When the Queen met Prince Philip: A royal love story in their own words
9 September 2022, 10:40 | Updated: 13 September 2022, 10:16
Following the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the nation mourns our monarch, and follows the passing of her husband the Duke of Edinburgh in 2021.
The 73-year love story of Prince Philip and Her Majesty The Queen is one that will be remembered forever.
On the morning of April 9, 2021 the royal family announced Prince Philip had passed away peacefully at Windsor Castle, and upon the announcement one of the most important love stories of the 20th and 21st centuries, came to an end.
Through thick and thin, the royal pair have been by side-by-side in service to the country and to one another, and yet little is known about the pair's affection and the secret to their marriage spanning over seven decades.
Here we bring you the Philip and Elizabeth's relationship – and their secrets to a happy marriage – in their own words:
The dashing Prince Philip and a young Princess Elizabeth first met at a family wedding and then five years later, when she was 13 and he was 18, during a visit to Dartmouth Naval College in 1939.
It was reported that Princess Elizabeth was immediately smitten with the Corfu-born Philip, Prince of Greece and Denmark, as he was then known and had eyes for no one else.
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"I've got letters from her saying, 'It's so exciting. Mummy says that Philip can come and stay,'" says the Queen's cousin Margaret Rhodes, adding: "She was truly in love from the very beginning."
Philip was away fighting in the Second World War, yet the pair's love endured and their engagement was announced in July 1947.
Prince Philip also expressed his affection for the future Queen during their engagement and in a letter to his mother-in-law, wrote "Cherish Lilibet? I wonder if that word is enough to express what is in me."
According to the book Young Prince Philip: His Turbulent Early Life, Prince Philip wrote a letter to Princess Elizabeth in c.1947, declaring: "I am sure that I do not deserve all the good things that have happened to me…To have been spared in the war and seen victory, to have been given the chance to rest and to re-adjust myself, to have fallen in love completely and unreservedly, makes all one's personal and even the world's troubles seem small and petty."
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The pair were married on November 20, 1947 and went on honeymoon first to Broadlands in Hampshire, the home of Philip's uncle, Earl Mountbatten and the rest of their honeymoon was spent at Birkhall on the Balmoral Estate.
After the wedding the Princess described her husband in letters to family members as "an angel" and "the best and nicest man in the world".
Just a few short years later after the untimely death of Elizabeth's father, the Princess was crowned Queen on June 2, 1953, with the strength and support of her Prince by her side.
“In the world that they were in, it was almost back to front. The Queen was taking on her role in a man’s world," said Prince William at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012. "The Duke of Edinburgh was taking on the role of consort as a very successful naval commander – and would have been an even bigger one."
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"Yet both of them carved their own paths and have done that ever since, to brilliant standards. Together, they’re a very good team.”
The couple went on to have four children, Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward and in turn eight grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.
In 1972, The Queen gave her thoughts 25 years of marriage: "If I am asked what I think about family life after 25 years of marriage, I can answer with equal simplicity and conviction, I am for it."
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On the night of her 50th wedding anniversary celebrations in 1997, the Queen made a speech at London’s Banqueting House and turned to speak to Prince Philip with uncharacteristic emotion: "All too often, I fear, Prince Philip has had to listen to me speaking," she began.
"Frequently we have discussed my intended speech beforehand and, as you will imagine, his views have been expressed in a forthright manner.
"He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years, and I, and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know."
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At another event to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, the Prince made a declaration of his own, saying in a toast in November 2017, "I think the main lesson we have learnt is that tolerance is the one essential ingredient in any happy marriage... You can take it from me, the Queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance."
For their most recent milestone in 2017 the couple celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary, which marked their platinum anniversary, with a private black-tie dinner attended by friends and family at Windsor Castle.
"I would love to know their secret," Prince William said during the celebrations. "They are the most lovely couple, and I hope Catherine and I have that sort of future ahead of us."
See more: Prince William helps Princess Diana with makeup in heartwarming unearthed video from 1985
"They are the most incredibly supportive couple to each other," Princess Eugenie said in 2012. "I think he is her rock really and she is his."
Perhaps the Queen's former private secretary, Lord Charteris, encapsulated it best: “Prince Philip is the only man in the world who treats the Queen simply as another human being," he once said. "He’s the only man who can."
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