Kinship
How were Elizabeth II and Prince Philip related?
Second cousins once removed through Christian IX of Denmark and Louise of Hesse-Kassel, and third cousins through Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Queen Elizabeth II and Philip Mountbatten: second cousins once removed
- Second cousin once removed through Christian IX of Denmark and Louise of Hesse-Kassel: Alexandra of Denmark → King George V → King George VI → Queen Elizabeth II; George I of Greece → Andrew of Greece and Denmark → Philip Mountbatten
- Third cousin through Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Queen Victoria: King Edward VII → King George V → King George VI → Queen Elizabeth II; Alice of the United Kingdom → Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine → Alice of Battenberg → Philip Mountbatten
The nearer link was Danish. Christian IX’s daughter Alexandra married the future Edward VII; their son George V was the father of George VI, and so the grandfather of Elizabeth. Christian’s second son, meanwhile, was elected to the Greek throne and reigned as George I, and George’s son Andrew was Philip’s father. Philip therefore stood three generations below the Danish king and Elizabeth four — the difference that makes them second cousins once removed. Because this link ran father to son from Christian IX down to Philip, it was also the source of his birth rank: he came into the world a Glücksburg, and a prince of Greece and of Denmark alike.
The second route climbs to Victoria and Albert, four generations on each side, which makes the couple third cousins as well. Elizabeth’s half of it is the line of the crown itself: Edward VII, George V, George VI. Philip’s half runs entirely through women. Victoria’s daughter Alice married into the grand-ducal family of Hesse and by Rhine; Alice’s daughter Victoria married Prince Louis of Battenberg; and their daughter, Alice of Battenberg, was Philip’s mother. In this archive the pair are joined twice, then — once through the children of a Danish king, once through those of a British queen.
They first met as children in 1934, at the wedding of Elizabeth’s uncle, the Duke of Kent, to Philip’s first cousin Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, and met again at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in 1939. Ahead of the July 1947 announcement of their engagement, he set aside his Greek and Danish titles, took British nationality and adopted Mountbatten, the English form of Battenberg, from his mother’s side of the family — the side through which he descended from Victoria. Of the two routes the diagram traces, then, one carried the titles he gave up, the other the name he took.
Computed from every recorded line in The British Royal Line on Kinlight; written 29 September 2026.