by The Laird o’Thistle
June 18 2006
Genealogy is an odd thing. When you stop and think about it, each of us is equally descended from all of our ancestors. But because that would be just too much to try to keep track of, we prioritize our family lines, emphasizing some more than others. The traditional mode of prioritization in most of the world has been to emphasize the male lineage over the female. And in fact, in many older genealogical records, the women’s names are often left out altogether. The other tendency is to emphasize the more socially prominent over the less prominent.
Royal descent isn’t all that different. In researching this column, I took a quick look at the genealogical chart for Queen Elizabeth II and found that though some of her lines of descent can be traced back to the fifth century, her direct female line seems traceable for only a couple of hundred years. The earliest ancestress in the female line that I was able to find was a Mary Garritt, H.M.’s great-great-great-great-grandmother, who was the wife of Francis Webb of Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, in the late eighteenth century. They were gentry of sorts, but not aristocracy, and the sources I found do not even list Mary Garritt’s dates of birth or death.
My focus in this column, however, is the male line descent of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. His 85th birthday celebrations this last week have reminded the world of a bit of the life story of Philip Mountbatten, who was born a Prince of Greece and later borrowed his mother’s family surname – itself a recent invention – when he took on British nationality at the time of his marriage to Princess Elizabeth in 1947. Prince Philip’s line of descent, in a traditional genealogical record, should become the dominant one for future generations of British royals. But in this case, the determination was long since made that the British royal family will remain the House and Family of Windsor, with the hyphenated Mountbatten-Windsor surname only kicking in at a few steps removed, as in the case of little Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor. It is, however, interesting to look into the question of who Philip’s most direct and remote male ancestors were, especially since that line carries forward with the Prince of Wales and Prince William.
Prince Philip is not, as already noted, a Mountbatten by birth. The fact that his parents were estranged and that he was largely taken in by his maternal Mountbatten relatives has been noted in the various sketches of his life published in recent weeks. And although he was born a Prince of Greece, he’s not ethnically Greek either. He is a member of the Danish House of Oldenburg. His grandfather was a Danish prince who was chosen as King of Greece in 1863, and even at birth Philip was officially a “Prince of Greece and Denmark.” Prince Philip’s great-grandfather was Christian IX, the “Grandfather of Europe” (rivaling, if not surpassing, Queen Victoria’s status as the “Grandmother of Europe”). Christian IX’s family included his successor Frederick VIII of Denmark (who was in turn the ancestor of the current Danish royals and the father of Norway’s Haakon VII), King George I of the Hellenes (Greece), Queen Alexandra of Great Britain (wife of Edward VII), and Dagmar / Marie the Czarina of Russia (wife of Czar Alexander III, and mother of Nicholas II). Christian IX himself was a somewhat accidental king. He was chosen as heir to the Danish throne during the reign of the childless Frederick VII in 1852 and succeeded to the throne in 1863 (the same year his second son became King of Greece). The new king’s closest relationship to the preceding Danish royals came via his maternal line, and his wife was actually a step closer than he in relation to the Danish throne. But in those times Danish law did not allow the succession of a Queen.
Christian IX’s male line did, however, stem from a collateral branch of the Danish royal family, the Dukes of Holstein-Sonderburg-Gluucksburg who were descended from King Christian III of Denmark (reigned 1535-1599). Their duchy constituted areas now in southern Denmark and stretching over into Germany, with varying degrees of semi-independence over the centuries. Looking further back, King Christian III’s grandfather had been Christian I (reigned 1448-1481). Christian I was previously the Duke of Oldenburg, a territory on the North Sea coast lying just south and west of modern Denmark, and bordering Hanover. Claiming descent in the maternal line from Eric V of Denmark (reigned 1259-1286), Christian of Oldenburg was chosen to be king by the Danish nobility when the main line of the previous dynasty, the House of Estrid, died out. (The Estridsons, by the way, were descendants of a nephew of Canute the Great, more familiarly known in English lore as “King Canute.”) Christian I was also the King of Norway, briefly of Sweden, and the heir of his maternal uncle as Duke of Schleswig and Count of Holstein. Christian’s paternal Oldenburg line stretched back to a chap of unknown origin named Count Egilmir (d. 1108) who ruled in Oldenburg at the beginning of the twelfth century. And that is where the known direct male lineage of Prince Philip, begins.
The most distant roots of the Duke of Edinburgh are very much fixed in the lands at the extreme of northwestern Europe where Scandinavian and German influences intermingled. Some interesting historical and familial connections emerge as we look at the charts. Christian I of Denmark, for instance, had a daughter who married James III, King of Scots, in 1469; and with that marriage, Scotland gained the Orkney and Shetland Islands as part of her dowry. All subsequent Kings and Queens of Scots, and in due course Britain, are descended from that marriage. Christian III was an early convert to Lutheranism, ca. 1520, and as king he presided over the Danish Reformation. He provides his descendants with a somewhat less scandalous connection to the original Protestant movement than the erstwhile Henry VIII. Subsequent Danish royal relatives, though distant cousins include Anne of Denmark (Queen of James VI/I of Scotland and Great Britain), and Prince George of Denmark (husband of Britain’s Queen Anne).
More recently, through Christian IX, Prince Philip is as closely tied to the web of current European royals as his wife. Britain’s Queen Alexandra, who died when Philip was four, was his great aunt. The late Princess Marina of Kent was his first cousin. The exiled King Constantine of Greece is a first cousin, once removed, as is Constantine’s sister, Queen Sophia of Spain. Queen Margrethe of Denmark is Philip’s second cousin, once removed, as is her sister, Queen Anne Marie of Greece (Constantine’s wife). King Harald of Norway is also a second cousin, once removed. And so is Philip’s own wife, H.M. the Queen.
As for the Duke’s closer relations, it would take another column to go into the story of Prince Philip’s four sisters, all now deceased. The last surviving sister, Princess Sophie of Hanover, died in 2001 shortly before Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother. Both the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh are now the only surviving members of their immediate families.
Finally, for now, perhaps the most interesting indication of the filial connection of Prince Philip to his father’s family is the fact that he and the Queen chose to include two names clearly drawn from the Greek/Danish lineage in naming their second son. The Duke of York’s baptismal names are “Andrew Albert Christian Edward.” The name “Andrew” is clearly, if somewhat surprisingly, derived from Philip’s too-long-absent father. (Albeit, it doesn’t hurt that it also tips the hat to Scotland’s patron saint.) And “Christian” is one of the two regularly given names of the Kings of Denmark, recently chosen anew for the son of Crown Prince Frederick.
It is said that one of the Queen’s most treasured pictures of her husband shows him as a young naval officer with a full beard. Published versions of the photo do show a dashing and rather Nordic-looking Prince. Pictures of the Duke as a schoolboy give a similar impression of a tall and very blond youth. It’s not hard to see him is such photos as a descendant of the old Vikings. Old King Canute would probably be pleased.
Best 85th birthday wishes to Philip of Oldenburg – a.k.a. HRH Philip Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh – for continued good health, long life, and happiness.
Yours Aye,
-Ken Cuthbertson