#philibeth

Elizabeth: i think im in love with philip

While visiting the Great Wall of China during their 1986 tour the Queen asked for someone to take a picture of her and Philip.

“When Philip had first danced with Lilibet at Coppins two years earlier, she had still seemed a mere schoolgirl. Now she was seventeen; she ‘sparkled’, as one of her intimates said, and a new quality of ‘radiance and sweetness’ was particularly obvious to doting elderly relatives such as old Princess Marie Louise. ‘I shan’t get married for years, not until I’m good and ready,’ Philip had once told Helene Foufounis, and I believe he had totally forgotten, as he had certainly dismissed, any boast to the contrary in South Africa. During the long spells of comparative solitude at sea, Prince Philip had not lacked opportunities of searching his heart and motives and weighing his own situation. David Milford Haven sometimes talked of marrying an American as if it were an attractive idea. While fully aware of the beautiful daughters of rich families — American, Australian and ‘anglo-aristocratic’ — who all too evidently showed their interest, Philip was more inclined to keep his thoughts to himself. ‘Fond mamas would fairy-godmother him,’ Queen Alexandra summed up, in recollecting an occasion during the war when she found him ill with flu at Claridge’s, surrounded by fruit and flowers, in a suite hospitably loaned to him by a wealthy family. ‘I can’t help it, Sandra,’ Philip said, amiably bombarding his cousin with grape pips. ‘I don’t do anything about it. It just happens!”