Philip of Edinburgh and Elizabeth II, 80 years of a love story that began on a boat
The longest-lived royal marriage in history had four children, with whom the duke maintained an unequal relationship, marked by disagreements with his first-born, Carlos
The world owes the tabloids and Netflix more of the history and lives of the British royal family than of so many other families much closer than their own. It has been thanks to the series The Crown that a good part of the intrahistory has become popular - with parts more fictional than real - of which the broken fairy tales of the eighties and nineties turned into the most observed monarchy in the world. This Friday, April 9, that family closes the door to a stage that will never return with the death at the age of 99 of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron of Greenwich.
For 80 years Felipe (born prince of Greece and Denmark) was a fundamental asset within the British royal family, always in the background. The queen was his wife, but also his commander-in-chief and his task. A complex relationship in the forties, and in the years to come, to which the duke did not always adapt flexibly given the macho customs prevailing at the time. Isabel always managed with absolute privacy - unlike her children - her relationship. And she did it for love. The then princess daughter of King George VI met Philip when she was only 13 and he was 18.
It was on a visit to the Royal Naval College ship Britannia (from which he would graduate in 1939 as the best cadet of his class) when he was just another boy. His last names, disgraced, brought him little, and he survived thanks to the pay he earned for his work, without further expense. It was especially at Christmas 1943, when he had nowhere to go, when he, along with a cousin of his and a friend of the royal family, was invited to Windsor Castle. Isabel was already 17 years old and, as her nanny Marion Crawford recounted in her diaries, the young woman was happy "as she had never seen her before." In the midst of the war, a weekend of festivities and joy enlivened everyone's spirit and ignited a spark that lasted eight decades. Felipe returned to the castle on leave that July, and there he felt loved and welcomed by a family life that he had hardly enjoyed before.
Young people began to send letters to each other while he served as another Briton in World War II and she was sheltered with her sister Margaret hers at Windsor Castle, with her parents in London. In September 1943, he went to Balmoral to spend a few days in the summer and it was there that he proposed to Isabel to marry, although the king asked to wait for the young woman to turn 21 years old. It was at the end of the contest that their relationship really began, culminating in a grand wedding at Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947.
There was popular acceptance for the future queen to marry a young cadet, a run-down prince, but not so much within the family. But that was one of the first moments of Isabel's life in which her fierce determination decided for her and managed to get ahead of her. Her desire to marry her was such that, even in the post-war period, she paid for the fabrics and decoration of her dress with coupons from her ration card.
For more than 73 years of union, the marriage has survived through thick and thin the waves from outside and from within, the one that forced him to lose his last name in pursuit of that of his wife, the Windsor, and also her religion , the orthodox. A lover of revelry and women, more than one of the duke's infidelities have been known. Nor has the relationship with his children been easy. The marriage had four: Carlos, Ana, Andrés and Eduardo (who is the one who has the best chance of inheriting his title of Duke of Edinburgh).
From the first moment, her relationship with Carlos, the heir to the throne, was highly observed. It was never easy. Both as a child and as a young man the Prince of Wales was a sensitive boy, more fond of art and the outdoors than military practice, cars or hunting, like his father. His training had to go through discipline and the army, but he did not feel comfortable with internships and obligations, which made them take a certain distance. Felipe once said that, as The Guardian reports, "he is a romantic and I am a pragmatist, and that means we see things differently".
However, Felipe was a proud father to each and every one of his offspring. As he put it in 1997, during their golden anniversary celebration, the four of them had "done quite well, given the difficult circumstances." "Like all families," he said then, "we have gone through all phases, from the greatest joys to the tribulations of raising children."
Ana was probably the closest to him, by character and hobbies: horses, the countryside. With whom she also maintained a much more cordial relationship than advertised was with whom one day she was her daughter-in-law, the popular Diana of Wales, who she also had to make an effort to integrate into a closed and complex family. After learning of Carlos's infidelities, his father tried to mediate so that the marriage did not end in divorce, precisely as it ended. However, he did not hesitate to walk behind Diana's coffin, along with her son and her grandchildren, that fateful September 1997.
That passion was passed on to his grandchildren, eight in all, for whom he became a mentor and inspirational figure, as well as his great-grandchildren. In fact, he gave some of them names, like Zara Tindall's newborn son. All of them looked forward to June 10, when the Duke of Edinburgh would turn 100 and return to occupy the public place from which he decided to depart in the summer of 2017, when he retired. 62 days to go.
