The Great Survivors

by Peter Conradi

  Although no other royal spouses in recent times have been embroiled in such murky matters as Bernhard, the role of male consort has proved a difficult one, not least because of the relatively small number of role models – a result of laws of succession that have either prevented queens from reigning in their own right or have put them on the throne only when they have had no brother. Nor are they likely to become more common, at least for one more generation, despite the drive towards equal primogeniture led by the Swedes. At the time of writing, that country’s Crown Princess Victoria is the world’s only female heir apparent.

  Britain has had the most women on the throne, since unlike the majority of the Continental monarchies its rules of succession have never been governed by Salic law. Previous incumbents have essentially made of the role what they wanted. In the sixteenth century, Mary Tudor’s husband Philip of Spain rarely visited Britain at all, because he had a prosperous kingdom of his own that occupied much of his attention. Just over a century later, William of Orange, who declared he could never “hold on to anything by apron strings”, gently elbowed Mary Stuart, his wife and co-sovereign, aside in order to rule alone. By contrast, Prince George of Denmark, the husband of Queen Anne, who reigned in the first decade of the eighteenth century, took almost no interest whatsoever in the affairs of state of his adoptive country.

  Far more vivid in British memories is Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, who, in a reflection of the traditions of royal intermarriage, was the great-great-grandfather of both Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip. Although devoted to his wife, Albert found it difficult to play second fiddle to her. “I am very happy and contented, but the difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, not the master in the house,” he complained in a letter to William von Lowenstein in May ‌1840, shortly after his marriage.6

  Matters were not helped by Albert’s low standing with the British public, who were not impressed by the impoverished and undistinguished German state from which he came, which was barely larger than an English county. Parliament refused to make him a peer – partly because of anti-German feeling and also out of a desire to exclude him from exercising any political role. The besotted Victoria wanted him to be crowned king (or king consort), but Lord Melbourne, her avuncular prime minister, urged her not to. It was only in June 1857, after he had spent seventeen years as HRH Prince Albert, that he was formally granted the title of Prince Consort by his wife. Albert was also given a relatively modest annuity of thirty thousand pounds – substantially less than the fifty-thousand-pound pension that had been awarded to his uncle Léopold. Albert was aware of the wariness of his wife’s subjects towards him and acted in an appropriately self-effacing manner. “The position of prince consort requires that the husband should entirely sink his own individual existence in that of his wife,” he wrote.

  Over time, however, Albert succeeded in carving himself out a role: he ran the Queen’s household, estates and office, was heavily involved with the organization of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and also adopted many public causes, such as educational reform and the abolition of slavery. At a time when the monarch could still conduct diplomacy independently of her government, he carried the key to Victoria’s dispatch boxes, serving as advisor and confidant and drafter of her state orders. “He is king to all intents and ‌purposes,” one disgruntled critic muttered.7 Yet he also helped the development of Britain’s constitutional monarchy by persuading Victoria to show less partisanship in her parliament – even though he actively disagreed with the interventionist “gunboat” diplomacy of Lord Palmerston while he was foreign secretary.

  Recent times have seen two other royal consorts who, to varying degrees, have struggled with the same problems as their predecessors: Prince Claus, the German-born husband of Juliana’s daughter, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and Prince Henrik, the French diplomat who married Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.

  Despite the outburst of anti-German feeling prompted by his marriage, Prince Claus was to prove a popular member of the Dutch royal family. He became involved in trade and industry as well as the preservation of historic buildings, nature conservation and the environment. More importantly, in April 1967, he and Juliana produced a baby boy, Willem-Alexander, the first male Dutch royal in one hundred and sixteen years. As the guns boomed one hundred and one times, the country went crazy. Bells tolled, bars were packed with revellers and ten thousand people signed a register at the Soestdijk Palace. The animosity towards their wedding just the previous year seemed forgotten. The couple went on to have two more sons, Johan Friso and Constantijn.

  Claus displayed a humility that appealed to the unassuming Dutch, which was a sharp contrast with the flamboyance of his father-in-law. In 1997 he asked the public to refrain from marking his birthday because it coincided with the funeral of the Princess of Wales. At an African fashion show the following year he expressed admiration for Nelson Mandela’s casual style of dress. In what he called the Declaration of Amsterdam, he ripped off his own necktie and tossed it at his wife’s feet, calling it “a snake around my neck”. His act briefly touched off an open-necked fashion craze among normally conservative Dutchmen, but the Prince was unable to escape royal decorum for good and, before long, was knotting his tie again.

  Claus appears to have found it difficult to adjust to life as a royal consort, however, and suffered a serious nervous breakdown in the early 1980s. In later life he suffered a string of maladies, including Parkinson’s disease and prostate cancer, and had to have a kidney removed. Although well enough to attend Willem-Alexander’s wedding in February 2002, he spent the following few months in and out of intensive care with respiratory and heart problems. He died that October of Parkinson’s disease and pneumonia, aged seventy-six, his three sons at his bedside.

  Denmark’s Prince Henrik also seems to have struggled to come to terms with his role as first gentleman in his adoptive land, claiming that the Danes have never accepted him. The French accent – and his preference for his native tongue, with which he speaks to the Queen – counted against Henrik in the eyes of many of his subjects. So too did his robust attitudes towards parenting; on one occasion he urged parents to “bring up children like dogs”, on the grounds that “both need a strong hand” – a sentiment that may have been accepted in French aristocratic circles, but did not go down well in liberal Denmark where corporal punishment has long been discouraged. He was also unhappy about being financially dependent on his wife and in 1984 asked that he too receive an official allowance, which he was eventually granted.

  Henrik reflected his frustration with remarkable frankness in his memoirs, Destin oblige, published in 1996. “I said recently that to be prince consort requires the sensitivity of a seismograph under the skin of a rhinoceros,” he wrote. “To be tough, but to feel the slightest vibration. To expect to be the ‌preferred target of any head-hunter.”8

  These frustrations came to a head in an extraordinary outburst in January 2002, when Queen Margrethe was forced to miss the annual exchange of greetings with the foreign ambassadors at the staterooms of Christiansborg Castle, the Danish parliament, after falling and breaking two ribs. Henrik hosted the social part of the event, but Søren Haslund-Christensen, the lord chamberlain, arranged it so that it was Crown Prince Frederik who replied in French to the speech by the doyen of the diplomatic corps.

  Henrik was livid, especially when he read the praise that the Danish newspapers heaped on his son the next day. The court was a social event where he and Margrethe received greetings, he felt, and therefore he should have replaced the Queen in her absence. Unusually, however, he did not try to keep his feelings to himself.

  A couple of weeks afterwards, Henrik left Denmark for France, where he attended a music festival before going home to his estate to oversee production of that year’s vintage. While he was there the palace agreed that he should grant an interview to Bodil Cath, the respected royal correspondent of BT, a Danish ta
bloid. Completely at ease on his home turf, he vented his frustrations with the way he had been relegated overnight from second to third in the hierarchy. “I feel that after more than thirty years’ service I have been put on ice,” Henrik said. “I have been trying to do everything in my power for my country. I am happy in Denmark. I care very much for Denmark. Why this constant degradation of me? Why this need to disappoint me? Why step on my toes and make me lose my self-respect? Something like this would not happen in the United States,” he added. “There you have the expression ‘The First Lady’; why not ‘The First Man’? The First Man is me, not my son.” The only reaction from the royal family was provided by Crown Prince Frederik, who told the paper: “My father is not well at the moment. ‌He needs to remain calm.”9

  Henrik’s comments caused a media storm. The Danish television news led with his remarks, and other newspapers weighed in with their analysis. The Amalienborg Palace responded to the blizzard of press enquiries with a simple “No comment” but swiftly shifted into damage-control mode. The Queen and Frederik, who had been in the Netherlands at the wedding of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, flew immediately to France to be with Henrik. Their second son, Joachim, followed soon afterwards.

  The next day, Henrik posed with Margrethe and Frederik outside the chateau for photographers. “As you can see with your own eyes, we are very happy to be together,” Henrik told them. No questions were allowed.

  Predictably, this was not enough to calm the media. “The Prince’s comments are incomprehensible, and we need a more profound explanation of what is happening now,” declared the conservative daily Jyllands-Posten. Speculation was rife that the couple were heading for a divorce. Amid the torrent of criticism, it was up to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister, to defend the Prince and voice appreciation for his work for Danish society. Henrik’s “period of reflection” over, he finally returned home the following week. The divorce never happened.

  The Queen provided her view of events in Margrethe, an authorized biography made up of a series of interviews she gave to journalist Annelise Bistrup, which was published in 2005. “At times it has been more difficult for my husband than I realized,” she admitted. “And I did not help him sufficiently. I have not been aware of how best to help.” She insisted, however, that the couple had overcome the crisis. “When you have been married for so many years as we have, you should be able to cope with some rough seas once in a while,” she said. “Actually, I think we have fewer crises than many other married couples. This particular thing had a happy ending. I think my ‌husband feels the same way.”10

  Now in his seventies, Henrik has suffered increasingly from ill health. A lover of food and fine wine, he put on weight after a health scare prompted him to give up smoking in 1997. Ten years later, a royal trip to South Korea had to be cut short after he went down with bronchitis on the flight out there. Arthritis has forced him to cut down on two of his passions – sculpting and playing the piano – and he has also given up horse riding. He devotes himself increasingly to writing poems, in French of course, which he reads at private gatherings. Some are apparently quite erotic. “He certainly does not beat around the bush when he writes,” said a friend who had attended several such gatherings. “It is not that he uses dirty words, but yet, you are in no doubt of the meaning of his poem. His language ‌is very flowery, very verbose.”11

  Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, provides a model for the modern consort – even though he too found it difficult to adapt to his position during the early years of his marriage. As long as his father-in-law George VI was alive, the Duke of Edinburgh, as he became known when he married, was able to continue his career in the Royal Navy. Stationed in Malta from 1949, he spent much of his time away at sea.

  The Duke’s life changed for good in February 1952, however, when Elizabeth became Queen and he was required to return to Britain to be at her side. Her elevation also confronted him with what he was to perceive as a series of slights – the first over the name of the royal house. Philip’s uncle, Lord Mountbatten, who had played such an important role in bringing the couple together, suggested the House of Windsor should be renamed the House of Mountbatten on the grounds that Elizabeth, had she been any other woman, would typically have taken her husband’s surname – or at the very least ensured that it was carried by their children. Elizabeth’s paternal grandmother, Queen Mary, was appalled, and told Winston Churchill, recently returned to power as prime minister, who advised Elizabeth to issue a proclamation declaring the royal house was to remain the House of Windsor.

  The Duke was angry. “I am nothing but a bloody amoeba,” he complained. “I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his ‌name to his own children.”12 In a concession to her husband, the Queen did, however, announce that the Duke was to have “place, pre-eminence and precedence” next to her “on all occasions and in all meetings, except where otherwise provided by Act of Parliament”.

  By nature, Philip loved to be in command, whether of a Royal Navy ship, a polo team or his own family. That could no longer be the case now his wife had become Queen. His role was to support her in her duties as sovereign, accompanying her to ceremonies such as the state opening of parliament, to state dinners and on tours abroad. “Until that point, I was head of the family,” he wrote later. “Within the house, whatever we did, it was together. I naturally filled the principal position. People used to come and ask me what to do. After the King’s death the whole ‌thing changed very, very considerably.”13

  Matters were not helped by the attitude of the royal household, ministers and other members of the establishment, for whom Philip, with his foreign origins, was something of an outsider. For some, he was too Teutonic – not a helpful attribute in country that had just spent six years at war with Germany. Some members of the aristocracy nicknamed him “Phil the Greek”.

  Lord Charteris, who became Elizabeth’s first private secretary in 1949, suggested Philip had not made things easier with his own attitude. “I think Philip might have tried a little harder to accommodate the views of the royal household,” he wrote. “Because of the way he was treated, especially before his marriage, he had a certain amount of prejudice against the old order. He thought it was stuffy and needed shaking up. He became the consort of the sovereign as opposed to the husband of a princess, with a certain amount of antipathy and impatience. ‌He sulked quite a lot.”14

  Elizabeth quickly realized she would have to find a way of keeping her hyperactive husband occupied; so she put him in charge of modernizing Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Sandringham, as well as making him chief ranger of Windsor Great Park. Philip began with Buckingham Palace: he set to with gusto, coming up with a flurry of proposals to update both the structures of the buildings and the way they were run. Not surprisingly, many of his plans were blocked by staff, but he succeeded in pushing some through. Lower, false ceilings were put into some of the rooms, the central heating was upgraded and an intercom system installed. There were also mass sackings and redundancies among the staff, many of whom were pensioned off.

  While the Duke makes a point of walking two steps behind his wife in public, theirs is apparently a far more traditional relationship when they are alone together. “They have worked out an interesting modus operandi,” says one senior royal official. “In public, as you might expect, the Queen is very much in the lead, and the jokes about him always being one step behind her are entirely accurate. But in private, he is very much in the lead. He takes the initiative on their conversations and what they will do. So their private and public worlds are entirely different.” Gyles Brandreth, author of the joint biography Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage, who knows the couple well, agrees: “They are typical of their generation. She wears the crown but he wears the trousers. Interestingly, she doesn’t really feel safe except ‌with the Duke of Edinburgh.”15

  Sir Michael Oswald, an old friend of the Queen, claims the royal couple also share a
sense of humour, teasing each other when they are away from the spotlight. “It helps them deal with stressful situations,” he says. “It is part of their mutual support, part of their camaraderie.” This is confirmed by Brandreth, who recalls being in a car behind theirs on the night of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002 and seeing them having an attack of the giggles. “You don’t think of the Queen really letting go, but she was actually rocking back and forth with laughter,” he says. “It was a wonderful sight. They will have been sharing ‌some anecdote about the day.”16

  Unlike many of their royal predecessors, the couple apparently share a bed, even if they have necessarily always spent a considerable time away from each other – which has helped fuel persistent rumours about Philip’s philandering. There seems no doubt the Duke enjoyed a number of romantic dalliances during his courtship with Elizabeth. Young, good-looking and a prize catch, he was sought after by beautiful women and reciprocated their attentions. After the end of the war and his return he was a fixture on the London party scene, often together with Mike Parker, who had been a close friend since their time in the navy together. Together they would frequent the capital’s drinking clubs and nightclubs.

  The partying continued after they married, although no convincing evidence has been produced for any of his supposed liaisons. Nor, following royal tradition, has the Prince ever responded to the claims – to the apparent frustration of some of the women concerned. Pat Kirkwood, an actress who lived for six decades under the suspicion of having been his mistress after they spent an evening together in 1948, wrote bitterly to Philip in May 1993, “I think if there had been some support from your direction, the matter could have been squashed years ago instead of having to battle ‌a sea of sharks single-handed.”17