He was born in Greece, schooled in France, Germany and Scotland, trained in England and served in World War II naval theatres on the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
And, 10 times with his wife and less frequently solo, Prince Philip - who died Friday aged 99 - crossed multiple oceans to reach a collection of islands so far from the seat of the British monarchy any kilometres further and he'd have found himself on his way back.
The first time, in the summer of 1953-1954, his wife Elizabeth was not only the newly crowned Queen but, s young mum of two.
Preparations, although tempered by the tragedy of Tangiwai - Prince Philip would lay a wreath at a mass funeral for victims of the Christmas Eve disaster - went far beyond digging out the bunting.
Sheep were dyed in the colours of the Union Jack, screens put up to block tired buildings and an army of kids in freshly sewn clothes were sent to parks, squares and train stations across the land.
Rotorua girl Miriama Searancke, 13, was among them, walking to Arawa Park alongside thousands of performers and spectators in her new red shoes with a Crown and the initials ER fixed to the side.
"Everybody came to perform for the Queen," Searancke told the Daily Post in 2018.
"It was amazing."
The 38-day tour took the couple to 46 towns or cities and 110 functions, with three-quarters of the country estimated to have spotted a royal wave.
As with all the couple's official tours over more than seven decades of marriage, Prince Philip was usually in the background.
When Pat Jamieson joined the crowds calling "We want the Queen" outside Revington's Hotel in Greymouth, she was convinced she actually got the couple onto the balcony
after - in a quiet moment - calling out "I want the Duke".
The 11-year-old had shared a moment with the consort earlier that day after running half a mile alongside their car during a street parade, she later told the Government's NZHistory website.
"The Duke of Edinburgh looked across and said, 'If you run much further, you will burst'."
He was known for a long list of blunt - and often outrageous - remarks.
One, made in a 1954 letter to Australian politician Sir Harold Hartley and unearthed last year, painted a different picture of the Duke of Edinburgh's thoughts on New Zealand and its inhabitants than could be gleaned from a spontaneous wave or a laying of a wreath.
Māori were treated in New Zealand like "museum pieces and domestic pets", he wrote, and the country was "the perfect welfare state" which was "over-governed with not much room for initiative".
He was, however, impressed by a museum exhibition of Māori culture, a special interest after reading The Coming of the Māori by Sir Peter Buck / Te Rangi Hīroa (Ngāti Mutunga).
And the people were "universally charming and on the whole most considerate", he wrote.
He'd be back two years later - alone - popping in after the Melbourne Olympics.
A decade after their first, wildly successful New Zealand tour, the royal couple sailed into the Bay of Islands on the Royal Yacht Britannia on Waitangi Day 1963, visiting ports around the country, including Nelson, from which the Duke - whose flagship Duke of Edinburgh Award programme helped thousands of young people master valuable life
skills - visited the Outward Bound School at Anakiwa.
The Queen and Duke, along with a young Prince Charles and Princess Anne, were back seven years later for the James Cook bicentenary, where they debuted the royal "walkabout".
The royal couple would return for the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch four years later, three years after that to mark the Queen's Silver Jubilee - thought by some to have come closest to matching the excitement of a quarter of a century earlier - and, in 1981, a short visit followed a Commonwealth Heads of Government conference over the ditch.
It might've been brief, but the 1981 tour left the country with the endearing memory of Ginette McDonald's Lyn of Tawa addressing the royals directly at the Royal Variety Performance.
McDonald, in character with her braless, blue jumpsuit outfit and broad Kiwi accent, won over the Duke when she made a comment about the royals opening Tawa's memorial paddling pool.
"The Queen didn't laugh at anything," McDonald later told the New Zealand Women's Weekly.
"It was Prince Philip who engaged with me. We met them afterwards and he muttered things in my ear. He said he liked the sound of the 'piddling' pool."
The next most prominent visit came in 1990, when New Zealand marked 150 years since the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Auckland hosted the Commonwealth Games, with the Queen, Duke and their son Prince Edward in attendance.
The last New Zealand visit by the pair was in 2002, with the only glitch relating to an errant Daimler, which suffered a flat battery.
As the royal couple waited on their now stationary Australia-bound aircraft, airport workers had the ignominious task of pushing the incapacitated car out of the way.