Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, passed away peacefully on Friday, April 9, 2021. He was the longest serving royal-consort in British history. Yet the 25 years he lived before marrying then Princess Elizabeth were marked by many tragic, conflicting events.

Philip Mountbatten was born on the Greek Island of Corfu on June 10, 1921 as sixth in line to the Greek throne. His parents were Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. His grandmother, Olga Constantinova, was a Romanov and his grandfather was Christian IX of Denmark. It is obvious that he was born into royalty based on who his ancestors were. However, his childhood was far from pretty.

In 1922, when Philip was just a baby, his uncle, the king of Greece, was forced to abdicate the thrown due to the Greco-Turkish War and his father, who worked in the army, was accused of treason. Due to this, the family fled to Paris. In 1931, his mother suffered from a nervous breakdown and became confined to a sanatorium in Switzerland where she would later be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Philip did not spend a large amount of time with his parents as a child and was left all alone at just ten years old when his four older sisters married German aristocrats and his father moved to southern France.

Under the care of aunts and uncles, Philip went to school in England, then was briefly educated in Germany, and was finally sent to a boarding school in Scotland. At just 16 years old, Philip experienced the death of his closest sister, Cecile, after she died alongside her husband and two children in a plane crash. She was pregnant with her third child at the time. A few months later, his uncle and guardian, George Mountbatten, died suddenly of cancer at only 46 years old. After he left school, he joined the Royal Navy and enrolled at the Royal Navy College in Dartmouth, England. Because his sisters were married to Germans, he found himself on the opposite side of his brothers-in-law during World War II, as they were fighting for the Nazis. During this time, he would also meet his future wife (and the future Queen of England), when he was 18 and she was just 13. Seven years later, in 1947, they would get married.

Prince Philip’s early life was extraordinary to say the least. He will be remembered by many for his witty, no-nonsense personality.