A photo of Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip are circulating online that claim to show the moment Philip pranked the queen by dressing up as a Palace Guard.
An example of the photo as it appeared on social media with the fake caption is below.
Prince Philip pranking The Queen by dressing as a Palace Guard.
While the photo itself is genuine, it does not show a moment where Prince Philip pranked the Queen, nor is he dressed like a Palace Guard. The uniform Prince Philip was wearing is the dress uniform of the Grenadier Guards, where Prince Philip was an honorary colonel. There are numerous other photos available of Philip wearing the same uniform during events.
The misleading caption has been promoted by a number of popular but extremely unreliable Twitter accounts purporting to post historical and “amazing” photos that regularly turn out to be either fake or staged, or in this case misattributed. We’ve previously discussed these Twitter accounts in an article here.
As for the photo itself, according to a recent BBC article explaining the photo, it was taken by photographer Chris Young at a 2003 event at Windsor Castle. Bizarrely, a swarm of bees had managed to disrupt the event’s proceedings, and while the bees were being removed by a Royal beekeeper, photographer Young had captured the candid moment between the pair showing the Queen giggling.
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The story was reported on at the time but Chris Young was the only photographer present at the event and as such there were not many photos to accompany the news stories. However the BBC report linked above has more photos from the same photographer showing the disruption caused by the swarm.
As such, no this is not Prince Philip pranking the Queen and we rank that claim false.
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