»The last king of Greece, Constantine, has died at 82«
The last and only monarch of Greece, Constantine, passed away on Tuesday night at a private hospital in Athens, according to his doctors. He was 82.
The private Hygeia Hospital in Athens confirmed to The Associated Press that Constantine had passed away following treatment in the ICU, but they had no other information until a formal announcement.
The young king, Constantine II, had already won fame as a gold medalist in sailing at the Olympics when he took the throne in 1964 at the age of 23. By the following year, he had largely wasted that support due to his active participation in the plots that toppled Prime Minister George Papandreou’s popularly elected Center Union administration.
The incident, which is still well-known in Greece as the “apostasy,” or the departure from the ruling party of a number of parliamentarians, upset the constitutional order and sparked a military coup in 1967. After a run-in with the military authorities, Constantine was eventually exiled. In 1973, the dictatorship dissolved the monarchy, and whatever aspirations Constantine had of ever governing again were destroyed by a referendum after democracy was reestablished in 1974.
He could only make brief trips to Greece in the ensuing decades, which caused a political and media uproar each time. However, in his latter years, when opposing his presence was no longer seen as a sign of vigilant republicanism, he was permitted to return home. Constantine became into a generally uncontroversial historical figure with little yearning for the Greek monarchy.
Prince Paul, the younger brother of King George II and presumed heir to the throne, and princess Federica of Hanover welcomed Constantine into the world on June 2, 1940 in Athens. Sophia, his older sister, is married to Juan Carlos I of Spain, a previous monarch. Uncle of the late Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom was the Greek-born Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh.
The dynasty was descended from Prince Christian, later Christian IX of Denmark, of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg branch of the Danish ruling line. The family had governed in Greece from 1863 with the exception of a 12-year republican interlude between 1922 and 1935.
The royal family was compelled to leave Greece following the German invasion of World War II, traveling to Alexandria in Egypt, South Africa, and then back to Alexandria before Constantine turned one. Following a contentious referendum, King George II made his way back to Greece in 1946, but he passed away only a few months later, leaving Constantine as King Paul I’s successor.
In order to prepare for his future career, Constantine first received his education in a boarding school before enrolling in classes at the Athens Law School and all three military schools. Along with competing in other sports, he was a black belt in karate and sailed.
In the age of 20, he and two other Greek sailors won a gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome in the Dragon Class, which is no longer an Olympic class. Constantine joined the International Olympic Committee in 1963 while still a prince and was made an honorary member for life in 1974.
On March 6, 1964, King Paul I passed away from cancer, and Constantine took his place a few weeks after the Center Union party had defeated the conservatives with 53% of the vote.
After Constantine insisted that command of the military forces belonged to the monarch, the relationship between the prime minister, George Papandreou, and Constantine quickly deteriorated.
Papandreou wanted to control the defense ministry and eventually demanded to be nominated defense minister since many officers were considering establishing a dictatorship and saw any non-conservative administration as soft on communism. Papandreou resigned in July 1965 following a contentious letter-writing war with Constantine.
Constantine’s insistence on establishing a government made up of centrist defectors that finally secured a slim legislative majority on the third attempt was wildly unpopular. Many believed that his cunning mother, dowager Queen Frederica, was controlling him. The protests that shook Greece in the summer of 1965, which were frequently violent, adopted the slogan “The people don’t want you, take your mother and go!” as their catchphrase.
In the end, Constantine and Papandreou reached a kind of understanding, and with his approval, Constantine chose a technocrat government, followed by a conservative-led government, to call elections in May 1967.
However, with the Center Union leading in the polls and Papandreou’s left-leaning son Andreas gaining support, Constantine and his courtiers feared retaliation and organized a coup with the help of senior officers.
On April 21, 1967, a dictatorship was declared by a group of lower-ranking officers, commanded by colonels, who had learned of Constantine’s plans through a mole, a general they had persuaded to join their cause.
Constantine was caught off guard, and the official portrait of the new government made it clear how he felt about the new leaders. He feigned to support them while organizing a counter-coup with the support of his loyal fleet and troops in northern Greece.
With the intention of marching on Thessaloniki and installing a government there, Constantine and his family took a flight to the northern city of Kavala on December 13, 1967. The poorly orchestrated and infiltrated counter-coup failed, forcing Constantine to leave the next day for Rome. He would never again rule as king.
After an unsuccessful Navy counter-coup in May 1973, the junta installed a regent and on June 1, 1973, the monarchy was overthrown. The choice was confirmed in a widely regarded rigged referendum in July.
Veteran politician Constantine Karamanlis, who had come back from exile to lead a civilian administration, counseled Constantine against returning to Greece when the dictatorship fell in July 1974. Conservative Karamanlis, who served as prime minister from 1955 to 1963, fought with the court over what he saw as its excessive meddling in politics.
Following his resounding victory in the November elections, Karamanlis scheduled a vote on the monarchy for December 8 of that same year. Although Constantine was prohibited from entering the nation to campaign, the outcome—a republic winning with 69.2% of the vote—was clear-cut and highly regarded.
Karamanlis famously said shortly after that the country has gotten rid of the cancerous tumour. The day after the vote, Constantine stated that “Priority must be given to national unity… I sincerely hope that developments will support the outcome of the vote from yesterday.”
While acknowledging that Greece was now a republic, Constantine continued to refer to himself as King of Greece and his children as princes and princesses up until the end of his life. This was true even though Greece no longer recognized titles of nobility.
He reportedly maintained a close relationship with his second cousin Charles, the Prince of Wales and current King Charles III, while spending the most of his exile years in London’s Hampstead Garden Suburb.
While it took Constantine 14 years to briefly return to his own country in 1981 to bury his mother, Queen Federica, he increased the frequency of his visits after that and, starting in 2010, established permanent residence there. There were ongoing disagreements; in 1994, the communist government of the time denationalized him and took what was left of the royal family’s property. In 2002, Constantine filed a lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights and was given a settlement of 12 million euros, far less than the 500 million he had requested.
As a Danish prince, Constantine traveled with a Danish passport.
Alexia, Pavlos, Nikolaos, Theodora, and Philippos are among his five children, along with nine grandkids. He is also survived by his wife, the former Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark and youngest sister of Queen Margrethe II.
»The last king of Greece, Constantine, has died at 82«