Lady Louise Windsor held a special place in Prince Philip’s heart

Elegant and dutiful, Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor was one of the youngest and freshest faces among the senior Royals at the coronation and then on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

The 19-year-old has been largely shielded from the public eye by her parents Edward and Sophie, Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh.

But she is dear to the royal family and had a special relationship with her late grandparents, Queen Elizabeth II and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Lady Louise was their seventh grandchild. And for Philip, she brought not only joy, but also a sense of personal pride.

This was because she became the first Royal Family to officially bear the Mountbatten-Windsor surname, allowing Philip’s surname, Mountbatten, to continue in the future of the Royal Family.

(The former Duke of Edinburgh was particularly gobsmacked by the idea of ​​his children not inheriting his name, after learning that Charles would take the surname Windsor.)

A former aide said Philip would be “thrilled” that, 55 years after the birth of his first child, a member of the royal family would finally carry on the Mountbatten line.

In 2019, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Meghan, followed suit and named their first child Archie Mountbatten-Windsor.

Prince Philip was born with the family name Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.

But he adopted the more manageable name Mountbatten in 1947, when he abdicated his Greek and Danish royal titles and became a British citizen.

After her accession to the throne, Queen Elizabeth confirmed that the name of the royal family would remain Windsor, following the name change from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1917 due to anti-German sentiment.

The Queen’s decision to keep the name, on the advice of then Prime Minister Winston Churchill, is said to have angered her husband, as described in Sally Bedell Smith’s book, Elizabeth the Queen.

It reports that the former Duke of Edinburgh made the Queen cry with his “almost cheeky” attitude when she refused to take his surname.

She “didn’t see that her actions would have a profound effect on Philip, leading to tension in their marriage,” it adds.

In 1960 it was decided that the Queen’s ‘deroyalised’ descendants, beginning with any grandchildren who did not hold the title of ‘Royal Highness’, should adopt the Mountbatten-Windsor surname.

The monarch said in a statement at the time that she had “had this in mind for a long time and it is close to her heart.”

While royals with a prince or princess title often do not use a surname, Mountbatten-Windsor became the name they would use if the instance ever came into being.

The first time Mountbatten-Windsor appeared in an official document was by Princess Anne for the registration of her marriage to Captain Mark Phillips in 1973.

Prince Edward, now the Duke of Edinburgh, married Sophie Rhys-Jones in 1999 and was given the title of Earl of Wessex.

Letters of patent issued in 1917 by King George V decreed that the children of the monarch’s sons could use the title HRH as well as ‘prince’ or ‘princess’, but it was decided that Edward’s children would be given courtesy titles as children of a count.

Lady Louise got to choose whether to use Her Royal Highness style when she was 18 years old – an opportunity she has so far rejected.

Speaking to The Sunday Times Magazine in 2020, Sophie said: ‘We try to raise them with the understanding that they will most likely have to work for a living.’

Princess Anne’s children, Zara and Peter, also have no HRH titles and have taken their father’s surname – Mark Phillips.

Today, Louise, who conveniently goes by the title of Lady Louise Windsor, is in her first year of a degree at England’s St Andrews University – where her cousin William met Kate.

She was born prematurely in 2003.

Her mother, the then Countess of Wessex, went into labor when she was 36 weeks pregnant on November 8, 2003, while Prince Edward was in Mauritius – a 12-hour flight – on an official visit.

When she arrived at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey, Sophie showed signs of acute placental abruption, in which the placental lining detaches from the uterus, and doctors performed an emergency delivery.

The moment Louise was born, weighing just 4lb 9oz, she was taken away from her mother and rushed to St George’s Hospital in Tooting, London, for special care.

Sophie, meanwhile, was only 15 minutes away from death, the Mail On Sunday reported in 2014.

Louise was baptized in the private chapel at Windsor with godparents including Lady Sarah Chatto, Lady Alexandra Etherington, Mrs Francesca Schwarzenbach and Mr Rupert Elliott as well as Lord Ivar Mountbatten.

The young royal family shared a love of carriage riding with the late Duke of Edinburgh, who was instrumental in establishing the activity as a sport in Britain.

Louise paid tribute to her grandfather’s legacy by participating in a carriage event last April, the weekend of his death.

In 2011, she was a bridesmaid at William and Kate’s wedding.

It was revealed that Lady Louise had worked in a garden center the previous summer before going to university, earning £6.63 an hour.