Following his birth into the Greek royal family in on June 10, 1921, the future Duke of Edinburgh has baptized a Greek Orthodox Christian the following October in the Church of St. George at the Old Fortress on Corfu. (Coincidentally, his funeral will take place in St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle this Saturday.) Doesn’t it look dreamy? The name that appears on Philip’s birth certificate is ‘Philippos.’ He spent the first two years of his life in the 19th-century neoclassical villa of Mon Repo, but when he was two years old he and his family were exiled from Greece, with Philip famously being transported in an orange crate onto the ship that would take them way. When he married Princess Elizabeth in 1948, Philip was required to convert and ceased to be Orthodox, becoming instead an Anglican like his wife, who would later become queen and head of the Church of England. However, he apparently continued to make the Orthodox-style sign of the cross throughout his life (made with the thumb, index and middle fingers pressed together to represent the Holy Trinity.) His mother Princess Alice later returned to Greece and became an Orthodox nun. In the last two years of her life she joined her son Philip at Buckingham Palace and was photographed wearing the Orthodox habit to occasions like her daughter-in-law’s coronation as Queen Elizabeth II. Her remains are buried under a Russian Orthodox church in Jerusalem. Next up, who were Prince Philip’s parents? All about Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenburg.
