youngest child of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, duke of Edinburgh.

Edward had three older siblings: Charles (Charles, prince of Wales), Anne, and Andrew. He attended Gordonstoun School, a spartan boarding school in Scotland, and studied history at Jesus College, Cambridge. After Cambridge, he joined the Royal Marines but resigned his commission in 1987 in the middle of commando training. He worked briefly for musical theatre composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Lloyd Webber, Andrew, Baron Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton) before setting up his own theatrical production company. This collapsed in 1991 with debts of £600,000 (almost $1 million). In 1993 he set up Ardent Productions, Ltd., which survived, mainly through making programs about the royal family's past history, though seldom earning profits. Despite these ups and downs, Edward won respect for his attempts to be the first child of a British monarch to seek a career in the private sector.

On June 19, 1999, Edward married Sophie Rhys-Jones (now Sophie, countess of Wessex (Wessex, Sophie, countess of)), a public-relations consultant. On the wedding day, the queen bestowed on Edward the title earl of Wessex and Viscount Severn (the senior title represented a geographic reference that could be found only in history books, for Wessex had ceased to be a formal region of England many centuries earlier). Edward and Sophie had two children, Louise (b. 2003) and James (b. 2007).