Queen Elizabeth’s husband Prince Philip dead at 99

Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II‘s husband and the longest-serving consort of any British monarch, has died at age 99.

Philip spent 65 years supporting the queen, retiring from his public role in 2017 and staying largely out of the view since. In his active years, he helped set a new course for the monarchy under a young queen, championing Britain itself, as well as environmental causes, science and technology.

“It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen announces the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement Friday (Apr. 09, 2021). “His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle. Further announcements will be made in due course. The Royal Family join with people around the world in mourning his loss.”

“His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle.”

The couple had four children (Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward), eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

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The intensely private prince will likely be remembered for his early efforts to help modernize the royal family’s image during a time of great change for Britain and the world, especially at the outset of Elizabeth’s reign in 1952. He also developed a reputation for the occasional brusque comment and crass, if not racist jokes.

“The queen inherited from her father a model of monarchy that was very hands off, old-fashioned and slightly invisible,” said Sarah Gristwood, a historian and the author of Elizabeth: The Queen and the Crown.

Philip met Princess Elizabeth for the first time in 1934 at the wedding of Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark and Prince George, the Duke of Kent. Elizabeth was not the heir apparent at the time but became so two years later after her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated so that he could marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.