Arrived on the throne in 1964, the monarch had been deprived of his title in 1974 by referendum, after the return of democracy.
by Marina Rafenberg (Athens, Correspondence)
An important chapter of Greek history has just closed on Wednesday January 11 in Athens, in a deafening silence. Former King Constantine II, or rather Constantine Glücksburg, as some Greek media do not wish to evoke the royal title of the one who was fallen in 1974, died at the age of 82, at Athens.
The last member of the Danish dynasty in power from 1863 and until the return of the parliamentary republic was the cousin of the British monarch Charles III and one of the sponsors of his son Prince William, and the brother of Queen Sofia from Spain. But his death did not arouse the excitement in Greece, a country which, from its creation, was enamelled with divisions between the royalists and the Democrats.
His burial will not be that of a statesman, as he had so much wished. Neither the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, nor the President of the Republic, Katerina SakeLallopoulou, will be present on Monday, January 16, during her funeral. His death “now marks the formal epilogue (…) of a chapter which has definitively closed with the 1974 referendum”, when the Greeks voted at 70 % for the abolition of the monarchy, said the Prime Minister , in a message of laconic condolences. The conservative leader also recalled “the hectic journey of the former King Constantine, marked and marked by turbulent moments in the contemporary history of Greece”. “History now has the floor. It will consider Constantine fairly and severely in public life,” he concluded.
period of instability
Born in Athens, on June 2, 1940, Constantine went into exile with his family at just 1 year in Egypt and then in South Africa, after the invasion of Greece by Germany, in 1941. In 1960, The young man, a high -level sportsman, is crowned with a gold medal in sail at the Olympic Games in Rome. Four years later, when the athlete has just married her young cousin, Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, the sister of the current Queen, Margrethe II, he accesses the throne at the age of 23. Improved, he takes the reins of a country agitated by deep political divisions. His disagreement with Georges Papandréou, Prime Minister of the time, led to the resignation of the latter, in 1965, and to a period of instability promoting the taking of power by the military junta, April 21, 1967.
“I was forced to accept it as a fait accompli, in order to avoid an unnecessary bloodshed,” he said, several years later, to justify himself. Eight months after the coming to power of the colonels, Constantine had organized a military counterpoup that failed … “It was the worst day of my life. It was the day I saw my first white hair appeared,” -He confessed to the Greek to Vima newspaper in 2015. After this aborted attempt, he is forced to go into exile, with his family, in Rome at first, then in London. Many Greeks will never forgive him for his role in the takeover of colonels.
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