The last king of the Greeks, Constantine II, has died in Athens this Tuesday at the age of 82.
After a life marked by the loss of the throne and exile, for the Greeks he was no longer a monarch, but a Danish citizen named Glücksburg.
His title was abolished in 1973 and he lost his Greek nationality in 1994 after refusing to have a passport with that patronymic, arguing that his name was "Constantine of Greece".
The Greek republic – then governed by the socialist Andreas Papandreou – replied that this was not a valid last name because the Constitution prohibits titles of nobility.
Constantine II was born on the outskirts of Athens in 1940. The only son of Kings Paul and Frederick of Greece, he belonged to the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a branch of the Danish Oldenburg dynasty.
Doña Sofía, Queen Emeritus of Spain, who was very close to him, and Irene, Princess of Denmark, were his sisters.
The family, when he was still a baby, went into exile in Egypt and South Africa to avoid World War II and returned to Greece in 1946 to a country embroiled in a three-year conflict and in which a government supported by the monarchy to anti-communist forces.
Constantine was crowned king in 1964 on the death of his father and that same year he married another descendant of the Danish royal family, Anne-Marie of Denmark.
In an unstable Greece, his reign ended up engulfed by the political crisis and the military coup on April 21, 1967. The next day, Constantine II swore in the colonels of the military junta and took a photo with them. that would haunt him forever as a political testament.
Only months later, in December 1967, he attempted what is known as "Antikinima," a counter-coup supported by members of the royal family and the prime minister.
He failed and had to leave Greece.
In that second exile, which took him to Rome and then to the United Kingdom, he cultivated an image of a king who fights to restore democracy in his country.
According to articles published in the Greek media, there were contacts with the military junta, which even reformed the Constitution to maintain the monarchy, but without executive power.
The return of the former king did not come to pass.
Although the junta did not officially depose him until 1973, a year before the regime's collapse caused by a combination of a student revolt and the disaster of the conflict in Cyprus.
In 1974, after the fall of the dictatorship, Constantine tried to return to Greece as king, arguing that the repeal of the junta's Constitution implied that the 1952 Constitution would be in force again, that is, the one that recognized him as monarch.
His attempt ran into a referendum to choose between the monarchy or the republic.
In the campaign, the photo of Constantino with the colonels weighed more than anything.
69.2% of the Greeks preferred not to have a king again.
Doña Sofía, two years older than Constantino, accompanied him in the most difficult moments of his life.
From the 1967 coup, which coincidentally coincided with her trip to Greece to visit her brother, to the last days they have spent together in Athens.
During the 46 years that Felipe VI's uncle lived in London, trips to see each other when his schedules allowed it were very common.
They have also been seen together in many Greek museums over the past decade.
Constantine never gave up.
Despite the fact that, since 1974, he declared that he accepted the result of the referendum, he on numerous occasions questioned that it was final.
In 2016 he still said that he was not "ex-king" because he never stops being a monarch.
Speaking to the Greek channel SKAÏ, he stated: “There is no end and there is no beginning.
Everything is in the hands of the Greek people.
They decide what they want, they decided twice if I remember correctly, to restore the monarchy.
Now, if they want it, they have the right to do it again... I will not lift a finger to recover the kingdom, the Greeks will, I will not.
The passport controversy
Although it took him almost 40 years to return to reside in Greece - in 2013 he settled in Porto Jeli, an opulent town in the Peloponnese - his return was gradual.
In 1981, the government allowed him to enter the country for a few hours to attend the funeral of his mother, Queen Federica, in the family cemetery of the former Royal Palace of Tatoi, near Athens.
From then on he began to make sporadic visits.
But he still had two difficult issues to solve: the royal family estate and the passport.
In 1992 he reached an agreement with the conservative government of Constantinos Mitsotakis, father of the current prime minister.
The former king agreed to cede most of his land in Greece to a non-profit foundation, in exchange for repossessing the former royal palace of Tatoi and the right to take a number of chattels out of Greece.
In 1993, Constantine visited the country again, but the newly elected prime minister, Andreas Papandreou, asked him to leave.
A year later, Papandreou unilaterally revoked the 1992 agreement and stripped Constantine of both his property and Greek citizenship.
The family sued the Hellenic Republic before the European Court of Human Rights and requested compensation of 500 million euros.
Strasbourg substantially reduced the amount, but recognized their right to be compensated.
Constantine received 12 million, his sister Irene 900,000 euros and his aunt Catalina 300,000.
The Greek government paid the sums from a fund to prevent "extraordinary natural disasters."
No land was returned to him and Tatoi Palace is now public property.
The court ruling should also resolve the issue of the passport, that is, the surname.
Strasbourg ruled that Greece had not violated Constantine's human rights by requiring a surname to have a passport and nationality.
Thus began the former monarch's battle to achieve a Greek identity without accepting the Danish surname.
He initiated procedures in which he used a Danish passport where he is called "King Constantine" and a certificate from the office of the Danish prime minister that ensures that, since the time of King Christian IX, no member of the royal family has the surname Glücksburg. .
The Greek Justice finally ruled that he could use the name "Constantine, ex-king of Greece".
However, Constantine did not officially apply for an identity document under that name.
The last time he was seen in public was on October 19, 2022, together with his wife and sisters, Queen Sofía, and Irene.
He went to Athens, where he lived out the last months of his life.
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