbatten sprang into action.
While the bomber was circling around for another run at the ship, he devised a plan to throw
a wooden raft into the water, with smoke floats that would go off when hitting the water,
sending thick plumes of smoke wafting in the air to mimic burning debris.
The idea worked, creating a decoy target while the ship was able to scoot away to safety
in the darkness.
As Hargreaves said:
"Prince Philip saved our lives that night."
Matt Smith, who portrayed Prince Philip in the first two seasons of Netflix's The Crown,
did plenty of research on the role to help get into character — and he even revealed
a few things about the Prince himself during an interview with Variety.
While prepping for the role, Smith came to discover much of what he thought he knew about
the Duke of Edinburgh simply wasn't true.
As he told Variety:
"All the research I did found him to be brilliantly funny, very clever, very popular.
In the royal house he’s the most popular of all of them.
If you’ve talked to any of the staff, Philip’s the one they all love really."
According to Smith, Philip was, quote, "a bit more of a man of the people" than other
members of the royal family.
He explained at the time:
"The royal protocol hasn't dogged him in quite the same way his whole life and there's a
sort of rebellion in him and a naughtiness and a cheekiness.
I think he's quite affable and open by all accounts with the staff.
They all love him."
While Britain's royal family are admired by many around the world, one tribe on a tiny
island in the South Pacific have taken their reverence of Prince Philip to quite an extreme.
Matthew Baylis, who wrote a book about his experience living with the tribe on Vanuatu's
Tanna Island, told Australia's ABC News in 2018:
"For them Philip is a tabu man — human but possessing qualities and powers that make
him sacred."
The villagers believe Philip is the fulfillment of an ancient tribal legend in which the,
quote, "pale-skinned son of the mountain god" journeys across the sea and returns with a
rich and powerful wife.
Kirk Huffman, honorary curator of the National Museum of Vanuatu, told ABC that Philip was
aware of the villagers' beliefs, and even met with five Tannese men in Windsor Castle
in 2007.
One of the villagers once explained more to the Associated Press, saying:
"Here in Tanna, we believe that Prince Philip is the son of our god, our ancestral god,
who lives up in the mountain.
We ask him to increase the production of our crops in the garden, or to give us the sun,
or rain.
And it happens."
Prince Philip once visited the island in 1974, and the tribe still believes he will one day
return — albeit in a more spiritual form.
Considering his Greek origins, his large family, and his multifaceted cultural roots, it may
not come as much surprise to find that Prince Philip didn't consider himself purely British.
As he once explained to the Independent:
"If anything, I've thought of myself as Scandinavian.
Particularly, Danish.
We spoke English at home.
[...] But then the [conversation] would go into French.
Then it went into German, on occasion, because we had German cousins.
If you couldn't think of a word in one language, you tended to go off in another."
But things became a lot more British for Philip when he married Queen Elizabeth.
When he changed his surname from Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg to Mountbatten, he knew full well that his
new name would not be passed on to his progeny; instead, his children took their mother's
last name, Windsor.
As he once reportedly said:
"I am the only man in the country who can't give his name to his children."
When Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, few people could have guessed that she would
still be on the throne nearly seven decades later, well into her 90s.
And through her reign, Prince Philip was planted steadfastly by her side.
"However, I think the main lesson that we've learnt is that tolerance is the one central
ingredient of any happy marriage."
"And you can take it from me, the Queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance."
In fact, in 2009 the Duke of Edinburgh celebrated a significant milestone when he officially
became the longest-serving consort to a monarch in the history of Britain.
He beat the previous record of 57 years and 70 days set by Queen Charlotte, the wife of
King George III, who reigned from 1760 until 1820.
Philip also held the distinction of being the longest-serving husband to a British queen,
surpassing the record that had previously been held by his own grandfather, Prince Albert,
who was consort to Queen Victoria for 21 years — before dying at just 42 years old.
In 2017, Buckingham Palace announced that the 96-year old Prince Philip was retiring.
And when one attendee at a royal event told him they were sorry to hear he was standing
down, Philip quipped:
"Well, I can't stand up much."
Philip followed up his retirement announcement by moving out of Buckingham Palace, splitting
his time between Windsor Castle and Wood Farm, a modest cottage on the grounds of the queen's
estate in Sandringham.
Media reports have suggested that the move to Wood Farm was part of a kind of joint fantasy
of both Philip and the Queen, of living a relatively normal life in the Shires of England.
Mostly, the prince's post-retirement days were spent painting, reading, and writing
letters.
According to former royal chef Darren McGrady, Prince Philip had a much broader palate than
the Queen when it comes to food.
As McGrady once famously revealed:
"The Queen eats to live whereas Prince Philip lives to eat."
Philip also enjoyed cooking; McGrady recalled one time at Sandringham when he was in the
process of preparing lamb when the prince took over and grilled the meat himself.
McGrady later said:
"He actually cooked on the grill that night — he cooked for me!"
While the Duke of Edinburgh was said to have a fairly sophisticated palate, however, there's
one particular delicacy that neither he nor the queen embraced: raw oysters.
In fact, anyone hosting a dinner at which the queen and Philip would be attending were
explicitly told that neither of them liked oysters.
And, according to former royal butler Grant Harold, avoiding raw shellfish is, quote,
"a very sensible move".
Harold says:
"We don't want a member of the royal family having a serious reaction to food poisoning,
especially if [they are] on an overseas tour."
One particular activity Prince Philip enjoyed over the years was oil painting.
When a special exhibition was held in celebration of his 90th birthday, one of the many aspects
of his life covered was a section devoted to his painting and other design work.
Philip was said to be keen on art as a patron, a collector, and an artist himself.
Other work featured in the exhibition included a jewel-encrusted bracelet that he designed
as a gift for the Queen in celebration of their fifth anniversary, and his own hand-drawn
design for a stained-glass window for the chapel of Windsor Castle, which was badly
damaged in a 1992 fire.
Other paintings by the Duke of Edinburgh include a landscape of Duart Castle and a portrait
of the Queen eating breakfast.
Jennifer Scott, the assistant curator of paintings at the Royal Collection, told the Mail in
2010:
"I think generally people don't know that the Duke of Edinburgh paints.
It's quite a private pursuit."
In that sense, maybe it was the perfect hobby for Philip in his later years.