The UAE News web report: Queen Elizabeth II’s 99-year-old husband Prince Philip, who was recently hospitalised and underwent a successful heart procedure, died on Friday, Buckingham Palace announced.
“It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen announces the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,” it said in a statement.
“His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle.”
“Further announcements will be made in due course.
“The Royal Family join with people around the world in mourning his loss.”
He often grabbed headlines for his gaffes, but Prince Philip was portrayed by royalists as the silent stalwart, who shelved his personal ambitions to support Queen Elizabeth II over seven decades.
Born into the Greek royal family — although he preferred to be thought of as a Danish prince — the Duke of Edinburgh never wore a crown himself.
Yet he was a permanent public presence at the queen’s side, who called him her “strength and stay”.
Like her, his life was ruled by duty and tradition, putting his considerable energy behind numerous charities and carrying out 22,219 solo public engagements since Elizabeth rose to the throne in 1952.
But Philip regularly got into hot water for what were politely referred to as “politically incorrect” off-the-cuff remarks — quips that from anyone else would be seen as downright racist.
“You managed not to get eaten, then?” he remarked to a British student who had trekked in Papua New Guinea in 1998.
And on a historic state visit to China in 1986, the self-described “cantankerous old sod” warned a group of British students: “If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed.”
There was also his reputation as a womaniser, something that worried the royal family even before he and queen married.
They reportedly found the young naval officer “rough, ill-mannered and uneducated” and worried he “would probably not be faithful”.
The man the queen’s formidable mother privately referred to as “The Hun” because of his German Battenberg blood, was quickly suspected of a string of affairs, which would later be resurrected in the hit Netflix series “The Crown”.
But Philip laughed off talk of philandering – with Sarah, the Duchess of York’s mother often cited as one of his former lovers.
“For the last 40 years I have never moved anywhere without a policeman accompanying me. So how the hell could I get away with anything like that?” he said.
