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with difficulty that he faced the wrench of parting from her and breaking up the family
quartet – ‘us four’, as he called it – which was so close to his heart. In return for his
agreement, the King exacted a promise from his daughter that nothing official should be
announced for a year until after her twenty-first birthday and the family’s return from
their forthcoming official tour of South Africa early the following year. He was torn, he
later told her, between fear that she should think him hard-hearted and his longing for
one last tour together. ‘I was so anxious for you to come to South Africa as you knew,’
he told her. ‘Our family, us four, the “Royal Family” must remain together…’
In fact, the King’s options as to a suitable husband for his daughter were limited. She
was the heir to the throne and under the terms of the Act of Settlement could not marry
a Catholic, which removed most Europeans from the running except the Protestant
Germans, who were ruled out because of the recent war. The two ‘suitable’ English
candidates in terms of position and money, the heirs to the dukedoms of Grafton and
Rutland, both became engaged to other girls in 1946. In choosing Philip, who, despite
his German blood, was by nationality a Greek, one of Britain’s wartime allies, Elizabeth,
as usual, had done the right thing. Philip might have been poor, but he had a good war
record, having been ‘mentioned in despatches’ for the battle off Cape Matapan, and he
was royal, which meant that he understood the constraints and responsibilities of
royalty as no outsider ever really can. Prince Philip put it bluntly: ‘After all, if you
spend ten minutes thinking about it – and a lot of these people spent a great deal more
time thinking about it – how many obviously eligible young men, other than people
living in this country, were available?’
Some of the more romantic-minded in royal circles thought that if Elizabeth and Philip
were in love, they should show it more. They were thought almost too keen to take part
in all the social activities, never showing lover-like tendencies to want to be alone with
each other. The two of them had the same attitude towards displays of emotion,
regarding them as somehow ‘phoney’. Elizabeth had always been emotionally aloof and
undemonstrative, only, as Crawfie revealed, showing her feelings when deeply moved.
Partly this was temperamental, partly training and the influence of her grandmother,
Queen Mary. The old ‘stiff-upper-lip’ attitudes of the British ruling class were even more
marked when it came to royalty. At a deep level, however, the couple understood each
other; her calm, controlled temperament was the perfect foil for his hyperactive,
sometimes cantankerous nature; as was his penchant for positive action for her more
conservative approach.
Philip was none the less sensitive to hints of it being an arranged marriage. He very
much disliked gossip about the behind-the-scenes machinations of the Greek royal family
on his behalf and, once again, he felt obliged to tell his uncle Mountbatten to back off.
Before he left for India in March 1947 Mountbatten had been very much to the fore.
According to his official biographer, Philip Ziegler, he took much credit for the match
between his nephew and the heir to the throne and showed himself keenly interested in
every detail of the wedding and the future household. ‘I am not being rude, but it is
apparent that you like the idea of being the General Manager of this little show,’ Philip