Philip met the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret during a royal visit to Dartmouth, when Louis Mountbatten assigned his cadet nephew to show them around. This practical arrangement was later polished into a matchmaking story that credited Mountbatten with a long-term plan. Elizabeth and Philip became correspondents while he spent the war at sea, with letters offering continuity to a young officer whose family was divided across the conflict. Their friendship developed over seven years and looked very different when Elizabeth was about twenty and Philip about twenty-five than it had when they first met as teenagers. The gradual correspondence does not support tabloid claims of an instant, predetermined romance.
Notable Point · 1:40:17-1:44:15
Wartime letters built Philip and Elizabeth's relationship over seven years
Their friendship grew through years of letters, while the claim that Mountbatten engineered the marriage from their Dartmouth meeting is treated as a retrospective story.