How The Queen Decided That Her Family Would Mourn Prince

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How The Queen Decided That Her Family Would Mourn Prince Philip In Civilian Dress



This Saturday's funeral rites for patriarch and Britain's official Grand Old Man will be filled with much protocol—not the least of which will be the British armed forces' celebrated roles within the Windsor Castle walls. But, much to the detriment of the ceremony and to its historical role and meaning, one thing we will not see is Prince Philip's direct male heirs in uniform.

Neither Princes Charles, William, Edward, nor certainly and more pointedly, Harry or Andrew, will be in military dress, it was announced late on April 14. All will be in mufti. It's those last two members of the family who have driven the decision, reportedly reached by the Queen herself late in the day.

That Prince Philip thought himself a Navy man to the end of his life is perhaps best evidenced by an hilariously dry barb he tossed upon being asked an innocuous question more than a half-century in, that he was, as the lifelong consort to the Queen, on "leave" from his Navy job. Philip didn't just look the part of a Navy officer, he was one, and a pretty fair one at that, gauging from his war record in the North Sea, where he chased Hitler's submarines, in the Mediterranean, where he participated in the landings on Sicily, and in the Pacific, where he witnessed, from his ship in Tokyo Bay, the surrender of the Japanese onboard the USS Missouri. Deeply attached to his service, and a graduate of the naval academy at Dartmouth, he was a completed man: The work inhabited him, and he it, for the rest of his life.

Philip's funeral on Saturday will be a largely military circumstance, as befits the man. He will, according to his carefully-worked plan, be buried in naval dress, his coffin will be borne by various honor guards, and the ceremony will feature drills and tattoos by favored regiments from all services, whose connections to the Duke of Edinburgh are long standing. Charles, Anne, and Edward have not served in the military, but each of them bear a host of close long-standing military patronages that permit military kit.

Prince Philip's two direct descendants that do have sterling military records — who are also combat veterans with longstanding connections to their units as well as to many other military units — are, of course, the princes Andrew and Harry. For very different sets of reasons, both Andrew and Harry present problematic figures for the royal family and for the courtly administrators of the funeral to put in uniform at any official royal family engagement, let alone one of Saturday's extreme rarity and gravity. Until late on the evening of April 14, therein lay the rub.

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