The meaning of mourning the Duke of Edinburgh

The national episode of mourning following the death of the Duke of Edinburgh acknowledges his remarkable life and contribution. For some, obsequies are a religious process commending a soul to the next life; for even fewer, they will be in remembrance of a person they actually met. But like the reaction to the death of any figure, including the mood at any family funeral, last week’s events are testament to much more besides. Our feelings are about the significance of the deceased, those who survive them, the times in which they lived, and about our own conditions.

Prince Philip’s life shows a record of prodigious endeavour from youth. His aristocratic family, evicted from power by the 1922 military coup in Greece, disintegrated and dispersed around Europe before he was ten. He lived an itinerant existence before arriving a Gordonstoun, the public school founded by a Jewish refugee from Nazism, which channelled and authorised his ebullient, independent, practical spirit.

Much tribute has been aid in the Duke’s obituaries to his impressive record as a Naval Officer in the war, and to his sacrifice of this role, along with his name and family title, to become the first male consort to an English monarch since Prince Albert’s marriage to Victoria in 1840. The Queen has made explicit reference to his contribution to his guidance and example in making the Royal Family a more visible and active institution, especially in his encouragement of young people through the Duke of Edinburgh programme.

The nation also felt sadness because their loss was most intensely that of the Queen, whose popularity has been unaffected by the recent controversies and divisions around the Royal Family. This sympathy was reflected in the Sun’s headline ‘We’re all weeping with you, Ma’am’.

In addition, respect for both the Queen and Prince Philip is intensified by the reminder given by the Duke’s lifetime of its resonances with those of the mourners amongst the public. The values his story celebrates – of loyalty to public duty, to family and in particular marriage, allied to rugged self-reliance, independence of mind and perseverance in fulfilling those duties – are ones shared by a generation of who also suffered war, obeyed intrusions into freedom which even the harshest COVID lockdown would not begin to match, and lived through austerity unimaginable in modern Britain.

These are values recognisable, too, to the baby-boomers raised by the wartime generation. As with the death of other long-serving public figures - from Churchill to Victoria or the Duke of Wellington – mourners contemplate, only partly nostalgically, the way in which their shared experiences shaped their values, and the way in which those values have been affected by social change.

Lastly the response of the public to a high-profile death is always a reflection of the times in which it takes place, often acting as a symbol for an existing, if partly latent, attitude to the times. The overwhelming emotional response to the death of Princess Diana, for example, came at a time when Britain had just emphatically swept away the last remnants of the hard-nosed and ambitiously self-seeking climate of Thatcherism. The mood music around Blair was more in tune with the caring social responsibility associated with Diana. In some ways the celebration of the Duke’s life could be interpreted as a search for evidence of national unity and resilience at a time of internal division and global threat.

Not all of the values Prince Philip personified are as relevant or popular as they were earlier in his life. We know that he sometimes struggled to convince later generations of his own family and of the Millennial public to embrace the demands of his no-nonsense approach to education, marriage and the duties of office, or to share his sense of humour. This much is to be expected in the story of a man whose parents met at Victoria’s funeral, whose birth was recorded in the pre-modern Julian calendar still used in Greece at the time, but whose death is marked by electronic billboards, website books of condolence and tweets from world leaders. Even mourners who have been critical of Prince Philip’s conduct will reflect on its context and meaning. There are few for whom mourning means nothing.