Prince Philip’s death was “very gentle” — as if “someone took him by the hand, and off he went,” his daughter-in-law said Sunday.
Sophie Wessex — who is married to Prince Edward, the 57-year-old youngest son of Philip and Queen Elizabeth II — said the royal family is taking consolation on how “very peaceful” the 99-year-old’s death was Friday.
“It was right for him and, you know, it was so gentle,” the countess said as she joined her husband and other family members at a service at the Royal Chapel of All Saints in Windsor.
“It was just like someone took him by the hand, and off he went,” she told reporters outside the church.
She said it was “very, very peaceful, and that’s all you want for somebody, isn’t it.”
The Queen was “thinking of others before herself,” the countess said, even as the monarch told son Prince Andrew that the death “left a huge void in her life.”
“I think it is so much easier for the person that goes than the people who are left behind,” Sophie said.
“We are all sitting here looking at each other going ‘this is awful’. But equally, look at all the tributes. It’s just amazing,” she said of well-wishers who continued to bring flowers and cards to royal households.
Despite Philip being two months shy of 100 and having just had a month-long stay in a hospital where he had heart surgery, his death Friday still came as “a bit of a shock,” Edward admitted.
“However much one tries to prepare oneself for something like this it’s still a dreadful shock. And we’re still trying to come to terms with that. And it’s very, very sad,” he said.
He said the “wave of affection for him and just those lovely stories” from well-wishers had helped the family in “bearing up.”
“It just goes to show: he might have been our father, grandfather, father-in-law, but he meant so much to so many other people,” he said.
With Post Wires