Banished from his home, Philip gave up his crown, country and career to be with Elizabeth.
The groom barely stole a glance as they walked up the aisle.
An audience of 200 million people across the world gathered for the broadcast as the bride, a future monarch, made her way to the altar of Westminster Abbey.
Not much attention was paid to Philip, dressed in his naval uniform and decorated with medals from his military career as well as his new title, Duke of Edinburgh.
He and Elizabeth came to a halt in front of the archbishops of Canterbury and York for what was the first great celebration of the post-war era.
They listened patiently to the ways in which their union would entangle them forever, more so than a regular marriage.
While Elizabeth would gain a husband, Philip’s “I will” was a vow to not only love his wife, but also a pledge to spend a lifetime in service of the Crown.
The blond Greek Apollo and the princess
They had met in 1934 at his cousin’s wedding.
Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark was marrying Prince George, the Duke of Kent — Elizabeth’s uncle.
Elizabeth was eight years old. At 13, Philip was already a teenager.
Princess Elizabeth was third in line to the British throne but at that time not seriously expected to inherit the Crown; her uncle King Edward VIII would reign for less than a year before abdicating.
Philip of Greece and Denmark was just as connected to royalty.
But despite his gilded lineage, he was a prince without a home or a kingdom, and his family were living in relative poverty after their banishment from Greece.
Philip and Elizabeth’s paths would eventually cross again, but in the years before they became an iconic couple, the blue-eyed, ash-blond boy earned a reputation as a ladies’ man.
At 17, after finishing school, Philip stayed with his “auntie” Aspasia, Princess of Greece and Denmark, in Venice.
Mindful of his son’s upcoming entrance exams into the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, Philip’s father warned his cousin’s wife to “keep [Philip] out of girl trouble”.
Aspasia’s daughter, Alexandra, described Philip at that point in his life as “very amusing, gay, full of life and energy and a tease”.
“Blondes, brunettes and redhead charmers, Philip gallantly and, I think, quite impartially squired them all,” she recalled.
Distractions granted, Philip still secured his place at Dartmouth, and would later be named the best cadet of his class.
One day at the college in July 1939, he was called to chaperone two young girls while their parents attended a special service — Elizabeth, then-heir to the throne, and her sister Margaret.
“Philip rather resented it, I believe — a youth of 18, called to help entertain a girl of 13 and a child of nine,” Alexandra wrote in The Australia’s Women’s Weekly in 1960.
The shy princess Elizabeth barely said a word as together they ate ginger crackers, drank lemonade and played a game of croquet.
But after Philip had left, Elizabeth admired: “How good he is.”
The pair began exchanging letters after this second meeting, and it was well known that Philip had by this point become the object of the young princess’s affection (she was rumoured to have a photo of the handsome naval cadet on display in her bedroom).
Despite Elizabeth’s growing infatuation, Philip came with various strings attached.
He and his family were poor compared to other members of the European aristocracy.
And as a young prince of the house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, Philip was also too German for the liking of a Britain which had recently fought one world war against Germany, and was on the brink of a second.
While Philip had been taken in by his British relatives, the Mountbattens, when he was seven years old, his four sisters were married to Germans, three of whom had links to the Nazi party.
Philip was also related to Elizabeth — although most European royals were at the time.
He was her second cousin once removed through King Christian IX of Denmark, they were third cousins as great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria, and among his uncles was King George V of England, also Elizabeth’s grandfather.
But none of it mattered to Elizabeth, who had come to see not an impoverished distant relation, but a man who towered above her, boasting a head full of blond hair and a promising naval career.
Despite her accomplishments, and all that she was to be, Philip insisted the actual thought of marrying Elizabeth didn’t cross his mind until 1946, when he stayed at the royal family’s Balmoral estate in Scotland.
“I suppose one thing led to another,” he conceded to his official biographer Basil Boothroyd.
“It was sort of fixed up. That’s really what happened.”
Philip proposed to Elizabeth by the side of a loch on the family’s Balmoral estate, with a ring encrusted with diamonds from his mother’s tiara.
King George VI granted them permission to marry, though he insisted they keep their engagement private until Elizabeth was older.
It was publicly announced in July 1947, a few months after Elizabeth turned 21, and they were married before the year was out.
And so it was that after years of waiting, Elizabeth finally got her prince.
In a letter to the Queen Mother, Philip revealed the extent to which he had fallen for his bride as the pair finally embraced their union.
“To have fallen in love completely and unreservedly makes all one’s personal troubles and even the world’s seem small and petty,” he wrote.
Once wed, they divided their time between Surrey and London, where Elizabeth was committed to royal duties as Princess, and Malta, where Philip was stationed and quickly promoted to lieutenant-commander in charge of the frigate HMS Magpie.
Just six days shy of their first anniversary, the couple became parents, with the birth of an heir to the throne, Charles.
Charles, the first of the couple’s three sons, told his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby that it was nursery staff who witnessed his first steps and raised him, as his parents were often away in the early years of his life.
Regardless, with the birth of his and Elizabeth’s only daughter, Anne, in 1950, Philip achieved his purpose of aiding in the provision of an “heir and a spare”.
Centuries ago, when minor illnesses had the potential to end in death, a monarch would be desperate for a second child that assured the royal line would continue.
Soon after, he would see the life he had envisioned for himself fall victim to a change to the monarchy that had been forecast to take place in the distant future.
It was not the first time he had experienced such an abrupt development.
The baby in the orange crate
For the first 18 months of his life, Philip was destined to serve the kingdoms of Greece and Denmark.
The last child and only son of Princess Alice…
