Prince Philip’s will is kept in a secret London vault, along with the wills of 32 other high-ranking members of the royal family. The safe, which is maintained by High Court Judge Sir Andrew McFarlane, also contains a unique selection of royal wills, dated 1911, according to People magazine.
There are the last wishes of Queen Elizabeth’s mother, the late Queen Mother, her sister Princess Margaret and her uncle, the Duke of Windsor (aka King Edward VIII), who abdicated the British throne in December 1936, McFarlane said.
Other wills kept in a top-secret vault include the wills of Uncle Philip, Lord Louis Mountbatten of Burma, Queen Mary, wife of King George V, and Princess Beatrice, the youngest child and close companion of Queen Victoria.
“I am now the custodian of a safe containing more than thirty envelopes, each containing a sealed will of a deceased member of the royal family,” McFarlane said in September when he revealed the existence of the royal safe during a trial over the secret of the prince’s last wishes.
“The last additions were made in 2002 and are a testament to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mother, and Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret, Countess Snowdon, respectively,” McFarlane said.
Apart from finding out whose wills are hidden in a mysterious royal safe together with the will of the Duke of Edinburgh, there is very little chance that the details contained in the documents themselves will ever be revealed, the publication notes.
McFarlane stressed that the royal family has the right to an increased level of confidentiality “to protect the dignity and authority of the public role of the monarch and other close members of her family.”
Applications for unsealing of wills can only be made 90 years after the death of their owner, adding that any claims filed before that date “are unlikely to be satisfied for lack of any specific, individual or private justification. related to the management of the property of the deceased.