Prince Philip’s life in 50 photos

And so it begins…the fateful day when Prince Philip brought Prince Charles to his first day as a student at Gordonstoun School. According to Vanity Fair, it was here that Charles experienced a great deal of bullying, but also became an avid polo player (much to his father’s joy) and developed a great interest in Shakespeare. Perhaps Philip’s attitude towards fatherhood had to do with trying to stay humble. “In the first years of the Queen’s reign, the level of adulation – you wouldn’t believe it,” he’s quoted as saying in The Telegraph. “You really wouldn’t. It could have been corroding. It would have been very easy to play to the gallery, but I took a conscious decision not to do that. Safer not to be too popular. You can’t fall too far.”

Prince Philip loves sports and, according to Polo Weekly, gifted his son Prince Charles with a polo mallet at the age of 15. In fact, the Duke of Edinburgh is responsible for founding England’s Windsor Park polo team, as well as Guards Polo Club. In this photo, taken in 1975, Prince Philip talks to Charles before a polo match at Windsor.

For an entire year in 1969, Philip and Elizabeth’s family was filmed for a BBC documentary appropriately titled Royal Family. It was broadcast on both BBC One and ITV, and while the still photos, like this one of Prince Philip painting, are all kinds of fascinating, the doc was widely panned by audiences and critics alike. According to History.com, the film was produced in an effort to make the Queen appear more, but it backfired. Still, we wouldn’t mind watching the documentary today with a modern-day perspective.

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In his younger days, Prince Philip did a lot of travelling with the Queen. In fact, he rarely stopped moving until he finally decided to retire from public life in 2017. In another snap from the Royal Family documentary, we see Philip and Elizabeth in flight, returning from a visit to Yorkshire. Many of the official royal visits you now see William and Kate or Charles and Camilla make are the same sorts of tours that the Queen and the Duke made previously, before health concerns made it more difficult for them to shuffle about as frequently.

If the name Frogmore Cottage sounds familiar, it’s because the home that was given to Harry and Meghan upon their marriage that created such a ruckus, with rumours of lavish renovations and ridiculous demands surrounding the cutesy-sounding estate. Take a look at Frogmore Cottage way back when, as the Queen, Prince Philip, and the kids hang out on the lush grass outside. This is where Elizabeth celebrated her 39th birthday, with teenaged Charles and Anne, plus little ones Andrew and Edward.

One common bond Prince Philip and Prince Charles share is their love for polo. In 1967, the father-son duo were victorious when they won the Junior County Championship alongside their Windsor Park team. The match, which took place in Little Bidworth, Cheshire, ended with a three-point victory over the opposing team, Cowdrey. To make the whole thing even sweeter, it was Charles who scored the winning goal. This photo was taken while Prince Philip was getting in some last-minute practice before the big competition.

Here, Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth share some family time with the kids in the drawing-room at Sandringham House in Norfolk. We’d love to know what Edward is pointing out to his father in the newspaper. And what’s the deal with Prince Andrew and the bow and arrow indoors? Meanwhile, Princess Anne is just looking adoringly at her mother. If only we could have been a fly on one of those expensive walls.

The Queen and the Duke have been married for a long time. A really long time, in fact. Here, they take a portrait with their children in the Belgian Suite of Buckingham Palace as they celebrated their Silver Wedding Anniversary in 1972. The silver anniversary marks 25 years of marriage, and, boy, did this couple experience a lot in those 25 years alone. Between the Queen’s coronation just five years after they were wed and the birth of their four kids in the ensuing years, they lived a lifetime in their first two-and-a-half decades as husband and wife.

The world loves a royal wedding, so it was exciting indeed when Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips in 1973. The two met five years earlier and bonded over a shared love of horses. The wedding, held at Westminster Abbey, was, of course, televised, and the couple went on to have two children together, Zara and Peter. Sadly their relationship ended in divorce by 1989. Princess Anne went on to marry Sir Timothy Laurence in 1992, not long after her divorce from Phillips was finalised, according to Harper’s Bazaar. At the time, the Church of England didn’t allow second marriages, so the couple wed in Scotland instead.

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Here’s another super relaxed Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip photo at their Balmoral home. It makes you wonder if these two ever have a chance to wear stretchy pants and T-shirts for a truly comfortable at-home experience. And who is Prince Philip talking to? This snap, taken on September 26, 1976, leaves us with more questions than answers about day-to-day royal life. But we do love that Philip is lovingly petting their dorgi (a corgi and dachshund mix). The family has been known to have corgis as pets for decades, but from 1976 on, they’ve been spotted as pet parents to the dorgi mix, reports Woman’s World.