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Was Prince Philip a womaniser? Royal marriages don't require monogamy

A case of “phallic swagger”? (Anwar Hussein/Getty Images)


November 9, 2022   4 mins

Was Prince Philip a player right up until the end of his life? That’s the implication made, albeit discreetly, in the latest series of The Crown, which depicts the Duke of Edinburgh’s appreciation for Penny Romsey (later Countess Mountbatten) during his latter years.

In episode two, Jonathan Pryce’s Philip tells his (much) younger blonde friend Penny: “The one thing human beings do the minute they make a commitment to a life together” is “grow in separate directions”. His imagined advice to the vulnerable Diana (preparing to detonate her Andrew Morton “bomb”) is even more incriminating: “Be creative… you can do whatever you want, you can make whatever arrangements you need to find your own happiness”, as long as “you remain loyal to your husband and loyal to this family in public”. But the show doesn’t dare go further.

Likewise Philip’s marriage to Elizabeth has always been a tough subject for biographers. There is no hard evidence that Philip was unfaithful, and while Her Majesty was still alive the issue was all the more sensitive. This may explain the strange detour in Gyles Brandreth’s otherwise excellent biography Philip, the Final Portrait. Promising an interrogation of the Duke’s reputation as a womaniser, Brandreth seeks to establish what Freud would have made of Philip’s female-heavy early childhood. (He was a longed-for son arriving late into a family of four girls.)

Brandreth explores the hypothetical possibility of Philip having “penis awe”, perhaps even “phallic swagger” — both conditions which apparently stem from disproportionate female attention and devotion when young. He tells us what we already know: that Philip liked the company of young attractive women, but his discussion with a Freudian psychologist is inconclusive. Apparently, men with “phallic swagger” aren’t always serial adulterers.

Had Brandreth really wanted to land a psychobabble blow, he would have looked into the male role models in Philip’s life. There was his father’s failed marriage and glamorous lady friends in the Riviera, his uncle Lord Mountbatten’s notoriously “open” marriage, not to mention his Greek uncle Big George and Marie Bonaparte’s “unconventional” relationship. Monogamy did not have much currency in the Duke’s wider family.

In many respects Elizabeth and Philip’s marriage was in keeping with the pair’s pedigree, upbringing and exceptional status. What went on behind closed doors in their marriage is a moot point and one which has disproportionately focused on the importance of monogamy at the expense of arguably greater goals — an enduring marriage and stable family monarchy.

Aristocrats have long played by different rules, and in the first half of the 20th century, when marriages were often undertaken for practical and dynastic reasons, an exclusive physical relationship was rarely a prerequisite for a lasting union. Between the wars, commentators promoted the idea of emotional and spatial independence in marriage. In 1935 co-founder of the National Marriage Guidance Council, Edward Griffith, recommended “the independence of each must be guaranteed”. Others were more explicit: “A woman may love her husband with all her heart, but even love needs an occasional rest.” And those women, invariably without an income of their own, had to shut up and put up.

But times were changing fast. Service girls, having enjoyed rare freedom outside the domestic arena during the war, bought into new idealised notions of a companionate marriage. These modern unions were based on affection, friendship, and sexual gratification; it was anticipated that a spouse would meet all of their partner’s emotional and physical needs. Or as a panellist on the 1954 Royal Commission of Marriage and Divorce put it: “We are coming to expect more and more of our marriages.” It was these expectations that meant “marriages today are at risk to a greater extent than formerly”.

Take 99-year-old Daphne Attridge for instance. As a young woman, she served in the female army (ATS) during the war and keenly followed Philip and Elizabeth’s love story. Like many, she got engaged during the conflict (and promptly unengaged). Until she found her perfect man, she pinned her romantic hopes vicariously on the royal couple’s relationship. “We wanted to know they were in love. That mattered to us.”

This post-war companionate model of marriage has endured, but marriages in general have not necessarily. As the Commission predicted, higher expectations led to greater disappointment and a rapidly rising divorce rate. Despite the best efforts of both church and state, marital breakdown quickly became a hallmark of modern living, with Elizabeth and Philip’s union an almighty exception. But then, they were playing by different rules, weren’t they?

There is no doubting the late Queen’s devotion to her husband; she was sticking press cuttings about sailor Philip’s wartime adventures into her scrapbook aged 14. As for the nomadic Prince, steadfast Elizabeth was a game-changer. However, their union lent heavily on more independent models of marriage in vogue in the early 20th century: Elizabeth did not hang out with Philip’s “funny friends” who entertained him in Soho supper clubs, at Cowdray Park playing polo, and on (and off) the River Solent. She avoided Cowes Week “like the plague”, pursued separate equine hobbies, had agency and income that vastly outstripped her husband’s and slept in her own bedroom. (According to the author and campaigner Marie Stopes, interwar champion of Married Love, the latter was a sensible move. Apparently separate bedrooms prevent “everyday association” which “tends to reduce the keen pleasure each takes in the other”.)

By all accounts, even Charles was irked by his father’s latter-day friendship with Penny; perhaps he was also miffed that there had been a spread featuring 13 women in Tatler, entitled “The Duke of Edinburgh’s Fan Club”. And yet somehow, in both cases, Philip got away with his reputation enhanced: a raffish old man at worst. Who could resist the outspoken Duke in his dotage, stumbling around Sandringham, riding carriages with his sometime blonde companion and driving when dangerously old? Like his father, Charles had also inherited Mountbatten as a pre-marriage mentor, but with very different results. Times had irrevocably changed. The posh propensity to turn a blind eye no longer washed in a society where divorce was prevalent, and modern celebrity promised riches outside the royal club.

Elizabeth and Philip’s union was forged in a different age, when commitment to monarchy and marriage trumped everything else. Ultimately their 73-year union not only stood the test of time, it was a great success, and one which the couple were justifiably proud of. The Queen, never an open book, divulged her tips for a successful marriage in 1972 — the year of the couple’s Silver Wedding anniversary — explaining that a Christian marriage should be “tolerant and understanding”. Fifty years later, the Duke confirmed the Queen had “tolerance in abundance”.

Exactly what that says about the dynamics within our late monarch’s marriage is open to interpretation, as the Duke no doubt intended. After all, Elizabeth and Philip came from an old-fashioned school of thought — it was important to be seen, but, where possible, royalty should not let in too much “daylight upon the magic”. As Walter Bagehot explained, “its mystery is its life”.


Dr Tessa Dunlop is an author, broadcaster and historian. Her book Elizabeth And Philip: The story of young love, marriage and monarchy (Headline, £20) is published on 10 November.

Tessadunlop

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Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago

Normally I would read an article before commenting on it. However, in this case I will not waste my time reading speculative tittle tattle about the marriage of a well respected and recently deceased couple. It is simply not a decent subject for an article in Unherd and I am sorry it was commissioned.

Gretchen Carlisle
Gretchen Carlisle
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

That’s a shame, because the title is clickbait and the article is about so much more– the changing expectations of marriage and the ramifications of that. Best not to comment at all when you don’t have all the information.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
1 year ago

Nah I’m with Jeremy – it’s tittle tattle. This is Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph material, not Unherd.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

An article like this would be featured in PEOPLE magazine in the USA…perhaps it’s your HELLO?

Roger Inkpen
Roger Inkpen
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

Well it’s 2 months since the Queen died, and 18 months since the death of Philip, the subject of the article. I’ve no doubt that Philip had affairs in his younger days – of course they were rumours, as no one would dare to publish! And anyway, this piece is more about the change in relationships over the past 70 odd years.

ben arnulfssen
ben arnulfssen
1 year ago

I always found it fascinating that the late Royal couple were considered “untouchable” by a MSM which generally displays the morality of a festering ulcer?

Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
1 year ago

The casualty rate in modern marriages is far too high, partly, perhaps, because successful men have every opportunity to meet attractive, often younger, women in the workplace and women, whose instinct is to make themselves attractive, are attracted to successful men.

Gordon Black
Gordon Black
1 year ago

Could it not be that women were Prince Philipiisers?

William Freed
William Freed
1 year ago

Let me shorten this by altering the title and adding a less analytical, but equally insightful, response:
Was Prince Philip a product of his time and status? Yes.
That was really all that was necessary, and now can we focus on journalism, please?

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago

I’m willing to bet Philip was a busy boy throughout his life. The more interesting question, for me, is whether the Queen ever strayed, as hinted in The Crown. For what it’s worth, my respect for the late Queen would not be in any way diminished if it eventually came to light she’d had an affair. Perhaps that was part of the source of her “tolerance in abundance.”

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Lord Porchester?

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

The marriage of our late Queen and her husband, whilst the subject of the article, is not the most important aspect to be considered. The wider point about the changing context in which marriage is considered is the real issue, and the writer is well aware of this.

It’s significant, for instance, that the weight of female expectations has become greater alongside female emancipation. Not having too high an expectation (by both parties) seems to me an eminently sensible approach. Perhaps the much-condemned divorce rate, and its lamented effects on the offspring of marriages, wouldn’t be anywhere near as high if greater tolerance of human nature (which isn’t going to change in any significant way) were factored in, and unions maintained despite the perfectly natural desire to seek alternative sexual and emotional engagement.

Of course, plenty of married couples remain faithful, in deed if not in thought. My own.marriage lasted almost twenty years before i finally strayed, which led to divorce. As the writer quotes, the temptation started almost as soon as the knot was tied. Am i an exception? I very much doubt it, and if i describe myself as happily married for much the greater part of it, that doesn’t change the basic imperative to seek other experiences. It’s hard-wired into us; the only restraining factor is opportunity.

I’m fully aware of the implications for husbands whose wives stray too; that they might become the upbringers of children not their own. Well, the old jokes about a child looking like the milkman didn’t arise from nowhere! So be it, i say. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, especially when contraception makes it much less likely!

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
0 0
0 0
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

People stray for egotistical reasons and out of the entirely unreliable impression that it will make them happier. Marriage is designed to subordinate the ego to something larger than oneself. This is not a bad thing given all great religions and streams of philosophical thought suggest the subordination of the ego is the only possible path to happiness.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  0 0

Thanks for your little homily. I’m very happy.

Philip Stott
Philip Stott
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

No, you are not the exception.
Young men and women need to sow their wild oats.
I met my wife when I was 19 and dated her for 10 years before marrying her.
It didn’t help that aged 23 I discovered that I was an exceptional software developer who could earn £3K – £4K per week on the contract market, with international travel.
As such, I had a perfect excuse for straying, and I did, but only with escorts in posh hotels, which in my male dominated logic meant it was OK because there was no chance of forming an emotional attachment.
I jacked that in after marriage but was probably helped by kids taking up all my energy.
Would I be OK if I found out my wife had been doing the same prior to marriage? I can honestly say “probably … maybe … “.
Implicit in my response, though is that marriage is a promise to forgo all that stuff, which it seems that by more luck than judgement on my part that my long courtship has absolved me from (more male dominated get out of jail free card logic).

Last edited 1 year ago by Philip Stott
Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

In the USA, it’s said that women initiate most divorces – around 70%, for sure, for all kinds of reasons But to your point, clearly expectations have soared in recent decades, at the same time that women’s abilities to be self-supporting have also risen. ‘She’ just doesn’t have to ‘take it’ anymore.

Last edited 1 year ago by Cathy Carron
Tim Weir
Tim Weir
1 year ago

I was told by a Frenchman that his father, a homosexual, had seen Prince Philip in a gay nightclub in Paris. Of course, even if this story is true it doesn’t prove anything, but I found it amusing.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Tim Weir

Trust the French!

John Solomon
John Solomon
1 year ago

But don’t trust the Mountbattens………

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  John Solomon

Indeed, a more pusillanimous bunch of cretins would be hard to imagine.

Adrian Clark
Adrian Clark
1 year ago

Compared to who?

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Adrian Clark

The Kennedy clan.

Brian Laidd
Brian Laidd
1 year ago

Before he was married Prince Philip was stationed for a while near Pwllheli in North Wales at what later became a Butlins holiday camp. There he was rumoured to have fathered a son by a local girl. It is said that the reason Madge never made him Prince Consort is because she was aware of his proclivities.

Carmel Shortall
Carmel Shortall
1 year ago

“Who could resist the outspoken Duke in his dotage, stumbling around Sandringham, riding carriages with his sometime blonde companion and driving when dangerously old?”

???

Kayla Marx
Kayla Marx
1 year ago

If he cheated throughout his life and left no “hard evidence,” that’s quite a feat.

Kayla Marx
Kayla Marx
1 year ago

If he cheated throughout his life and left no “hard evidence,” that’s quite a feat.

Tom Scott
Tom Scott
1 year ago

It didn’t take long. Sad title. Not read.

Slopmop McTeash
Slopmop McTeash
1 year ago

Who gives a fork?

Why is this vacuous article being printed on this website?

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago

Gossip: story and comments.

Adrian Clark
Adrian Clark
1 year ago

I found Branreth’s ‘Portrait of a Royal Marriage’ insghtful.

Josh Barrett
Josh Barrett
1 year ago

A

Last edited 1 year ago by Josh Barrett
N T
N T
1 year ago

why do we care?