Like Lena Dunham, Air Mail has been a reliable source for examples of nympholepsy in pop culture. For example, Air Mail's piece "Sissy Sheridan Knows [Teen] Sex Rules On TikTok," Nancy Goldstone's post where she dubbed King Louis XV the possible Jeffrey Epstein of the 18th century, and on episode 58 of the Air Mail's "Morning Meeting" podcast (Oct 22, 2021), we learned that François Mitterrand, the former President of France, had [at least] two mistresses. And [at least] one of his mistresses, Claire, was 50 years younger than Mitterrand and that Claire was 18 when she seduced the elderly former statesman.
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13-Year-Old Elizabeth | Philip & Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage |
And we learned from an Air Mail podcast that 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth fell in love with 18-year-old Prince Philip - at first sight.
Gyles Brandreth's Philip & Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage relates how the teen age-gap relationship began:
Their first port of call - part duty, part pleasure - was along the Devon coast, at the mouth of the estuary of the River Dart, at Dartmouth, at the Royal Naval College, where the King - a cadet at the College in the years before the Great War - was to carry out an inspection, and Princess Elizabeth, age thirteen, was to meet Prince Philip of Greece, age eighteen. Lilibet [Princess Elizabeth's nickname.] later claimed it was love at first sight.
During the visit: "Prince Philip would be detailed to entertain them. Lilibet and Margaret Rose [Princess Elizabeth's younger sister.]"
The nymphet was playing with a: "[...] children's train set when Philip appeared. He said, "How do you do," to Lilibet, and for a while they knelt side by side playing with the trains. [Unsurprisingly] [h]e soon got bored with that."
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Philip - The Year Before. | Philip & Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage |
After "ginger crackers and lemonade", Philip suggested, "Let's go to the tennis courts and have some real fun jumping the nets.”
Consequently, “She [i.e., Princess Elizabeth a.k.a. Lilibet ] never took her eyes off him the whole time [...] And today, the Queen does not deny the essence of it either: that was the weekend she fell for Philip. And why not. He was enviably good-looking. He was fit. He was fun. He was funny.”
Why not? Well, it appears that official and unofficial royalty are immune to being cancelled for being involved in age-gap affairs. For instance, like we previously mentioned, the Air Mail podcast hosts spoke flatteringly about elderly François Mitterrand's affair with his 18-year-old mistress. And who has attempted to cancel a Kennedy for an age-gap affair? (e.g., JFK and Mimi Alford. And Michael Kennedy & Marissa Verrochi.) But 22-year-old Jerry Lee was (literally) cancelled in Britain after it was revealed that he was married to Myra Gale - his a 15-year-old cousin.
Wait, did we mention that Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth were cousins? Brandreth related that the age-gap couple met prior to 1939, because they were cousins:
It is frequently asserted that Saturday 22 July 1939 was the day on which Philip and Elizabeth first set eyes on one another. Not so. They had met before. They were cousins, after all.
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Philip (18) and Elizabeth (13) Playing Croquet | Philip & Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage |
Brandreth described the above photo and somehow determined that 13-year-old Elizabeth was gazing intently at Philip and that the royal nymphet looked happy:
There are, however, in existence two photographs taken that weekend, each featuring Philip and Elizabeth, and each telling its own story. The first is a snapshot of the two of them alone playing croquet in the garden of the Captain's House.
The eighteen-year-old boy appears to be concentrating on his next stroke. The thirteen-year-old girl, standing by a hoop, in her neat double-breasted summer coat, small hands clasped together in front of her, is gazing at him intently. She does look happy.
Allegedly, Elizabeth's love was unrequited, but not because Philip wasn't sexually active. Reportedly, prior to enrolling at Dartmouth, Philip had a "holiday dalliance [i.e., teen sex] in Venice" but no word on if the girl was a blond, brunette or redhead charmer:
What distinguishes their meeting in July 1939, of course, is not Philip's attitude to Elizabeth - he was interested in girls, girls of his own age, not thirteen year olds - but hers to him.
In the run-up to taking the Dartmouth entrance exam, he stayed [...] with a Mr and Mrs Mercer in Cheltenham. By day, Mr Mercer prepared young men for their naval examinations. By night [...] Alexandra of Yugoslavia, Mr Mercer's teenage daughter entertained the student prince [...] Alexandra also recalled Philip enjoying a holiday dalliance in Venice at about the same time. 'He was very amusing, gay, full of life and energy and he was a tease,' she said. 'Blondes, brunettes and redhead charmers, Philip gallantly and I think quite impartially squired them all.
Although, Philip and Elizabeth didn't marry until the princess was no longer a nymphet, they did keep in touch - reportedly only "here and there" and "now and again. And if you believe that, I have a plot of sand at Coney Island I'm willing to sell you - for a (large) fee:
Through the war years, Prince Philip kept in touch with his cousin, Princess Elizabeth. He wrote to her, 'from here and there'. He saw her, 'now and again'. Sixty years on, he says he really doesn't remember much about it.
Lastly, despite the surprising (open) support for 13-year-old Elizabeth's love for 18-year-old Prince Philip, ironically, their relationship wouldn't even be cleared by the "Romeo and Juliet laws" where, per Wikipedia: "a person can legally have consensual sex with a minor provided that he or she is not more than a given number of years older, generally four years or less." #royalty