London – Prince Philip, the husband of the British Queen Elizabeth II, has died, the royal family announced on Friday. He was 99 years old.
“His Royal Highness died peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle,” the family said in a statement.
He was hospitalized in February and underwent surgery for a heart condition. He and the queen have been married for over 73 years.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Philip “won the affection of generations here in the UK, the Commonwealth and around the world”.
“Like the expert chariot driver, he helped lead the royal family and the monarchy, so that it remains an indisputable vital institution for the balance and happiness of our national life.”
His role in life was to walk one step behind the queen, but even there, Prince Philip managed to carve out his own reputation and role in history.
“In essence, the queen always wore the crown,” said Giles Brandreth, who for years ran one of Philip’s charities, while “Prince Philip was always allowed to wear trousers. That’s how it worked.” .
Philip was born into the Greek royal family in 1921, but was educated and had a naval career in Britain.
And by luck or – many believe – according to the royal design, he was chosen to escort the young Princess Elizabeth in a tour. The queen’s summer and her close friend until her death in 2016, Margaret Rhodes, well remembered the impression Philip made on that first date.
In an interview with CBS News, Rhodes once said that Philip had the immediate advantage of looking good when he met the young princess, describing him as “a completely good-looking Viking god.”
They married at Westminster Abbey in 1947, in a televised ceremony that transfixed millions of viewers around the world. It was the beginning of a long and successful royal marriage. He and the queen have four children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
After Elizabeth became queen in 1953, Philip offered support and, from time to time, controversy. Some thought it was a fountain of political inaccuracy prone to blunders.
He once asked the Aborigines of Australia if they were throwing spears at each other. Closer to home, he once asked Scottish driving instructors how they kept their students “out of the sauce” long enough to pass the test.
“He just said how he feels,” Brandreth told CBS News. “It was very funny. Prince Philip was the man who said that if you want to see a man open the car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife. He was a wise observer of people.”
In 1997, with Britain in mourning after the death of Princess Diana, he intervened to defuse a moment of crisis at her funeral. Philip was the one who convinced the young princes William and Harry to go behind their mother’s coffin when they didn’t want to. “I’ll walk with you,” he said.
Philip remained healthy and active into old age, but has suffered a number of failures in recent years. He was treated for a blocked coronary artery in 2011, then spent several nights in hospital in December 2019. A month later, he was forced to give up driving at the age of 97 after hitting a car with Land His rover near the royal estate of the Sandringham family.
Philip retired from official royal duties in 2017 and public appearances have become rare. He recently spent time blocking the coronavirus at Windsor Castle with the queen.
Very rarely, the royal gossip and we do not know what Philip thought of the queen’s brilliant tribute to their golden wedding anniversary, but some of her words could serve as his epitaph:
“He was simply my strength and remained so all these years,” the monarch said. “I and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a greater debt than he would ever claim, or we will ever know.”