Before he became the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip was known as Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark. He was born in Greece, on the island of Corfu, at Mon Repos, a summer residence for the British high commissioner of the Ionian Islands. His family was Greek and Danish nobility, and his grandfather was a Danish prince brought to Greece to become king.
Prince Philip’s parents were Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. According to Town and Country, Prince Philip stood sixth in line to the Greek throne. He also had four sisters with whom he shared his early life in Greece. Interestingly, he was a great-grandchild of Queen Victoria, as was Queen Elizabeth II, making them third cousins.
Prince Philip’s uncle was King Constantine I, who took control after Prince Philip’s grandfather, King George I, was assassinated in 1913. King George himself was a Danish noble with little connection to Greece, but monarchs were sometimes elected by a country’s general assembly in those days. Greece elected King George when he was only 17. He reigned for 50 years until an anarchist shot him in the back during a morning walk without bodyguards in Salonika.
The Greek monarchy did not last long after King George’s assassination. The Greco-Turkish War led to upheaval in the country and the eventual removal of King Constantine, who was forced to abdicate in 1922. Prince Philip’s father, Prince Andrew, was working with the military at the time and was subsequently convicted of treason, sentenced to death, and exiled from the country.
According to The Sun, the family was rescued from Greece by a British warship and settled in Paris for the better part of a decade. The move was stressful on Prince Philip’s parents, and the family suffered as a result. Prince Philip’s mother did not adjust well to life in Paris. According to The Independent, Princess Alice initially passed her time helping Greek refugees before converting to the Greek Orthodox religion in 1928.
Princess Alice then dove headfirst into religion, going so far as to tell people she was receiving messages from God and acting as a divine intermediary. This eventually led to her nervous breakdown in 1930, when she was committed to a sanatorium in Switzerland. Princess Alice was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was treated by Sigmund Freud. Freud blamed her state on sexual frustration and prescribed ovarian X-rays to numb her libido.
She managed to escape the institution after nearly two years and cut off contact with her family as she roamed around Europe for the next few decades. According to The Independent, Princess Alice hid a Jewish family in her home when the Nazis invaded Greece and ultimately returned to the UK in 1947 for Prince Philip’s wedding.
Princess Alice may have slipped into obscurity were it not for an episode of The Crown that delved into her somewhat estranged relationship with Prince Philip. The episode, called “Bobbykins,” is named after the nickname Alice gave to her only son. According to Express, Princess Alice sent a letter to Prince Philip in 1965 addressing him as such. Prince Philip and his mother did eventually reconcile, and she came to live with the royal family at Buckingham Palace at the end of her life.
Princess Alice died in 1969 after leaving Prince Philip a note reading, “Dearest Philip, be brave and remember I will never leave you and you will always find me when you need me most. All my devoted love, your old Mama.”
After his family was exiled from Greece at barely a year old, Prince Philip moved with his family to Paris, where they lived in the suburb of Saint Cloud. His father, Prince Andrew, didn’t last long in Paris, leaving the family shortly afterwards and settling in the south of France. Prince Andrew later relocated to Monte Carlo, where he spent much of the rest of his life drinking and gambling before he died in 1944.
Prince Philip lived in France for the next seven years, where he learned to speak French from a very early age. His knowledge of the language didn’t diminish much as he got older, as during an official state visit in 2008, France’s then first lady said he spoke impeccable French, according to the Daily Mail.
After Prince Philip’s mother had her nervous breakdown and was involuntarily committed, the young prince didn’t hear from her for five years. With a father living it up elsewhere and a mother in a Swiss mental institution, the responsibility for raising Prince Philip fell on his aunts and uncles. Fortunately, those aunts and uncles happened to be British royalty, and the Milford Havens and the Mountbattens took him in. Prince Philip would later adopt the surname Mountbatten.
It was his uncle, Louis “Dickie” Mountbatten, who cajoled Philip into accompanying a young Princess Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret during their visit to the Royal Naval College. The rest is British royal history.
Before he met Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip was educated at four different schools. The first was the MacJannet American School in France, while his mother was still living with him. However, after his parents left and his aunts and uncles were responsible for his education, Prince Philip was sent to Cheam School in the UK, then to a school in Germany owned by one of his sister’s husbands. After returning to the UK, Prince Philip was sent to Gordonstoun, a boarding school in Scotland. According to The Sun, he was captain of both the cricket and hockey teams there.
While Prince Philip was at Gordonstoun, tragedy struck his family on November 16, 1937. Philip’s sister, Princess Cecile of Greece and Denmark, was flying from Frankfurt, Germany, to London for her brother-in-law’s wedding. According to Closer Weekly, the flight was scheduled to land in Brussels, Belgium, en route to London when foggy weather supposedly caused an emergency landing in Ostend, Belgium. The thick fog caused the plane to hit a factory chimney, and the plane crashed, killing all 11 people on board. A later investigation found the plane may have been making an emergency landing because Cecile had gone into labor early.
For his part, the stoic Prince Philip didn’t let his sadness show much at school. Town and Country quoted a former classmate telling The Independent, “I suppose he just buried his feelings.”
Prince Philip’s sister Princess Cecile was married to George Donatus, a German duke who also died in the plane crash. According to Closer Weekly, both were members of the Nazi Party. Princess Cecile was not the only sister to marry a royal German. Philip’s sisters remained in Germany after their parents split, and they all ended up marrying German nobility. Princess Sophie married Prince Christoph of Hesse in 1930 when she was just 16. His oldest sister, Princess Margarita, married Prince Gottfried in 1931. That same year, Princess Theodora married her second cousin, Berthold, Margrave of Baden.
None of Prince Philip’s sisters were invited to his wedding to Queen Elizabeth in 1947, as wounds from World War II were still healing in Europe. The Independent also reports that photos exist of a 16-year-old Prince Philip surrounded by men doing Nazi salutes at Princess Cecile’s funeral.
Like many young men, Prince Philip was into fast cars and driving them faster than he probably should. Before their wedding, Princess Elizabeth wrote in a letter, “Philip enjoys driving and does it fast. He has his own tiny MG which he is very proud of. He has taken me about in it once up to London which was great fun only it was like sitting on the road and the wheels are almost as high as one’s head.”
Prince Philip’s appreciation for fast times continued after he married as well. The Times quoted royal biographer Robert Lacey saying, “For those very privileged people who have chauffeurs and footmen coming out of their ears, the ability to drive themselves takes on enormous significance. It is a form of freedom, of being in control of things.” Perhaps that’s why at the age of 98, Prince Philip was driving his own Range Rover when he crashed in 2019.
Before he met Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip attended the Dartmouth Britannia Royal Naval College, which among other things was the alma mater of King George VI. One weekend when Prince Philip was 18, the young cadet was asked to escort the King’s daughters, Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth, during the royal family’s official visit. The academy was in the midst of a dual outbreak of mumps and chickenpox, and Prince Philip was one of the few healthy cadets trusted to show the princesses around.
According to Vogue, Philip impressed the girls during a tennis exhibition, bounding with great athleticism over the nets between games. He sealed the deal with a future monarch by gorging himself on shrimp. While spending time on the King’s yacht, Victoria and Albert, Prince Philip reportedly polished off multiple helpings of shrimp and topped it off with a banana split.
Princess Elizabeth first met Philip when she was only 13. Her crush on her third cousin reportedly ran deep. Though the princess was smitten, Prince Philip was not quite so quick to commit. Though he maintained contact with Princess Elizabeth through World War II and his time in the Royal Navy, it would be 1947 before they were engaged. They’ve been married ever since, the longest-lasting marriage in the history of the British monarchy.
After finishing at the Royal Naval College, Philip was stationed on the HMS Ramillies in 1940 in the Indian Ocean. From there, he moved to the HMS Valiant, where according to Forces, he was mentioned in dispatches during the Battle of Cape Matapan after spotting enemy forces with his searchlights. He was later awarded the Greek War Cross of Valor for his actions.
Later in the war, while serving on the HMS Wallace, Prince Philip outsmarted enemy forces when he set a raft on fire to divert an enemy attack. According to The Sun, believing the flaming raft was a distressed British vessel, aircraft bombed the raft and left the Wallace and its 163 crew unharmed. The following year, in 1944, Prince Philip was appointed as a first lieutenant and served on the HMS Whelp in the Pacific.