Thousands of Greeks and almost all of Europe’s royal houses and other nobles bid farewell to Greece’s deceased ex-king Constantine II in Athens. Thousands of people gathered around the Orthodox Cathedral in central Athens on Monday to pay their last respects to the ex-king. When the coffin was carried out of the church after the funeral service, many people sang the Greek national anthem, as shown on television.
Since the monarchy in Greece was abolished by referendum in 1974, Constantine II was buried as a private citizen. The flags were not flown at half-mast and there were no military honors as is customary at funerals of former heads of state in Greece. This was decided by the conservative government under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Nobles from eleven countries attended the funeral service. The royal couples of Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands were sighted. Britain was represented by King Charles III’s sister, Princess Anne. Numerous heirs to the throne and other nobles from Luxembourg, Monaco and members of former royal houses in Europe such as Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria also attended the funeral service, state radio reported.
Reunion of Sofia and Juan Carlos
The Spanish Queen Mother Sofia and Spain’s ex-King Juan Carlos also met at the funeral service. The two became estranged from Juan Carlos after numerous financial scandals and extramarital affairs. Juan Carlos lives in exile.
As Greek television showed, the two hardly exchanged a word on Monday and hardly looked at each other. They were last photographed together at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral service in mid-September 2022. Sofia is Constantine II’s sister. She married Juan Carlos in 1962.
Fatal political mistake
The time when Constantine II was king in Greece was ill-fated. When he ascended the throne in 1964 at the age of 23, he was one of the youngest monarchs in Europe. The young man, who was still inexperienced at the time, quickly got involved in disputes with the political leadership and made a fatal political mistake when a military group staged a coup in Greece on April 21, 1967: he had his picture taken with the coup plotters and signed the agreement to form a military government. He said he wanted to avert civil war and bloodshed.
A counter-coup he organized in December 1967 failed miserably. Constantine went into exile. Many Greeks have never forgiven him for interfering in political life and for initially tolerating the dictatorship (known as the Colonel Junta 1967-1974). After the restoration of democracy, the monarchy in Greece was abolished by referendum in December 1974.
Painful years of disputes with his native country followed. He was expropriated and only compensated after a decision by the European Court of Human Rights in 2000. After that, relations with both the governments and the Greeks normalized. Konstantin bought a villa on the Peloponnese peninsula and spent several months of the year at home. Many people greeted him and there were hardly any negative reactions.
“They were good times. We were young”
His life as crown prince was turbulent. He made the headlines at a young age. The playboy life of the young crown prince is well known. Veteran journalists still tell of secret meetings with a successful actress. “They were good times. We were young,” he said in a TV interview without giving any details. He is said to have had a lot of arguments with his mother.
Konstantin was also successful in sport: at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960 he won the gold medal together with two other Greek sailors in the then kite class. The medal was shown along with his other awards during his funeral service.
For the bourgeois conservative government in Athens, the funeral service and funeral were a political balancing act. Since parliamentary elections have to be held in Greece by July at the latest, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis did not want to annoy centrist voters who want nothing to do with the royal family. That is why Constantine II was buried as a private citizen.
At the same time, however, he allowed the funeral service to take place in the Athens Cathedral, where all funeral services for politically important former figures in the country are held. At least some of the few remaining royalists in Greece were satisfied with this.
Constantine II died on January 10 at the age of 82. The health of the ex-monarch had suddenly deteriorated after a stroke. The funeral was to be held at the former royal family’s summer palace in northern Athens. There are the graves of almost all of Constantine’s ancestors. From his tomb you can see the Aegean Sea where he used to sail. He had chosen the spot himself, as he once said on a visit to the Summer Palace.
