A royal life story. Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip‘s youngest son, is 13th in the line of succession for the British throne.
After the queen’s death at age 96 in September 2022, the Earl of Wessex joined his three older siblings — King Charles III, Princess Anne Prince Andrew — in following their late mother’s hearse during the funeral procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland. The eldest of the siblings, Charles, became king immediately upon their mother’s passing.
Charles is almost 16-years younger than Edward. Edward was born in March 1964 at Buckingham Palace. According to Ingrid Seward’s book My Husband & I: The Inside Story Of 70 Years of Royal Marriage, the queen and her husband Prince Philip — who died in April 2021 at the age of 99 — broke royal tradition by allowing the Duke of Edinburgh to witness the birth.
“The Duke of Edinburgh was actually holding his wife’s hand as their youngest was born,” Seward wrote. “The Queen, by then aged 37, had asked him to be there. She’d been keenly reading women’s magazines that stressed the importance of involving fathers in childbirth and had become fascinated by the idea.”
Edward’s wife, Sophie Rhys-Jones?, told Sky NewsIn 2016, she and her husband had a close relationship to Her Majesty.
“We do see quite a lot of her,” the Countess of Wessex said at the time. “We’re over there most weekends riding.”
After many years of dating, the prince and countess were married in June 1999. They have two children, Lady Louise Windsor (born in 2003) and James, Viscount Severn (born in 2007). Louise and James are right behind their father in royal succession in 14th and fifteenth places, respectively.
Edward graduated from the University of Cambridge and served briefly with the Royal Marines. After working as a theatre production assistant, and then forming his own television production company called Ardent Productions in 2002, Edward became a full-time member of the royal family. His royal charity work focuses on the arts, athletics and the development of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, a youth program founded by his father.
Speaking to reporters after Philip’s death, the Cambridge alum called his father’s passing “a bit of a shock.”
“However much one tries to prepare oneself for something like this it’s still a dreadful shock,” he said at the time. “And we are still trying to come to terms with that and it’s very, very sad.”
Scroll through for a look at Prince Edward’s life over the years: