LONDON
— As dawn broke following a frenzied, middle-of-the-night scramble by
the global news media for strategic real estate outside …
Queen Elizabeth's husband, Prince Philip, will "no longer carry out public engagements" starting in the fall, Buckingham Palace says, announcing …
As scheduled, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip headed to a Thursday morning service for members of the Order of Merit. After the ceremony, …
LONDON
— As dawn broke following a frenzied, middle-of-the-night scramble by
the global news media for strategic real estate outside Buckingham
Palace, the much anticipated announcement finally came: A 95-year-old
man was retiring.
That would be Prince Philip, also known as the Duke of Edinburgh, the gaffe-prone but grumpily endearing and loyal husband of Queen Elizabeth II,
who has been her consort for 70 years — the longest royal union in
British history — and has served the country for nearly as long.
“His
Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh has decided that he will no longer
carry out public engagements from the autumn of this year. In taking
this decision, the duke has the full support of the queen,” read the
terse statement from the palace, which gave no reason for the
retirement. It added that the queen’s role would be unchanged, and that
while Prince Philip would retreat from public view he may occasionally
attend public events.
Only minutes earlier, outside the palace, more than a dozen television crews and assembled journalists from Britain,
the United States, France, Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Australia had
been watching for even the slightest clue about what was happening.
Speculation was rife — unfounded speculation, as it turned out — that
either Prince Philip or the queen might be dead.
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The
flag atop Buckingham Palace was at full mast, signaling that the queen
was fine and at home. Beyond the possibility that there would be an
announcement of a royal death – an event that would be carefully
choreographed after years of preparation — various other possibilities
were discussed in whispers. Could it be an abdication crisis? Some sort
of security threat at one of the queen’s many lavish homes? A palace
decoration emergency?
At one point, a group of royal-looking horses trotted by, galvanizing a flock of photographers into action. False alarm.
“This is more exciting than the election,” mused Rachael Venables,
a reporter for LBC, a London-based talk radio station, alluding to
Britain’s somewhat lackluster upcoming general election, which Prime
Minister Theresa May and the Conservatives are widely expected to win
handily.
The
media scrum had been touched off by a report in The Daily Mail, a
British tabloid, that all members of the queen’s staff had been ordered
to a meeting in London, and that employees from royal residences across
the country would be in attendance.
The
Daily Mail described the meeting as “highly unusual,” and Buckingham
Palace’s silence on the matter early in the morning allowed rumors to
flourish. A palace official said such gatherings happened every now and
then, and that there was “no reason for alarm.”
The
Sun, Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid, erroneously published an
unfinished obituary of Prince Philip on its website for a few minutes on
Thursday morning. The headline read: “Prince Philip dead at 95, how did
the Duke of Edinburgh die, etc etc.” “We are mortified this happened,” a
Sun executive later said.
An
announcement was rumored to be forthcoming at 8 a.m., and when it
failed to come BBC television news said its top story of the morning
would be the sharp rise in eating disorders among men. Palace gardeners
could be seen jovially going about their chores. Bemused tourists near
the palace asked what all the fuss was about.
Adding
to the confusion was the fact that both the queen and Prince Philip had
performed duties on Wednesday: The queen met Mrs. May and the prince
cut a ribbon to open a new stand of seats at a cricket ground. If a
royal personage had died, the palace was behaving with remarkable
stoicism.
The
royal family are beloved fixtures in Britain and speculation about
royal health has been simmering for months. The prince was ill during
the holiday period while the queen, who is 91, was not seen in public
for nearly a month after missing church services on Christmas and New
Year’s Day because of what Buckingham Palace described as a persistent cold.
A
former naval officer, Prince Philip has earned a reputation as a royal
workhorse and a steadfast spouse to the queen, even as he has sometimes
come under criticism for making rude and occasionally out-of-place
remarks.
During
a trip to Canada in 1976, he had this to say: “We don’t come here for
our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves.”
In
1986, while on an official visit to China, he told a group of British
exchange students living in the city of Xi’an that if they stayed much
longer “you’ll all be slitty-eyed.”
In
1995 on a visit to Scotland, he met a driving instructor. “How do you
keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?” he asked.
Yet
despite his propensity for political incorrectness, on Thursday he came
in for praise, the memory of earlier embarrassments perhaps blunted by
the sheer stamina and longevity of the foreign-born prince as he
approaches 100. Mrs. May, the leader of the Conservative Party, offered
him “our deepest gratitude and good wishes.”
Prince
Philip’s essentially diplomatic role as royal consort did not come
naturally, even as he has served as a patron, a president or a member of
over 780 organizations. When interviewed by the Independent
in 1992, he reflected with characteristic bluntness on his various
honorary functions, including roles on a committee on coinage and at the
wildlife charity WWF.
“It
was not my ambition to be president of the Mint Advisory Committee. I
didn’t want to be president of WWF. I was asked to do it,” he said,
before adding: “I’d much rather have stayed in the Navy, frankly.”
A
nephew of Greece’s King Constantine I, Prince Philip was born in 1921
on the dining room table of a villa on the Greek island of Corfu. Known
for his passion for the rugged outdoors, he represents an era when
Britain ruled large parts of the world and gentlemen wore their lack of
visible emotion like a badge of honor. That style has been blamed for
making him a distant figure in the lives of his children, particularly
Prince Charles, the heir to the throne.
There
has also been speculation about his marriage to the queen. When asked
by the Independent about rumors of infidelity, he replied wryly: “Have
you ever stopped to think that for the last 40 years, I have never moved
anywhere without a policeman accompanying me? So how the hell could I
get away with anything like that?”
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