Still beside the queen at 99: Prince Philip to mark birthday

London, June 9

There actually will not be a fuss. Count on that.

When Britain’s Prince Philip reaches the grand age of 99 on Wednesday, he’ll spend it quietly and in a lot the identical approach he is spent most of his grownup life: Beside Queen Elizabeth II.

The stalwart consort plans a quiet lunch at Windsor Castle, the place the senior royals have been sheltering as a result of COVID-19 pandemic. Some relations might name however the palace is saying little greater than that. Britain remains to be below coronavirus restrictions that restrict the scale of gatherings and Philip and the 94-year-old queen are nicely into the over-65 age group most susceptible to coronavirus.

The final 12 months hasn’t been a straightforward one for Philip, who retired from public life in 2017 after 65 years of supporting the queen.

In November, his second son, 60-year-old Prince Andrew, was pressured to step away from all royal public duties due to issues about his hyperlinks to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted American intercourse offender who died in a New York jail.

Two months later, Prince Harry, Philip’s grandson, and his spouse, the previous Meghan Markle, prompted additional controversy once they introduced they had been stepping away from royal duties, so they may search monetary independence in North America.

Wednesday’s birthday is simply the newest milestone for the person born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark on June 10, 1921, amid the upheaval that led to a army coup that overthrew his uncle, King Constantine of Greece, a couple of months later.

His dad and mom had been Princess Alice of Battenberg, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and Prince Andrew of Greece.

England’s King George V despatched a Royal Navy cruiser to evacuate Philip’s household, and the toddler prince was whisked to security in a cot comprised of an orange field. The younger Philip went to high school in Germany and Britain and barely noticed his dad and mom when he was rising up.

In 1939, Philip joined the British army as a cadet on the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. It was there he was requested to escort then-Princess Elizabeth and her sister on a go to to the power.

He served within the Royal Navy all through World War II, profitable point out in dispatches for service aboard the battleship HMS Valiant at Cape Matapan, on Greece’s Peloponnesian peninsula. Philip rose to the rank of commander, however his profession ended when his spouse grew to become Queen Elizabeth II after the demise of her father, King George VI, in 1952.

Philip had married the long run queen at Westminster Abbey in 1947 when she was 21, and he was 26. He renounced his Greek title and King George VI made him the Duke of Edinburgh. At Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953, Philip swore to be his spouse’s “liege man of life and limb,” and he settled right into a life-supporting the queen. — AP