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Express, almost the only newspaperman whom Philip knew and liked, ‘sees through his
uncle and fully realizes how great are the Mountbatten ambitions’. Christiansen
reported a conversation with Philip’s sister, the Margravine of Baden, which showed his
family to be just as resentful of Mountbatten’s attempts to capture the throne as the
Palace officials were. 16 None the less on this particular point, the question of the family
name, Philip shared his uncle’s views, although he seems to have been prepared to
compromise on the name ‘Edinburgh’. The Mountbatten side of the family later excused
Elizabeth on the grounds that she was young and overborne by Churchill, and, as
Edward Ford’s letter of 1948 demonstrated, Mountbatten had a point. But the feeling
within her own family, particularly where her grandmother and mother were concerned,
was strongly against any change and she was probably moved as much by family piety
as by anything else. She could hardly be expected to repeal the change made specifically
by her grandfather or go against what would undoubtedly have been the feelings of her
father. She was convinced by the Lord Chancellor’s points in his memorandum of 7
April: ‘It cannot be doubted that by His Proclamation of 1917 King George V intended
that, so long as there was a member of His House to ascend the Throne, the name of the
House should be Windsor…’ And especially by the next point:
Nor can it be questioned what was the wish of George VI. It may be assumed that He expected to be
succeeded by a daughter, but it is certain that it was His wish that the name of the Royal House should in
that event continue to be Windsor. When he conferred a dukedom upon HRH the Duke of Edinburgh he did
not intend that the name of Edinburgh should supersede that of Windsor as the name of the Royal House…
Permanence and continuity are valuable factors in the maintenance of a constitutional monarchy and the
name of the Royal House should not be changed if change can be avoided.
Philip took it very hard. ‘I’m nothing but a bloody amoeba,’ he exploded. It was not
an entirely appropriate metaphor for a man who had fathered two children by his wife;
amoebas, as every schoolchild (but not, apparently, Philip) knows, are self-reproducing,
but the sense was clear enough. He felt robbed of his identity and he was, perhaps,
disconcerted by Elizabeth’s new-found ease and self-confidence. ‘I no longer feel anxious
or worried,’ she told a friend. ‘I don’t know what it is – but I have lost all my timidity
somehow becoming the Sovereign and having to receive the Prime Minister…’ 17 Philip
had lost his dominant role and it unnerved him. As a relation said:
I think psychologically it was a terrible blow, because [the] poor young man felt already that everybody was
giving him a hard time and there he was being told that his own children couldn’t take his name. It was
really hurting and it took him a long time to get over that one. It was a mistake. I can understand her making
it because I think she was persuaded that it was her duty to do it… perhaps she was too young to see the
implications of what it would do to somebody to say you can’t give your children your name. I think it… for
some time was quite a difficult situation [between them]. Of course she put it right later. By then the
damage had been done… it’s history now. But it’s a pity because it did make for difficulties, obviously. I
mean it’s a psychological difficulty that’s very difficult to get over…