It's clear the late Prince Philip never considered himself German.
He was born a Greek and his paternal grandfather was a Danish prince who had been appointed King of Greece and his paternal grandmother was a Russian Grand Duchess.
His maternal granparents were both born Germans but his grandmother was also the granddaughter of the Queen of UK and his grandparents settled in the UK where his grandfather made a career in the Royal Navy.
From a fairly young age Philip lived in the UK and became a legal Brit before he married. It's obvious he himself identified with that nation as his. It had provided him a home, his wife and their offspring as well as a career and a life mission.
As Charles already replied the Prince of Wales was born and raised in the UK and though he has learned to speak some German you cannot confuse him for German in spite of the many German or Germanic ancestors he has. The same applies to the Queen and most other reigning dynasties in Europe.
Besides that the nation states we know today developed over centuries and at times quite accidental.The Iberian peninsula had many different states in it that by conquest and inheritance ended up in four different countries Spain, Portugal, Andorra and the UK (Gibraltar). Had things gone differently the kingdoms of Portugal and Castille and Leon might have joined into one nation with Aragon as a seperate unity. The the Christian conquest of the southern part of current Spain failed things would have been different as well.
Had the Belgian revolt of 1830 not happened or if it had been unsuccessful the current three monarchies and nations of the Benelux would be officially two countries (with different borders when it comes to Luxembourg) and most likely would have the same sovereign from the House of Orange-Nassau on the throne in Brussels.
just to point out how accidental current nations and their borders are.
To me the best definition of what someone is when it comes to nationality is how that individual identifies, where he or she was born and raised and in what culture they grew up.
As we have seen there are people who are born and raised in one country but identify mainly with another country due to their cultural background.
There are also mistakes made within family traditions about their background. My father always assumed that his ancestry was Belgian on his father's side and French on his mothers. When my cousin and i later researched our family tree we found out that what we though wes a French line turned out to be a Germanic Swiss line that had it's name spelled incorrectly during the Napoleonic time and a few generations later people did no longer know that. The story of the Belgian ancestors (or more precisely Southern Low Countries background) also turned out to be wrong. The male line of my father lived in the area where he was born and raised for centuries.
Genetic or ethnic ancestry is even more tricky because it assumes that legal parents were also the genetic parents and we know that is not always the case.
In the case of Prince Philip his ancestor prince Alexander of Hesse may very well have been the biological son of the Grand Duchess' lover rather than her husband. It was openly speculated about at that time. Not that rumours are always true but still.
Think of the king of Spain. His formal ancestry is not particularly Spanish. But you only have to go back a few generations to Alfonso XII and there is a major question mark over his biological paternity. If it was the King-consort than Felipe VI would have little Spanish blood in his veins genetically. However if Alfonso XII was the result of one of Queen Isabel II's affairs than his genetic background alters quite a bit.
We've had a discussion here about Prince Philip and others in the royal family and their Germanic backgrounds. When Charles assumes the throne, what will be the makeup of his background? Will there be enough Scots in him to say that he is Scottish for instance? German? British?
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