Description
This 2012 $20 double-effigy commemorative coin features Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip. Mintage is 15,000 coins. HST/GST exempt.
The Design:
The image is bordered by two decorative elements containing a shamrock, a (Tudor) rose, and a thistle (symbolic of the British Isles) as well as some maple leaves (symbolic of Canada).
A Young Princess Meets Her Prince:
Queen Elizabeth II, the first-born child of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, began her public life when she was a teenager. Her first radio address, broadcast from Windsor Castle in 1940, attested to her mettle even from the young age of fourteen, as she encouraged and comforted other children while bombs fell on London.
It was at the age of thirteen, while accompanying her parents on a royal tour of Dartmouth Naval College in 1939, that Princess Elizabeth met the dashing young Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten. The Lieutenant, five years her senior, was born a Prince of both Greece and Denmark, but his family had been exiled from Greece when he was a child. As he escorted Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret around the Dartmouth campus, young Elizabeth fell in love. After more than five years of letter-writing throughout the war, Philip asked for Elizabeth’s hand in marriage in 1946.
After War, A Time to Celebrate:
After the bleak days of war, Princess Elizabeth's wedding captured the world’s imagination. The ceremony in Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947, broadcast by radio to 200 million people around the world, was relatively modest out of respect for Britain’s war recovery effort.
Philip continued his naval career until Elizabeth’s coronation in 1952. In the years that followed, he became a patron of hundreds of charitable organizations. Today, he is Britain's longest-serving consort.
A Lifelong Partnership:
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip have four children and eight grandchildren, and continue their lifelong partnership of mutual support and service to the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, and numerous individual organizations and charities.
