Prince Philip’s funeral: live updates

British Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, died at the age of 99 on April 9 at Windsor Castle. (Alexa Juliana Ard / The Washington Post) During the eight days of official national mourning, the British began to take action on Prince Philip. To his critics, it was a relic, apostasy, who supported a petty soap – the Windsor opera – an overeating man who represented the ultimate privileges of a white man who stood at the forefront of a family tracing her lineage to Queen Victoria, in the days of the British Empire, and the colonialism and exploitation that accompanied it. Critics see fanatic, fanatical and worse, but many of his fans see a different prince, who spent his life earning his unearned titles, who has steadfastly served his wife and queen – and 800 different charities and organizations. “Oh, you know how fickle British people can be.” Ingrid Seward, the royal biographer and author of The Prince Philip Revealed, said after spending years criticizing him for being rude, and even racist, they now love him. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said – who is known to regularly abuse – in Parliament. “The world did not hold him against him. On the contrary, they overwhelmingly understood that he was trying to break the ice, get things moving, make people laugh and forget their temper. “He didn’t really have a candidate for his racism, so I suppose that honesty should be grateful,” said Keyinde Andrews, professor of black studies at Birmingham City University. “I mean, come on, saying the Chinese with dirty eyes isn’t a bit rude. Who gets away with that kind of thing today, except for a member of the royal family?” Andrews, whose Jamaican grandmother hung a picture of the Queen on the wall of her living room. “Imagine what he said when he wasn’t in public.” To many, Andrews said, Philip is famous for his “missteps,” not in spite of them. It was a powerful symbol, “a throwback to empire … linked with colonial whiteness and nostalgia” to the past when Britain ruled the waves. He said, “The function of the royal family is to represent the whites.” “Philip was on the brand.”