Cape Town - Was it love at first sight?
Although Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip have been committed to each other for several decades, royal expert Robert Lacy, recently revealed what Her Majesty first thought of the Duke of Edinburgh.
The queen, who was 13 when she met 18-year-old Phillip, apparently couldn’t take her eyes off the charming young man, Daily Express reports.
"One of the most extraordinary things about the queen is that she fell in love and married just about the first man she met," Lacy said.
"Of course, it’s a slight exaggeration. But she met Prince Philip of Greece, as he then was [known] in 1939 when he was a dashing naval cadet at Dartmouth Naval College.
"She’d met him before at a family occasion, but this was the occasion when, by her own account, the spark was struck."
Majesty magazine editor Ingrid Seward added that the queen was besotted with the young prince.
"Very dashing and very handsome, and I mean quite unusually," Seward said.
"She actually thought this man is wonderful, you know, as a 13-year-old could think.
"A handsome prince... And she never really had any affection for any other man."
The royal pair, who tied the knot in Westminster Abbey in 1947, will be celebrating their 72nd wedding anniversary on 20 November, BBC reports.
Sources: Hello Magazine, Daily Express, BBC