Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth II’s marriage has withstood the test of time. The pair tied the knot in 1947 just after the end of World War II. Since then, they’ve weathered the good and bad times, from the queen’s ascension to the throne, having four children, deaths, rumors, and everything in between.
Though their marriage has been riddled with tales of infidelity at one point or another, it seems that the prince and queen’s marriage has been able to endure more than seven decades because there has been genuine love and respect for one another from the beginning.
The pair fell in love when they were just teens and to this day, the queen never takes off her engagement ring which has a secret hidden message from the Duke of Edinburgh engraved in it.
Queen Elizabeth II’s parents were apprehensive about her romance with Prince Philip
Since the queen and the prince are distant cousins, they first met when they were kids, The queen was 8 and the prince was 13 when they attended the wedding of Prince Philip’s cousin Princess Marina and the queen’s uncle, Prince George, Duke of Kent in 1934. Though they met again sometime after, it wasn’t until 1939 when the queen found herself absolutely smitten with the duke and the pair began exchanging letters.
By the time the queen was in her late teens, she and Prince Philip began talking seriously about marriage. However, the queen’s parents were apprehensive about the match. After all, Prince Philip had a very unstable childhood and they were unsure if he could assume a help-mate role when their daughter became queen.
“It caused her parents great anxiety,” historian Robert Lacey revealed in the documentary, Being the Queen. “What parent wouldn’t be anxious about a daughter who wants to marry the very first man she’s fallen in love with? It was a matter of her personal happiness, it was a matter of the stability of the Crown.”
Prince Philip could not afford to buy an engagement ring for Queen Elizabeth II
In the end, the prince was allowed to propose once the queen turned 21. At the time, the prince had very little to his name. However, once his mother Princess Alice, who lived out the remainder of her life as a nun, knew the Duke of Edinburgh wanted to marry Queen Elizabeth, she gave him the tiara she wore on her wedding day.
The prince had the tiara melted down and made into an engagement ring. He worked with Philip Antrobus Ltd to design the queen’s three-carat ring. It includes a large round diamond in the middle and side stones set in platinum. The queen still wears the ring to this day along with her wedding band.
Queen Elizabeth II’s engagement ring has a hidden message.
The queen’s engagement ring might appear to be a classic piece of jewelry, but it has a hidden special message. When Prince Philip had the ring made with Welsh gold, he also had a loving message inscribed within the band.
“At least Philip didn’t have the expense of a wedding ring, as the people of Wales supplied a nugget of Welsh gold from which the ring as made,” biographer Ingrid Seward wrote in Prince Philip: A Portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh via Daily Mail. “She never takes it off and inside the ring is an inscription. No one knows what it says, other than the engraver, the Queen and her husband.”
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