With the passing of the Duke of Edinburgh, one of the last representatives of a system that had endured for a millennium passes into history
In November 1947, a dynastic union was forged between the royal houses of Greece and Great Britain. It would be one of the last of this kind of royal marriages in history -- a type of union that had knitted together the continent for 1,000 years.
When Philip, prince of Greece and Denmark married Elizabeth, princess of Great Britain, they reconnected two bloodlines descended from Queen Victoria. But they also renewed a kinship tie between Britain and Denmark that had been joined together numerous times, from Canute and Aelfgifu in 1015 to Edward VII and Alexandra in 1863.
For centuries, almost every European monarchy maintained diplomatic relationships with its neighbours through dynastic marriages, in a system that persisted all the way up to the 1930s, then rapidly faded away in the post-war era.
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