Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, 10 June 1921), is the husband and consort of Queen Elizabeth II. Philip was born into the Greek and Danish royal families. He was born in Greece, but his family was exiled from the country when he was an infant. After being educated in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, he joined the British Royal Navy in 1939, aged 18. From July 1939, he began corresponding with the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth, whom he had first met in 1934. During the Second World War
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Mountbatten", as Elizabeth would typically have taken Philip's last name on marriage; however, when Queen Mary, Elizabeth's grandmother, heard of this suggestion, she informed the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who himself later advised the Queen to issue a royal proclamation declaring that the royal house was to remain known as the House of Windsor. Churchill's strong personal antipathy to Lord Mountbatten, whom he considered a dangerous and subversive rival who had lost India, may have contributed to this. Prince Philip privately complained, "I am nothing but a bloody amoeba. I am the only man in the country not allowed