Prince Philip will be home in time to celebrate his 91st birthday tomorrow, as he left the hospital today after being treated for a bladder infection. Queen Elizabeth recently marked her Diamond Jubilee, but she already celebrated her diamond wedding anniversary back in 2007. Before Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth in 1952, she married the handsome foreign prince from Greece who also happened to be her third cousin, the now Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
According to Sally Bedell Smith's new biography, Elizabeth the Queen, Philip came from a tumultuous background despite his lineage. Born in 1921 on Corfu, he moved to Paris with his parents, Prince Andrew of Greece and mother Alice, at age 1. By age 8, he'd headed to England for boarding school. While there, his parents separated following his mother's nervous breakdown. She later went back to Greece to start an order of nuns. His father took a different path, living as a socialite in Monte Carlo. As for Philip's four sisters, they married wealthy Germans, some of whom had Nazi ties. That meant Philip couldn't go back to visit as World War II approached.
With generous amounts of good looks and confidence, Philip was able to make his way in England with the help of royal relatives. He met his cousin Elizabeth first at a family wedding in 1934 and then again at the coronation of her father in 1937. He would later be invited to have lunch with the royal family, and that's when Elizabeth reportedly fell for him. During World War II, Philip and Elizabeth wrote each other letters. By 1946, he was back in London and making regular visits to Buckingham Palace. During that Summer, he spent a month at the royal family's Balmoral Estate, where he proposed. At the king's request, they kept it a secret until after her 21st birthday. The wedding was held at Westminster Abbey on Nov. 20, 1947. While on their honeymoon, he wrote a letter to his new mother-in-law, explaining his "ambition to weld the two of us into a new combined existence that will not only be able to withstand the shocks directed at us, but will also have a positive existence for good."
During their almost 65 years of marriage, 60 of them during Elizabeth's reign as the monarch, Prince Philip has been as constant as the queen herself, although he's a bit more controversial, making quite a few insensitive gaffes. But when he's not giving the press an unfortunate quote to run, he's either by the queen's side, working as a patron for 800 charities, or, until recently, enjoying carriage racing. At age 90, he doesn't look like he's slowing down, despite a recent heart scare over Christmas. Let's look back at pictures of Prince Philip over the years.
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