Their Sovereign Majesties

Although love and marriage appear to have become somewhat diluted as a social institution in favour of less formal partnerships in life's journey, it's nice to see and hear of old married couples celebrating half-centuries and more of wedded convenience.

Oh, of course there's more than convenience in long companionships. There's the original background of physical attraction, psychological attachment, and the convenience of instant companionship. I'm being provocative here.

Kidding, just kidding. We're talking about Lizzie and Phil Windsor after all. Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain (and the Commonwealth nations) and her royal consort, Lord Philip Mountbatten. Um, Elizabeth Windsor and Prince Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg. Sixty years of marriage. And good on them.

Although there is most certainly an element of royal discretion and duty involved in their relationship, it cannot have been devoid of the sweet considerations of a shared love, of spiritual forgiving. They committed themselves to one another. It cannot have been easy for someone like Prince Philip to swear allegiance to his queen, also his wife, and to walk careful steps behind her royal presence at all times as royal consort.

She to the palace born, ruling regally with distinction and wit in her role as constitutional monarch, devoted to her sense of duty to her country and her position. Hard to know which might have come first, her ingrained, carefully taught and absorbed duty to country or her womanly love for her gallant and often outspoken husband.

But it's their little secret and so it should remain.

In the final analysis they have acquitted themselves exceedingly well. More power to them, if they indeed required more power. They've suffered through the same indignity and 'cuts of a thousand deaths' that most parents of independent-minded children undergo. And they did it with grace and dignity.

Therefore, may they long linger in peace and contentment.