Philip, duke of Edinburgh

known as Prince Philip

born June 10, 1921, Corfu, Greece

Husband of Queen Elizabeth II of Britain.

Son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark (1882–1944) and Princess Alice (1885–1969), a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, he was reared in Britain. In World War II he served in combat with the Royal Navy. In 1947 he became a British subject, taking his mother's surname, Mountbatten, and renouncing his right to the Greek and Danish thrones. He married Princess Elizabeth in 1947 and continued on active service in the navy until her accession to the throne in 1952. Charles, prince of Wales, is their son.

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▪ British prince

in full  Prince Philip, duke of Edinburgh, earl of Merioneth and baron Greenwich,  also called  Philip Mountbatten,  original name  Philip, prince of Greece and Denmark 

born June 10, 1921, Corfu, Greece

 

 husband of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

      Philip's father was Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark (1882–1944), a younger son of King George I of the Hellenes (originally Prince William of Denmark). His mother was Princess Alice (1885–1969), who was the eldest daughter of Louis Alexander Mountbatten, 1st marquess of Milford Haven, and Princess Victoria of Hesse and the Rhine, granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Reared chiefly in Great Britain, Philip was educated at Gordonstoun School, near Elgin, Moray, and at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. From January 1940 to the end of World War II, he served with the Royal Navy in combat in the Mediterranean and the Pacific.

 On February 28, 1947, Philip became a British subject, renouncing his right to the Greek and Danish thrones and taking his mother's surname, Mountbatten. (His father's family name had been Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.) His marriage to his distant cousin Princess Elizabeth (Elizabeth II) took place in Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947. On the eve of his wedding, he was designated a royal highness and was created a Knight of the Garter, Baron Greenwich, earl of Merioneth, and duke of Edinburgh. He continued on active service with the Royal Navy, commanding the frigate Magpie, until Elizabeth's accession on February 6, 1952, from which time he shared her official and public life. Since then, Philip has attended an average of 350 official engagements a year on behalf of the royal household.

 In 1957 she conferred on him the dignity of prince of the United Kingdom, and in 1960 his surname was legally combined with the name of her family—as Mountbatten-Windsor—as a surname for lesser branches of the royal family. His outspoken right-wing views, the public expression of which he has sometimes found hard to resist, have occasionally embarrassed a monarchy trying to put aside its traditional upper-crust image. While much of his time was spent fulfilling the duties of his station, Philip engaged in a variety of philanthropic endeavours. He served as president of the World Wildlife Fund from 1981 to 1996, and his International Award program allowed more than six million young adults to engage in community service, leadership development, and physical fitness activities.

 

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