But who was Philip before he became His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh, consort to the British monarch? Philip was born into the Greek royal family on June 10, 1921, on the island of Corfu and christened Philippos by his parents. His father was Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, who was in the line of succession to both the Greek and Danish thrones. His mother Princess Alice of Battenburg was born in Windsor Castle—poignantly, the same place where her son Philip would die 136 years after her birth in 1885. Her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, was present at her birth. Andrew and Alice had five children: Princess Margarita, Princess Theodora, Princess Cecile, Princess Sophie, and Prince Philip. Prince Andrew was brother to King Constantine I of Greece. When Greece lost the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, Andrew and his family had to flee. This is when 18-month-old Philip was famously smuggled off Corfu in an orange box. The Greek royal family thus began their banishment in Paris, where Philip and his sisters were dressed in hand-me-down clothes. Eventually, Philip was sent to school in Britain and his father Andrew went to live on the French Riviera. In 1930, Alice was committed to a sanatorium where she was treated for schizophrenia by Sigmund Freud. She was discharged in 1932 and would not see her husband again until the funeral of their daughter Cecile in 1937, who was killed in a plane crash along with her husband and two sons. Although Andrew and Alice were separated their divorce was never finalized. Andrew died in 1944. In 1948 Alice returned to Greece and set up an order of nuns, the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary. She would wear the nun’s habit for the rest of her life, including at her daughter-in-law Princess Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953. She died at Buckingham Palace in 1969, having joined her son there two years before. Next up, find out more about Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s four children. https://parade.com/1192749/roisinkelly/prince-philip-pictures/
