It is hard to believe for those who may not be knowledgeable on the royal family all the way back to the early days of Queen Elizabeth’s life, however it is no secret the royal’s mother did not approve of the “dangerous progressive” Prince Philip.
A new documentary has brought up old wounds, and specifically touches on the atmosphere of the royal family when then-Princess Elizabeth announced she would be marrying Prince Philip.
The Queen Mother, who was Queen Consort to King George VI at the time, was worried her daughter was setting out to marry the wrong kind of man when she brought her to-be husband home.
Philip was not exactly the upstanding British husband the Queen Mother pictured for her Elizabeth, as he came from German heritage and had loose connections to the Nazi Party.
This isn't to say Philip was a Nazi himself; he only has connections through his sisters, who still lived in Germany.
However it still caused concern and according to the documentary The Private Lives of the Windsor’s, the Queen Mother’s dislike for Philip went beyond frivolous gossip.
It claims she was used to having all her daughter's attention and didn't like having to compete with Philip for Elizabeth's time and affection.
“The Queen Mother viewed him as rather an enemy and in fact one would see those early years as being a tug-of-war and a tussle for the ear of the Queen,” historian and biographer Professor Jane Ridley said.
She also supposedly disliked that Philip, who was an “outsider”, was being brought into the family as he challenged her “authority” as family matriarch.
Philip's more “progressive” ideas only became more obtrusive to the Queen Mother when her daughter took the throne, as she was very much a true-to-form traditionalist.
They regularly butted heads in the early years of Elizabeth's reign, and even clashed over how future king Prince Charles should be raised.
While the Queen Mother pusher for him to be nurtured and treated with gentle care, Philip wanted to turn his first born son into a proper man.
The Queen Mother's frustrations weren't reserved for her son-in-law exclusively though and when Prince Elizabeth was crowned queen in 1953 – it was a difficult and forced transition without enough preparation.
Due to Her Majesty’s sudden death, the Queen Mother could not enjoy the same family dynamic that she had held for many years.
Royal biographer Christopher Warwick explains: “She felt they'd been cut off in her prime, she loved the position of being Queen and suddenly all that was taken from her.
“The Queen mother minded very much being Queen mother, and she was jealous of her daughter having become Queen.”
This article originally appeared on Over60.