Prince Phillip

[chickadeeee]

His passing is very sad, however aibu to be annoyed about the constant reference to him 'giving things up' to be the Queen's consort.
How many women 'give up' their lives when they get married, would the conversation be the same if he were King and his wife had passed away

He may well have had a good career in the Navy and risen through the ranks? He did alright though, Commander in Chief of The Royal Marines.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Lockdownbear But he seemed to recognise kids need to stand on their own two feet, as demonstrated by the DoE Awards. I always assumed someone else came up with the idea but actually it was his idea.

Within the past two days I have listened to Prince Philip himself saying that he got the idea from an initiative of his headmaster at Gordonstoun.

LordEmsworth
telling your wife off for being scared of your driving is in fact a feminist act

Hers was notoriously terrifying, so it's quite possible that was six of one and half a dozen of the other.

I'm still sceptical at how this anecdote became public knowledge. Presumably neither the Queen nor the Duke disclosed it and would any security staff have made such a breach of confidentiality?

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime Yes I learned that the other day. He came up with the idea, inspired by his experiences of Gordonston and spoke with his former headteacher on it.
It was Philip that made it happen.

I bet there is a tremendous amount of 'Fuck you' talk behind closed doors from many RF family members.

@Ihopeyourcakeisshit

I bet there is a tremendous amount of 'Fuck you' talk behind closed doors from many RF family members.

Only fair given the amount of overt "fuck them" talk that is going on all the time in all forms of media including this one!

About 30yrs ago my boss took me to a talk / discussion in Windsor, part of a series organised by Prince Philip, bringing together community leaders, academics, politicians, business people to talk about difficult topics in contemporary society.

We worked in Community based stuff, it was a fascinating afternoon, the speaker was controversial in his field, and didn't get an easy ride, the session was introduced by PP, and the question session chaired by him.

All I knew about PP was the DoE awards and the WWF. My colleagues and I were actually blown away by how he handled the event. He was hugely knowledgable about the work of the speaker, about the nuances of the internal debates,, you could tell by the way he handled the Q&A that he'd done his research, understood the issues, and was intelligent and competent. After the talk there were drinks and people were in little groups having really interesting conversations - he moved between groups, chatting and picking up points.

It was a totally unexpected experience for me - I was expecting something dull & posh with people schmoozing, instead it was thought provoking and well worth going to. It did change my view of PP too - I began to pay a bit more interest in what he'd been doing.

I don't doubt he would have had a very successful career.

He was hugely knowledgable about the work of the speaker, about the nuances of the internal debates,, you could tell by the way he handled the Q&A that he'd done his research, understood the issues, and was intelligent and competent.

I imagine he has a team of staff to brief him, and always has. He'd have had that in the Navy as well.

I bet there is a tremendous amount of 'Fuck you' talk behind closed doors from many RF family members.

I can't forget Charles Windsor's response to a woman who worked for him, who made an employment claim tribunal about unfair promotion processes on his staff.

Charles Windsor was recorded as saying something like "Who do these people think they are?" The woman was highly qualified and black - "these people" daring to have ambition ...

And I know architects who lost work & careers over his ill-informed public pronouncements about architecture.

So, you know, the "fuck you" conversations are being had in public, ut the British culture of deference reframes them as "gaffes" or "he cares."

@MeltsAway

He was hugely knowledgable about the work of the speaker, about the nuances of the internal debates,, you could tell by the way he handled the Q&A that he'd done his research, understood the issues, and was intelligent and competent.

I imagine he has a team of staff to brief him, and always has. He'd have had that in the Navy as well.

People briefing you doesn't give you in depth knowledge of any topic.

I saw the Queen driving her Mini from Windsor back to Buck House when I was a young kid.
She overtook us at some speed.

This doesn't surprise me in the slightest; and Princess Anne used to get done for speeding really quite often at one point.

Source of “putting Queen out of car” story.
Mountbatten was there, told his daughter, she told Gyles Brandreth.
So 3rd-hand, but Brandreth certainly has connections, & wouldn’t risk them by making it up.

Oops, kefir thing added by accident

@donquixotedelamancha

must have been frustrating for him with a promising navy career ahead

He pursued her from the age of 13 (he was 18) because she was the heir to the throne. Prince consort was a much better 'career' option for him than minor royal of an exiled monarchy.

I'd put his actions perfectly in the feminist camp when it came to his wife.

I don't see how the royal family is anything other than a power structure of the patriarchy.

The fact that one woman in centuries happens to be first in line doesn't change the structural disadvantages in UK society which disproportionally affect women, the working class, non-white people etc.

@donquixotedelamancha

Actually she pursued him, if you look into it.

@GiantKitten

Source of “putting Queen out of car” story. Mountbatten was there, told his daughter, she told Gyles Brandreth. So 3rd-hand, but Brandreth certainly has connections, & wouldn’t risk them by making it up.

Interesting context for that; the problem when Prince Philip had that crash in 2019 (which was why the tale was recounted) was that his car was practically stationary and was run into by someone doing sixty (or that's what the speed-limit was on that bit of road at the time, so let's be charitable and say she wasn't exceeding it, but for a Kia to roll a Range Rover off the road it must have been going at a fair speed). So him driving too fast was seriously irrelevant: just anecdote. Does anyone else remember Brandreth from Just A Minute?

I am always rather suspicious about "I know more about the royal family than other people do" tell-alls. That one must have been a tale at least forty years old when it was told, because Louis Mountbatten died in August 1979.

@MeltsAway

He was hugely knowledgable about the work of the speaker, about the nuances of the internal debates,, you could tell by the way he handled the Q&A that he'd done his research, understood the issues, and was intelligent and competent.

I imagine he has a team of staff to brief him, and always has. He'd have had that in the Navy as well.

Nah - this was more than good briefing, I knew my own field, he demonstrated, by his handling of the Q&A, and his own interjections, that he understood the topic and the complexities - that's why we were so impressed, it was unexpected, we expected a well-briefed posh bloke and got someone who was up to date with research and understood the different ways it was being interpreted. He had a nuanced approach, not lightweight at all.

you may or may not believe that, or accept it, but, as I say, it changed my opinion of him.

EVERYBODY I know who met Philip at work gigs was impressed with his scientific and engineering and technical knowledge.

He drove like a maniac. As does the queen, as do their kids.

His views were "unreconstructed"
BUT
never malicious and the recipients of his barbs (of whom I know several) all miss him.

I only ever saw him at a Garden Party where he seemed very happy in his skin.
Not a bad goal all things considered.

Andrew on the other hand ....

@ListeningQuietly

EVERYBODY I know who met Philip at work gigs was impressed with his scientific and engineering and technical knowledge.

He drove like a maniac. As does the queen, as do their kids.

His views were "unreconstructed"
BUT
never malicious and the recipients of his barbs (of whom I know several) all miss him.

I only ever saw him at a Garden Party where he seemed very happy in his skin.
Not a bad goal all things considered.

Andrew on the other hand ....

My dad reported that he wasn't all that clued-up about the French symbolists, though... (grin)

Asking
Phew !
Lets be honest the man was a geek.
His hearse will be a customised Landrover of his own design.

A friend who had to give him a tour of a clean lab wept afterwards because he fiddled with EVERYTHING

He met Elizabeth and Margaret when he was 18 and she 13
she set her cap
between then and when they got engaged, she learned to strip down an engine

FWIW in the current generation
the Cambridges (Kate and William)
and the Wessexes (Edward and Sophie)
are also known for taking a lot of care and study so they do not look like pillocks on engagements

and if that stops us having Johnson as head of state, I'm chilled

A 13-y-o having a crush on an 18-y-o does seem a great deal more probable somehow. Most 18-y-o males are not really that interested in just-adolescent girls: they think they are way above them, grown ups condescending to children. And didn't he already have a career when they met? He joined the Navy when he was eighteen, so he probably already knew what he planned to do with his life at least for the next few years, and young naval occifers don't generally get any encouragement to marry.

(Some of my brothers' friends of eighteen and nineteen very kindly wrote to me when I was thirteen and having a horrible adolescent time, but I know which way the interest was!)

@ListeningQuietly

EVERYBODY I know who met Philip at work gigs was impressed with his scientific and engineering and technical knowledge.

He drove like a maniac. As does the queen, as do their kids.

His views were "unreconstructed"
BUT
never malicious and the recipients of his barbs (of whom I know several) all miss him.

I only ever saw him at a Garden Party where he seemed very happy in his skin.
Not a bad goal all things considered.

Andrew on the other hand ....

How is ‘slitty eyes’ not malicious?

Not to mention I think he may have had a little more on his mind than a little girl, when he joined the Navy in July 1939.

The time they met when he was 18 she was 13, was Elizabeth getting a tour of the Navy base with her parents King and Queen.

I suspect that it was a planned introduction as it seems very random to me to leave her with just a random 18 year old sailor.

They had met already, when they were children, in 1934 at a family wedding: her uncle the Duke of Kent married his cousin Princess Marina. So it may be that since they were acquainted and related, he was told off to look after her and her sister.

I think it was at the Dartmouth Royal Naval College rather than "a navy base" that the tour was happening, and from what I know of the place whatever happened there will have been intended and planned to the last millisecond and millimetre.

After that he was a bit busy being in the armed forces and at war. The imminence of war might have been why the King and Queen were there just before the balloon went up: it never does any harm to give a boost to forces' morale.