Constantine II, Queen Sofia’s younger brother and last King of Greece, He passed away this Tuesday at the age of 82. in a private clinic in Athens, almost a decade after returning to his native country after 46 years in exile.
Constantine II and his wife Ana María had been expelled from the country after the fall of the Board of Colonels in 1974, which ended a brief reign of seven years, and they only returned to Greece in 2013.
The controversial initiatives that he took during his reign contributed decisively to the generation of a citizen rejection that led to the proclamation of the republic a few months after the fall of the dictatorship of the colonels.
In 1974 a referendum was held in which 69.2% of the population opted for the republic. When Constantino succeeded his father at the age of 24, in March 1964, he was already very popular.
At the 1960 Rome Olympics won in the sailing competition -Dragon class- the first gold medal for Greece since 1912. Six months after his coronation, in September 1964, hundreds of thousands of Greeks poured into Athens from all corners of the country to attend his wedding to Princess Anne-Marie , 18 years old, younger sister of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.
Shortly after, in the summer of 1965, thousands of citizens took to the streets throughout the country, this time against the monarchy, in protest at the removal of the centrist prime minister, Yeoryios Papandreou.
A year earlier, Papandreou had won a landslide victory in general elections promising to end human rights violations and transform Greece – fifteen years after the end of the civil war – into a modern democracy.
The political instability lasted almost two years and culminated in the coup d’état of the Colonelson April 21, 1967.
Constantine’s incoherent response to the coup plotters accentuated the anger of the population. First recognized the government of the coup plotters for, eight months later, try to overthrow them with little preparation and, from then until the fall of the dictatorship, refrain from all criticism of them.
After the failure of his attempt to end the Junta settled with Ana María and her two eldest sons in Rome. Later the royal family settled in London, where their three youngest children were born.
constantine never recognized the referendum result who proclaimed the Third Hellenic Republic in 1974, a condition imposed on him by the Greek state to allow him to return to his native country. In addition, in 1994 the socialist government of Andreas Papandreou withdrew the Greek nationality from the royal family and expropriated his assets.
In 2002 the European Court of Human Rights sentenced the Greek state to compensate him with 12 million euros for confiscated property. Until 2010, the dethroned king visited Greece sporadically, always as a guest on private yachts owned by Greek shipowners, without appearing in public.
In August 2010, his third son, Nicolás, despite being born in exile, decided to get married on the island of Spetses, in a ceremony attended by representatives of all the royal houses in Europe. After his marriage, Nicholas settled with his wife Tatiana in Athens.
In 2014, Constantino sold his house in London for 11 million euros and settled in Porto Jeli, a well-known summer resort for many Greek shipowners, where he stayed this year when, due to his delicate health condition, he chose to move to Athens to be closer to the hospitals. His return to Greece, at a time when society was experiencing the worst moments of the economic crisis, went almost unnoticed.
Source: Lasexta
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
