King Constantine II of Greece at his north London residence in 2001. THE TIMES/NEWS LICENSING/ABACA
An important chapter in Greek history just ended in a deafening silence in Athens on Wednesday 11 January. The former King Constantin II, or rather Constantin Glücksburg, as some Greek media call him, who did not want to name the king’s title of the deposed king in 1974, died in Athens at the age of 82.
The last member of the Danish dynasty in power from 1863 until the return of the parliamentary republic was the cousin of the British monarch Charles III and one of the godparents of his son Prince William and brother of Queen Sofia of Spain. But his death stirred no emotion in Greece, a country riddled with divisions between the royalists and the democrats since its inception.
His funeral will not be that of a statesman as he wished. Neither Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis nor the President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou will be present at his funeral on Monday 16 January. His death “now marks the formal epilogue (…) of a chapter that ended definitively with the 1974 referendum,” when Greeks voted 70% to abolish the monarchy, the prime minister said in a laconic message of condolences. The Conservative leader also recalled “the eventful journey of the former King Constantine, marked and punctuated by turbulent moments in contemporary Greek history”. “The story speaks now. She will judge the Constantine of public life fairly and harshly,” he concluded.
period of instability
Born on June 2, 1940 in Athens, Constantin went into exile with his family after the German invasion of Greece in 1941 at the age of only 1 year, to Egypt and then to South Africa. In 1960, the young man was crowned top athlete with a gold medal in sailing at the Olympic Games in Rome. Four years later, when the sportsman had just married his young cousin, Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, sister of the current Queen Margrethe II, he ascended the throne at the age of 23. Unprepared, he takes over the reins of a country marked by deep political divisions. His disagreements with then Prime Minister Georges Papandreou led to his resignation in 1965 and a period of instability that favored the seizure of power by the military junta on April 21, 1967.
“I was forced to accept it as a fait accompli to avoid unnecessary bloodshed,” he declared a few years later to justify himself. Eight months after the colonels came to power, Constantine had organized a military counter-coup that failed… “It was the worst day of my life. It was the day I saw my first white hair,” he confessed to the Greek newspaper To Vima in 2015. After this failed attempt, he and his family were forced into exile, first in Rome and then in London. Many Greeks will never forgive him for his role in taking over the colonels.
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