Watch the video to see the real reason Queen Elizabeth & Philip didn't share a bedroom.
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00:00Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip had one of the most public marriages out there.
00:04According to Brides, when they got married in 1947, everyone wanted to know everything
00:09about the couple that would one day sit at the head of the royal family. Then, in the 1950s and
00:1460s, the media delighted in whispering about Prince Philip's supposed affairs. British actress
00:20Patricia Kirkwood took a hit to her career when she was forced to publicly deny romantic
00:25involvement with the prince, despite the royal family's refusal to do so. She subsequently
00:30became infamous for allegedly declaring,
00:33"...I would have had a happier and easier life if Prince Philip, instead of coming uninvited
00:37to my dressing room, had gone home to his pregnant wife on the night in question."
00:41If Queen Elizabeth's silence surrounding the cheating scandals seems surprising to you,
00:46well, living like a royal involves a lot of things the layperson wouldn't understand.
00:50Some of the customs that are commonplace to them seem out of place to us.
00:54A life dedicated to being public symbols naturally makes for a very interesting marriage.
00:59And to have a marriage that's in the spotlight succeed, it takes unorthodox practices,
01:04some of them more surprising than others. Take, for example, the fact that, per HuffPost,
01:10many royal wedding menus are still inexplicably written in French.
01:14One of the peculiar things about their royal marriage is that Her Majesty and the Duke of
01:18Edinburgh often spent time apart. During the last years of their life, after Prince Philip retired,
01:23they lived in separate residences. But even when the royal couple lived and spent time together,
01:28they didn't share a bedroom. That's no indication, however,
01:31that the cheating rumors surrounding Prince Philip were true. Instead, it was a question
01:35of tradition. Lady Pamela Mountbatten told Vanity Fair,
01:39"...in England, the upper class always have had separate bedrooms. You don't want to be
01:43bothered with snoring or someone flinging a leg around. Then, when you are feeling cozy,
01:48you share your room sometimes. It is lovely to be able to choose."
01:51One could certainly make the case that separate bedrooms make for a cold or loveless marriage,
01:56but it certainly worked for the royal couple. Throughout the ups and downs of over seven
02:00decades, nothing broke them apart. On the contrary, time spent alone was valuable to the couple.
02:06The Duke of Edinburgh himself once told the media that,
02:09"...the secret of a happy marriage is to have different interests."
02:13As for the queen, she reflected during her golden anniversary speech in 1997, saying,
02:19"...he has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years. And I, and his whole family,
02:24and this, and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim,
02:29or we shall ever know."
02:31Not sharing a marital bed doesn't mean that Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth didn't spend
02:35time together in bed, at all. As Philip Eade wrote in his biography of the prince,
02:40during the beginning of their marriage, the couple spent a lot of time in each other's rooms.
02:44He wrote,
02:44Philip had his own bedroom next door to Elizabeth's, an arrangement common to a
02:48great many upper-class couples at the time. But he claims their sheets weren't exactly cold.
02:53Instead, the royal couple was used to enjoying the visitation rituals which that system involves.
02:58In fact, if you believe Eade, one day, the Duke of Edinburgh's valet was mortified to discover
03:04the two had slept together all night long upon entering Prince Philip's room in the morning.
03:09Per Eade, while she was wearing her usual silk nightgown, Prince Philip appeared to be naked.
03:15He didn't care at all. By every account, Prince Philip was always a bit cheeky.
03:19The Daily Mirror's James Whittaker once wrote that after someone complimented
03:23the queen's blemish-free face, her husband countered,
03:26Yes, she's like that all over.
03:28Lucky for Philip, Queen Elizabeth was almost inconceivably patient with him.
03:32The prince toasted his wife on his 50th anniversary, saying,
03:36I think the main lesson we have received is that tolerance is the one essential ingredient
03:41in any happy marriage. You can take it from me, the queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance.