The UK mourned the passing of HRH Prince Philip on Friday 9 April – the longest serving consort in British history and the longest-lived male member of the British royal family. But what was the former Duke of Edinburgh’s family tree like?
A third cousin to the Queen, Prince Philip was born in Corfu eight years after the assassination of his grandfather, King George I of Greece, the latter murdered by someone said to belong to a socialist organisation.
King George I’s mother and father were both great-grandchildren of Frederick V of Denmark and great-great-grandchildren of George II of Great Britain.
Relationship to Queen Victoria
King George’s seventh child and fourth son, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark married Princess Alice of Battenberg, and Phillip was their youngest child and only son. The relationship to Queen Elizabeth is through Queen Victoria, whose marriage to Prince Albert produced nine children, 42 grandchildren, and 87 great-grandchildren.
Queen Victoria’s oldest son, Edvard VII was Queen Elizabeth’s great-grandfather through her paternal line, while her second oldest daughter, Princess Alice, was Prince Philip’s great-grandmother through his maternal line.
Philip was also related to the Russian House of Romanov through both his parents. He was a direct descendant of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia via his grandmother Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia. His other grandmother, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, was a sister of Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse), the wife of Emperor Nicholas II.
DNA proof of Romanov identity
In 1993, scientists were able to confirm the identity of the remains of several members of the Romanov family found in the Koptyaki forest, more than seventy years after they were assassinated by Communist revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky in 1918, by comparing their mitochondrial DNA to living matrilineal relatives, including Philip.
In the popular Netflix series, The Crown, much has been made of the relationship between Prince Philip and Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Born Prince Louis of Battenberg, the Battenberg family members living in the UK changed their name to Mountbatten in 1917 because of the rising anti-German sentiment during the First World War.
The Earl’s grandmother had been Princess Alice too and his oldest sister was Princess Alice of Greece and Denmark, the mother of Prince Philip. Upon becoming a naturalised British subject, Prince Philip took the surname Mountbatten.
Royal house remained Windsor
When Queen Elizabeth acceded the throne in 1952, there had been some dispute as which family their descendants would belong. Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth’s grandmother, told Winston Churchill that she disliked the idea of the House of Mountbatten succeeding the House of Windsor as the royal dynasty. When the matter was raised in Parliament, MPs decided that the royal house would remain Windsor.
Incidentally, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s son is known as Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, as are Prince Edwards’ two offspring, Lady Louise and James, the Viscount Severn. When Prince William and his wife Catherine filed a lawsuit against a French magazine, they were named in the lawsuit as Monsieur et Madame Mountbatten-Windsor.
Prince Philip had four children, eight grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.
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