Prince Philip’s Impeccable Royal Heritage

Prince Philip. Image from Wikimedia Commons

Prince Philip holds the distinction for being the last foreign-born royal to marry into the British Royal Family, when in 1947, he tied the knot with Princess Elizabeth, the heiress to the throne of the United Kingdom. Despite relinquishing his Greek citizenship and royal titles, it could not be denied that what runs in his veins is a blood more royal than his own bride’s. Born a prince of Greece and Denmark and a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Prince Philip calls royals from Denmark, Russia, France, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, United Kingdom, Prussia and other small German states as cousins, uncles, aunts, and so forth. In this article, let us explore Prince Philip’s impeccable royal heritage and the complicated web of his family relations.

Prince Philip, who was born on June 10, 1921, was the youngest and the only son in a brood of five. His father was Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, while his mother was Princess Alice of Battenberg. Her four older sisters were: Princess Margarita (1905-1981), who married Gottfried, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg; Princess Theodora (1906-1969), who was wife to Berthold, Margrave of Baden; Princess Cecilie (1911-1937), who, together with her husband, Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse, and their family, perished after an air crash; and Princess Sophie (1914-2001),who married, first, Prince Christoph of Hesse, and secondly, Prince George William of Hanover.

Prince Andrew of Greece: of Danish/German and Russian heritage

Prince and Princess Andrew of Greece

Prince Andrew was the seventh child and fourth son of King George I of Greece and Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia. King George was born Prince William, from the House of Glucksburg, a Danish/German family, who rose to prominence when the Great Powers agreed that William’s father should succeed the childless Frederick VII as king of Denmark in 1863. Barely eight months before his father ascended the Danish throne, seventeen-year old William, who was originally destined for a career in the Royal Danish Navy, was elected by the Greek assembly and also supported by the Great Powers to become King of Greece. He took the dynastic name George I and in 1867,  married Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna, the second child and elder daughter of Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaievich and his wife, Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg. Constantine was the second son of Czar Nicholas I of Russia. Together, George and Olga had eight children, the seventh was Prince Andrew. As such, on his father’s side, Prince Philip was a grandson of the King of Greece, a great-grandson of the King of Denmark, and a great-great grandson of the Czar of Russia.

In 1902, while attending the coronation of King Edward VII, Prince Andrew met the beautiful Princess Alice of Battenberg. They married three times, once in a civil ceremony, and twice in church wedding. On October 6, 1903, their civil marriage took place in Darmstadt. The following day, they were married first, in a Lutheran ceremony at the Evangelical Castle Church, which was followed by a Greek Orthodox wedding at the Russian Chapel on the Mathildenhöhe.

Princess Alice of Battenberg: A German Princess Under Queen Victoria’s Ward

A young Prince Philip (second from the left) with his family. He was a generation apart from her sisters.

Princess Alice was born in the Tapestry Room at Windsor Castle on February 25, 1885. As it was when her mother, Princess Victoria, came into this world, Queen Victoria was present at the birth of her great-granddaughter. She was the eldest child of Prince Louis of Battenberg and  Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Prince Louis of Battenberg was the eldest son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine by his morganatic marriage to Countess Julia von Hauke. Alexander was the third son and fourth child of Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse, and Princess Wilhelmina of Baden and was also a brother of Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna, wife of Czar Alexander II, who was the older brother of Grand Duke Constantine Nicholaevich.

Despite of their morganatic origins, the Battenbergs rose to prominence. The oldest of the siblings, Princess Marie of Battenberg, became a respected writer and translator.  The second, Louis, of course, married his first cousin-once-removed, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. The third child, Alexander, was elected as the sovereign Prince of Bulgaria in 1879, only to abdicate in  1886 following a pro-Russian coup. The fourth child, Henry, married Princess Beatrice, the youngest daughter and child of Queen Victoria, and was the father of Victoria Eugenie, Queen of Spain. The youngest and most academically-inclined, Francis Joseph, married Princess Ana Petrović-Njegoš of Montenegro, the sixth daughter of Prince Nicholas I of Montenegro, whose two older daughters, Anastasia and Militza married two Russian grand dukes and were labelled as the “Black Peril” in the imperial court.

Prince Louis born in Graz and spent his younger years in Europe, but he decided to pursue a career in the British Royal Navy and took on British citizenship. Despite his royal connections, he rose to the ranks through his hard work and dedication. In 1912, he was appointed First Sea Lord, but at the height of World War I, with anti-German sentiments raging like wildfire, he was dragged into his retirement. He later joined other German princes who were members of the British Royal Family to drop their German titles and settle for British-sounding family names. With these changes, Prince Louis became Marquess of Milford Haven and took the family name Mountbatten.

Prince Louis has often met Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, his first-cousin-once removed, during family gatherings. The two eventually fell in love, theirs was a love match, unlike many of their relations who married for dynastic reasons. Despite the protestations of Victoria’s father, the princess’ will prevailed and she and Prince Louis were married on April 30, 1884 at Darmstadt. Surprisingly, Grand Duke Ludwig married her mistress, Countess Alexandrine von Hutten-Czapska, on the evening of that same time. A shocked Queen Victoria pressured his son-in-law to annul his own marriage, which he did a month after.

Prince Louis and Princess Victoria’s marriage was a happy one and they had four children,who all lived through adulthood: Princess Alice (1885-1969), Prince Philip’s mother; Louise (1889-1965), who married, as his second wife, Crown Prince and later King Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden; George (1892-1938), later second Marquess of Milford Haven, who married Countess Nadejda de Torby,

the second daughter of Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia and his morganatic wife Countess Sophie von Merenberg; and Louis (1900-1979), later Earl Mountbatten of Burma, who married the heiress Edwina Ashley.

Princess Victoria was the eldest daughter and child of Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, the second daughter and third child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Like her daughter Alice, who was born when she was 22, her mother gave birth in the presence of Queen Victoria in Windsor Castle. Her father was Prince Ludwig of Hesse and by Rhine, who, in 1877, succeeded as the sovereign Grand Duke of the German grand duchy. His father, Ludwig III, was the older brother of Prince Alexander of Hesse, as such, Princess Victoria was a first-cousin once-removed to Prince Louis of Battenberg. Victoria was also the older sister of Princess Elizabeth, later Grand Duchess Serge of Russia; Princess Irene, Princess  Henry of Prussia;  the Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig; and Princess Alix, later Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia.  Tragedy struck the family when Elizabeth and Alix, her husband Czar Nicholas II and their two children were murdered by the Bolsheviks at the height of the Russian Revolution in 1918.

Later when her husband dropped their German titles, Prince Victoria was given the option to retain her title as princess but she, instead decided to take the feminine form of her husband’s title. She also raised a young Prince Philip after Princess Alice suffered from nervous breakdown and Prince Andrew settled on the French Riviera.

As such, on her maternal side, Prince Philip claims ancestry on Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and Grand Duke Ludwig II of Hesse. On both paternal and maternal sides, he called cousins the members of almost every royal house in Europe… So that explains the extensive and complicated relations of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, a royal through and through.