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The BBC, the British public television station, interrupted its regular programming to announce the death of Prince Philip of Edinburgh, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
The presenter who released the news mourned the loss of the 99-year-old Duke and read the official statement from Buckingham Palace live.
Prince philip died after becoming the longest-lived royal consort of the British Crown, with more than 70 years with Queen Elizabeth II.
He was always in the shadow of his wife, with great loyalty and a propensity to show little respect for what was politically correct. “It is better to disappear than to reach the expiration date”, he had said a few years ago with his particular sense of humor.
If his wife, who came to the throne in 1952, broke all longevity records as a monarch, Felipe was the consort who held that honor the longest. It was since 2009, when it surpassed Carlota, the wife of Jorge III. “It’s my rock. It has been my strength and my support.” The queen once said, unlikely to show affection in public.
In 2017 he retired from public activities after having participated in more than 22,000 official events, but its main value was to be “the only man in the world to treat the queen as a human being, as equals”, Lord Charteris, former private secretary of the monarch, once explained.
Tall and stiff, always behind the queen as required by protocol, Felipe assumed his secondary role with better or worse disposition.
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FILE PHOTO: Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh leave the National Army Museum in London, Britain March 16, 2017.
By her own admission, it took years of apprenticeship to find her place in the shadow of Elizabeth II and in the hearts of the British, but then enjoyed a high popularity rating, as did his wife.
He often tried to get away with it, but came to his senses. Like in January 2019, when a traffic accident revealed that he was still driving at 97 years old. Despite criticism, he took the wheel again two days later and without wearing a seat belt. But three weeks later, he gave in to pressure and handed in his driver’s license.
Indifferent to what they will say
A Vanuatu tribe came to venerate him as a divinity linked to the spirits of the Yasur volcano. His temperament was indeed volcanic, without any regard for political correctness, although in recent years it has calmed down.
“Have you managed to avoid being eaten?” He asked a young British man who had just traveled from Papua New Guinea in 1998.
“You have mosquitoes, I have journalists.” He said in Dominica in 1966. Then he would compare journalists to the monkeys of Gibraltar.
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On another occasion, a boy confessed to him that he wanted to be an astronaut and the duke replied that he was too fat to fly.
When asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union, he said: “I’d love to visit Russia, even though those bastards murdered half my family”. (Alluding to the fate of the Romanovs).
His environment heard him curse his luck a thousand times, growl against the loss of values or against the follies of his four children in the 1980s, and even against “the damn mutts of the queen, always sticking to the legs.
“People have the impression that Prince Philip does not care what they think of him and they are right,” said former Prime Minister Tony Blair in his memoirs.