Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Athens for a month in mid-1939. At the behest of the Greek king, George II, he returned to Britain in September to resume training for the Royal Navy. He graduated from Dartmouth the next year as the best cadet in his course. During the Second World War, he continued to serve in the British forces, while two of his brothers-in-law, Prince Christoph of Hesse and Berthold, Margrave of Baden, fought on the opposing German side. Philip was appointed as a midshipman in January 1940. He spent four months on the battleship HMS "Ramillies", protecting convoys of the Australian Expeditionary Force
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in male line to the Danish House of Glücksburg, originally a cadet branch of the House of Oldenburg, which held several thrones and provided consorts to rulers of Russia and Great Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1993, scientists were able to confirm the identity of the remains of several members of Empress Alexandra of Russia's family, more than seventy years after their massacre in 1918, by comparing their mitochondrial DNA to living matrilineal relatives, including Prince Philip, her maternal grandnephew. Philip, Alexandra and her children are all descended from Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, the daughter