Queen Sofía’s brother died in Athens, at the age of 82, after failing to overcome the latest crisis of his poor health and ceded the headship of the Hellenic Royal House to his first son, Pablo
Constantine II of Greece (Athens, June 2, 1940) died this Tuesday at the hospital in the Hellenic capital where he had been admitted for a few days. He did it surrounded by his wife, Ana María; His five children, Alexia, Pablo, Nicolás, Teodora and Felipe, as well as his sisters, Queen Sofía and Princess Irene. He was 82 years old and had had serious health problems for a long time, to the point that last spring he moved his residence from the town of Porto Jeli in the Peloponnese to Athens, in order to be closer to the Iguía private hospital where he has dead. Constantine’s death means goodbye to the last king of Greece, to the last loophole of the monarchy in the Hellenic country. A king without a crown leaves, and now it will be Paul, his first son, who assumes the leadership of the testimonial Greek Royal House.
Constantine was the second son of the then princes Paul, brother of King George II who died without issue, and Federica, who two years earlier had had Sofia, their eldest daughter. Constantine was born in the palace of Psijicó, on the outskirts of Athens, as prince of Greece and Denmark, in a very troubled period. So much so that at the age of one he had to go into exile with his family to Egypt and South Africa due to the occupation of the Axis Forces during World War II. Once finished, and back in his country, with the death of his uncle Jorge II, his father assumed the throne and he became crown prince.
A curious man prepared for the role that fate had entrusted to him, he stood out in his youth as an elite athlete, so much so that he always boasted of having won an Olympic gold medal in the discipline of sailing. They were perhaps his most glorious years, in which the political stability of his country also contributed to the splendor of the Greek royal family.
The wedding of the eldest daughter of the kings of Greece, Princess Sofía, with Prince Juan Carlos was perhaps one of the great milestones of Paul’s reign, with the presence in Athens of the great European royal houses. Constantine also took root with another European princess, a distant cousin, since the lineage of the Greek royal family came from Denmark, hence Constantine II and his sons still hold the titles of princes of Denmark today.
brief reign
Constantine and Ana María met when they were princes, but the premature death of King Paul crowned Constantine before going down the altar. His brief reign was marked by political instability and by the Dictatorship of the Colonels, also by the prominent role played by his mother, Queen Federica, who was pointed out on many occasions as the one who directed the designs of the son of her
In early 1967 a military coup deposed the existing Executive and established a military government junta. The oath of allegiance that Constantine, as king and head of state, took to the military junta earned him strong popular resentment that, in a way, he was never forgiven. In December of that year the king failed to overthrow the junta with a military counter-coup, and he and his family went into voluntary exile in London.
In June 1973, the Greek military government deposed Constantine II as king, which was confirmed the following year with a referendum in which the monarchy obtained 31% support. This meant the end of the monarchy in Greece, although Constantine never did renounce his dynastic rights to the Hellenic throne. And, in fact, the rest of the European royal houses maintained his status and treatment. Also contributing to this was his relationship with the Spanish and Danish royal houses, with his sister Sofía as queen consort of Spain and her sister-in-law Margarita, monarch of Denmark.
The new Greek monarch
In London he established his residence and became friends with today’s King Carlos III. In fact, Constantine is one of Prince William’s godfathers. His trips to Spain, when his children were small and of approximate ages to the infantas Elena and Cristina and the then prince Felipe, were continuous. His eldest daughter, Alexia, in fact, became the great friend, confidant and roommate in Barcelona of the Infanta Cristina while Pablo, who will now take over the reins of the Greek royal house, was Don Felipe’s.
Constantine maintained a long dispute with the Greek Government over the compensation to be received after it seized the family’s properties. Once fixed, in 2013 he decided to settle again in Hellenic lands, in Porto Jeli, in one of his residences.
Constantine’s last major public act, already suffering from serious health problems after several coronary episodes, was the wedding of his young son, Felipe, to the wealthy Swiss heiress Nina Flohr, in October 2021. The wedding was held in Athens, which generated a fervent monarchical wave.
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