King Constantine II of the Hellenes
The last king of Greece, who spent most of his life in exile after mishandling the colonels’ coup and lost his throne in a referendum
KING CONSTANTINE II OF THE HELLENES, who has died in Athens aged 82, ascended to the throne of Greece in 1964, but went into exile in 1967 after mounting an unsuccessful counter-coup against the Greek junta which had seized power earlier that year; in 1974, he ceased to be king following a popular referendum.
A fairly tall, affable figure with a husky, smoker’s laugh, the King spent most of the rest of his life in exile in London, supported by wealthy Greek expatriates and his relations in other European royal houses. For more than 20 years he was careful not to stir up anti-monarchist feeling in Greece, though he never relinquished his claim to the throne.
Greek sensitivity on the matter turned to paranoia, however, in 1993, when the King took his family on a holiday in Greece – a visit to the mainland, followed by a cruise. The political subtext of the trip enraged the Greek authorities and the King found himself pursued by gunboats and shadowed by military planes. The following year, alarmed at a perceived political threat, the Socialist government under Andreas Papandreou confiscated the royal family’s passports, property and citizenship.
Yet when the Greek colonels seized power in 1967, instigating seven years of tyranny, it was King Constantine who had tried, however feebly, to stand up to them and rally the forces of democracy. Had he succeeded, as did his brother-in-law Juan Carlos of Spain, he might have been a hero to his people. As it was, in the eyes of many Greeks, he remained tainted by family history and by his own clumsy mishandling of the political crisis that had brought about his exile.
Prince Constantine was born on June 2 1940 in a villa in the Athens suburb of Psychiko, the only son of Crown Prince Paul, younger brother of King George II of Greece, and his German-born wife, Princess Frederika, a granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Prince Paul was a member of the Danish house of Glücksburg, which had acceded to the throne of Greece in 1863. The family had never managed to establish itself securely in the affections of the Greek people and its relatively short rule had been marked by unrest and misfortune. One king had been assassinated, one had abdicated twice, one fled the country and a fourth died after being bitten in the leg by his gardener’s pet monkey (surgeons refused to operate on the gangrenous leg on the grounds that it was “royal”).
At the time Constantine was born, Greece was involved in a bitter struggle with Mussolini’s fascists which caused him to be evacuated in infancy to Crete. When the Germans arrived, the royal family had to flee again, first to Egypt and then to South Africa.
The Greek monarchy was restored by the Allies in 1946 and Prince Paul succeeded to the throne on the death of King George II the following year. By that time however, Greece was in the throes of civil war between royalist and communist factions and, during the conflict and the subsequent repression, the power of the royal family came to be seen by many Greeks to be based, essentially, on an alliance with Right-wing forces backed by the Americans, in particular the CIA.
Prince Constantine was educated at Anavryta College in Athens, a school based on the self-fulfilment principles of Kurt Hahn; he was not a bright pupil and suffered from dyslexia. He went on to study at Athens University, but after his 18th birthday he became increasingly involved in state affairs, attending cabinet meetings and reviewing the troops. In 1960 his passion for sailing led him to win Greece its first Olympic gold medal since before the First World War.
Constantine ascended to the throne on the death of his father in 1964 and six months later married his cousin, the 18-year-old Princess Anne-marie of Denmark, with whom he had fallen in love when she was just 15.
The country’s new prime minister George Papandreou, the leader of the coalition Centre Union party, took young “Tino” under his wing, and for a year relations between King and government seemed harmonious. Yet the country was sliding towards political crisis, sparked by the subversion of the general election of 1961 by Right-wingers in the military unhappy with democracy and the government’s failure to take a strong line on “Enosis” (union) with Cyprus.
In 1965 rumours reached the King that Left-wing officers were planning a purge of Right-wing elements in the army and had even included the palace and government in their plans. Andreas Papandreou, the Prime Minister’s son and finance minister in his administration, was said to be involved in the plot. When George Papandreou demanded to be appointed to head an inquiry into the allegations, however, the King refused to comply and Papandreou resigned.
His resignation, and Constantine’s declaration that he would name his successor, sparked street riots, strikes and demonstrations by Left-wingers who accused the King of trying to create a Right-wing dictatorship.
A prolonged campaign of civil disobedience undermined the authority of a series of interim Right-wing governments, but the King and his advisers did nothing to calm the situation, and by the time an election was called in 1967, the leaders of the extreme Right had their plans in train.
Led by Brigadier-general Stylianos Pattakos, the junta forces swept into Athens on April 21 1967 and seized power. At around seven the next morning, Pattakos and the other leaders of the coup arrived at Tatoi, the royal palace outside Athens, to speak to the King.
Constantine told them their actions were unacceptable. But afterwards, when the chief of staff of the navy offered his forces to Constantine to put down the coup, the King vacillated and told him to do nothing. Within hours Constantine was signing decrees for the junta and posing for photographs.
He thought that his expression – a stony face – would convince his people he was acting under duress; but set among the equally stony faces of the junta, it had precisely the opposite effect. His reputation never recovered from the impression these photographs conveyed.
Nine months later the King tried to rectify the situation with a countercoup and on the morning of December 12 1967 went to seek help from the American ambassador Phillips Talbot: “I have decided to take control of the nation,” the King announced, requesting US military support. But the Americans gave no serious consideration to the suggestion.
Some days later, the King arrived in the royalist stronghold of northern Greece, only to find that the loyalist soldiers he hoped would back him had been sent to patrol the border with Turkey.
The next morning the junta moved quickly to quell any dissenting voices and Constantine and his family found themselves dumped unceremoniously on an aeroplane bound for London via Rome. His plan, the king admitted later, “never could have succeeded. Kings do not have conspiratorial minds.”
In England, King Constantine largely played the model exile, though he never renounced his throne. In 1974 democracy was restored under President Constantine Karamanlis, and a referendum on the monarchy called for later that year. Vilified by Leftwingers for not having stood up to the junta earlier, though forbidden from returning to Greece to argue his case, King Constantine swallowed the humiliation of the referendum, in which 69.2 per cent of Greeks voted to abolish the monarchy.
In exile, King Constantine lived the aimless life of ex-monarchs, spending much of his time looking after his family, socialising, and managing his investment portfolio from a large but unimposing residence in Hampstead. His brother-in-law King Juan Carlos was said to have supported him financially, as were various expatriate Greeks, including the shipping tycoon John Latsis.
The King himself worked briefly for the late Shah of Iran and was rumoured to have been involved in selling armoured cars. He served as chairman of the educational committee of a group of 20 international schools, including Gordonstoun, which subscribe to the ideals of Kurt Hahn; he also founded the Hellenic School in Knightsbridge, to which he sent all of his five children. He was also president of honour of the International Yachting Federation.
Constantine’s friendships with Prince Charles, as he then was, and other members of the British royal family were his main link to the role he had lost. Prince Philip became a regular sailing companion and the King’s godson, Prince William, in turn became a godfather to his grandson. It was at King Constantine’s 60thbirthday party at Highgrove that the then Prince of Wales finally reintroduced Camilla Parker Bowles to his mother.
In 1993 King Constantine formally recognised the referendum as indisputable fact and negotiated a deal with the government that retrieved some of his possessions and secured his continuing ownership of the family estate outside Athens and the royal summer palace on Corfu.
Yet it soon became clear that even if he wanted to, he could never settle in Greece as plain Mr Constantine Glücksburg, as the Greek government insisted on calling him.
The ambiguity of his position reached crisis point in August 1993, when he visited Greece with his family, the first time he had returned to his country (apart from a strictly controlled five-hour visit in 1981 to attend his mother’s funeral) since he had been driven into exile.
Though the visit was supposed to be a holiday, the political subtext was inescapable. Things began to go badly when the King abandoned his tourist pursuits and set off deep into the volatile northern province of Macedonia; when he then headed off to the Yugoslav border to greet soldiers on border duty, Athens erupted with rage.
Within two days of his arrival, a Greek naval officer had been cashiered for publicly escorting him, a bishop and two parliamentary deputies who welcomed him were threatened with trial for treason, and the country was in uproar.
As insult heaped on calumny, the government sent its gunboats to tail the King’s yacht, and a huge air force transport plane practised bomb runs over his deck. When the royal family were finally prevented from going ashore to greet a crowd of ageing admirers, the furious royalists responded by pelting a coastguard patrol boat with rocks and water melons. In Parliament, there were calls for the King’s passport to be confiscated, for the family to be expelled and for the young princes to be arrested and sent for military service.
If the King had hoped to improve his chances of returning to his homeland, the exercise was almost entirely counterproductive. The following year the incoming socialist administration led by King Constantine’s old adversary, Andreas Papandreou, stripped him of his passport, citizenship and property rights. Adding insult to injury, Papandreou also let it be known that, in his view, the few personal effects Constantine had managed to bring back with him from his holiday were “illegally smuggled” out of the country.
Constantine took his battle with the government to the European Court of Human Rights, which in 2000 declared that the Greek government had violated the King’s human rights when it seized his property, rejecting the government’s argument that Constantine’s ancestors had obtained the property under dubious circumstances.
However, although the court compelled the government to compensate the king for the royal estates it had confiscated, his Greek citizenship was never returned to him.
In 2001, a friend of the King’s described him as “desperately homesick” and dreaming of Greece every day. But his hopes of dying in his native land seemed destined not to be realised – until, in 2013, after 46 years in exile, he surprised observers by announcing that he was returning to Greece having sold his house in Hampstead Garden Suburb for £9.5million. “From that point of view it was considered the very best time for his majesty to not only downsize but return,” a royal insider told The Guardian.
King Constantine and Queen Anne Marie had two daughters and three sons, his heir being Crown Prince Pavlos, born in 1967.