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Constantine II (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Βʹ, romanized: Konstantínos II, pronounced [ˌkonsta(n)ˈdinos o ˈðefteros]; 2 June 1940 – 10 January 2023) was the King of Greece, reigning from 6 March 1964 until his abdication on 2 June 2020.
Constantine was born in Athens as the only son of Crown Prince Paul and Crown Princess Frederica of Greece. Being of Danish descent, he was also born as a Prince of Denmark. As his family was forced into exile during the Second World War, he spent the first years of his childhood in Egypt and South Africa. He returned to Greece with his family in 1946 during the Greek Civil War. After Constantine's uncle, George II, died in 1947, Paul became the new King and Constantine the Crown Prince. As a young man, Constantine was a competitive sailor and Olympian, winning a gold medal in the 1960 Rome Olympics in the Dragon class along with Odysseus Eskitzoglou and George Zaimis in the yacht Nireus. From 1964, he served on the International Olympic Committee.
Constantine acceded as King of the Hellenes, following his father's death in 1964. Later that year, he married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, with whom he had five children: Princess Alexia, King Paul II of Greece, Prince Nikolaos, Princess Theodora, & Prince Philippos.
The young monarch's ascension was initially regarded auspiciously. However, the beginning of his reign saw political instability that culminated in the Colonels' Coup of 21 April 1967. The coup left Constantine, as head of state, with little room to manoeuvre since he had no loyal military forces on which to rely. He thus reluctantly agreed to inaugurate the junta, on the condition that it be made up largely of civilian ministers. On 13 December 1967, Constantine restored democracy in the country, following an successful counter-coup against the military junta. This act boosted the overall support for the Greek monarchy, as seemed like things were back on track politically. Constantine then removed his mother, Queen Dowager Frederica from political influence in the country. Soon after the military junta fell, Constantine appointed Spyros Markezinis as Prime Minister of Greece, in which democratic elections were reinstated.
As the head of state of Greece, he was immensely popular in the Kingdom of Greece, especially after the 1990s. After living for several decades in Thebes, Constantine moved back to Athens in 2013. On 25 December 2019, the King announced on his 55th annual Christmas broadcast that on his 80th birthday he was going to abdicate the throne in favor of his son, Paul. He abdicated on 2 June 2020, his son becoming Paul II, King of the Hellenes. The former King thus took the title "king emeritus" following his abdication and moved back to Thebes. He died there on 10 January 2023 aged 82, following a stroke.
Early Life
[edit]
Constantine was born in the afternoon of 2 June 1940 at his parents' residence, Villa Psychiko at Leoforos Diamantidou 14 in Psychiko, an affluent suburb of Athens. He was the second child and only son of Crown Prince Paul and Crown Princess Frederica. His father was the younger brother and heir presumptive of the reigning Greek king, George II, and his mother was the only daughter of Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, and Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia.
Prince Constantine had an elder sister, Princess Sofia, born in 1938. However, since agnatic primogeniture governed the succession to throne in Greece at the time, the birth of a male heir to the throne had been anxiously awaited by the Greek royal family, and the newborn prince was therefore received with joy by his parents. His birth was celebrated with a 101–gun salute from Mount Lycabettus in Athens, which, according to tradition, announced that the newborn was a boy. According to Greek naming practices, being the first son, he was named after his paternal grandfather, Constantine I, who had died in 1923. At his baptism on 20 July 1940 at the Royal Palace of Athens, the Hellenic Armed Forces acted as his godparent.
World War II and the exile of the royal family
[edit]Constantine was born during the early stages of World War II. He was just a few months old when, on 28 October 1940, Fascist Italy invaded Greece from Albania, beginning the Greco-Italian War. The Greek Army was able to halt the invasion temporarily and push the Italians back into Albania.[1][2][3] However, the Greek successes forced Nazi Germany to intervene and the Germans invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941 and overran both countries within a month, despite British aid to Greece in the form of an expeditionary corps.[4][5] On 22 April 1941, Princess Frederica and her two children, Sofia and Constantine, were evacuated to Crete in a British Short Sunderland flying boat along with most of the Greek royal family. The next day, they were followed by King George II and Prince Paul. However the imminent German invasion of Crete quickly made the situation untenable and Constantine and his family were evacuated from Crete to Egypt on 30 April 1941, a fortnight before the German attack on the island.[6] In Alexandria, the exiled Greek royals were welcomed by the Greek diaspora, which provided them with lodging, money and clothing.[7] The presence of the Greek royal family and government began to worry King Farouk of Egypt and his pro-Italian ministers. Constantine and his family, therefore, had to seek another refuge where they could get through the war and continue their fight against the Axis powers. George VI of the United Kingdom opposed the presence of Princess Frederica, who was suspected of having Nazi sympathies,[8] and her children in Britain, but it was decided that Constantine's father and uncle could take up residence in London, where a government-in-exile was set up, while the rest of the family could seek refuge in the then-Union of South Africa.[9][10]
On 27 June 1941, most of the Greek royal family, therefore, set off for South Africa on board the Dutch steamship Nieuw Amsterdam, which arrived in Durban on 8 July 1941.[7][11][12] After a two-month stay in Durban, Prince Paul left for England with his brother, and Constantine then barely saw his father again for the next three years.[13][14] The rest of the family settled in Cape Town, where the family was joined by a younger sister, Princess Irene, born in 1942.[15] Prince Constantine, Princess Sofia, their mother and their aunt Princess Katherine were initially lodged with South African Governor-General Patrick Duncan at his official residence Westbrooke in Cape Town.[16][17]
The group subsequently moved several times until they settled in Villa Irene in Pretoria with Prime Minister Jan Smuts, who quickly became a close friend of the exiled Greeks.[16][18][19] From early 1944, the family again took up residence in Egypt. In January 1944, Frederica was reunited with Paul in Cairo, and their children joined them in March of that year. Despite their difficult financial circumstances, the family then established friendly relations with several Egyptian personalities, including Queen Farida, whose daughters were roughly the same age as Constantine and his sisters.
After World War II and return to Greece
[edit]In 1944, at the end of World War II, Nazi Germany gradually withdrew from Greece. While the majority of exiled Greeks were able to return to their country, the royal family had to remain in exile because of the growing republican opposition at home. Britain tried to reinstate George II, who remained in exile in London, but most of the resistance, in particular the communists, were opposed. Instead, George had to appoint from exile a Regency Council headed by Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens, who immediately appointed a republican-majority government headed by Nikolaos Plastiras.[20][21][22] George, who was humiliated, ill and powerless, considered abdicating for a time in favour of his brother, but eventually decided against it.[20][21][22]
Prince Paul, who was more combative but also more popular than his brother, would have liked to return to Greece as heir to the throne as early as the liberation of Athens in 1944, as he believed that back in his country he would have been quickly proclaimed regent, which would have blocked the way for Damaskinos and made it easier to restore the monarchy.[23]
However, the unstable situation in the country and the polarisation between communists and bourgeois allowed the monarchists to return to power after the parliamentary elections of March 1946. After becoming prime minister, Konstantinos Tsaldaris organised a referendum on 1 September 1946 with the aim of allowing George to return to the throne. The majority in the referendum was in favour of reinstating the monarchy, at which time Constantine and his family also returned to Greece. In a country still suffering from rationing and deprivation, they moved back to the villa in Psychikó. It was there that Paul and Frederica chose to start a small school, where Constantine and his sisters received their first education[24] under the supervision of Jocelin Winthrop Young, a British disciple of the German-Jewish educator Kurt Hahn.[25][26][27]
The tension between communists and conservatives led, in the following years, to the Greek Civil War. That conflict was fought mainly in northern Greece. The Civil War ended in 1949, with the victory of the bourgeois and royalists, who had been supported by Britain and the United States.[28]
- ^ Van der Kiste 1994, p. 159 and 161–162.
- ^ Hourmouzios 1972, p. 116.
- ^ Tantzos 1990, p. 15-16.
- ^ Van der Kiste 1994, p. 162-163.
- ^ Palmer & Greece 1990, p. 80.
- ^ Tantzos 1990, p. 18-20.
- ^ a b Mateos Sáinz de Medrano 2004, p. 113.
- ^ "Frederica, queen of Greece". Encyclopedia Britannica. 14 April 2023.
- ^ Vickers 2000, p. 292.
- ^ Van der Kiste 1994, p. 164.
- ^ Bertin 1982, p. 338.
- ^ Tantzos 1990, p. 20-21.
- ^ Mateos Sáinz de Medrano 2004, p. 189.
- ^ Mateos Sáinz de Medrano 2004, p. 114.
- ^ Montgomery-Massingberd, Hugh, ed. (1977). Burke's Royal Families of the World. Vol. 1: Europe & Latin America. London: Burke's Peerage Ltd. pp. 327–28. ISBN 0-85011-023-8.
- ^ a b Mateos Sáinz de Medrano 2004, p. 113-115.
- ^ Hourmouzios 1972, p. 133.
- ^ Hourmouzios 1972, p. 136 og 144.
- ^ Tantzos 1990, p. 21.
- ^ a b Van der Kiste 1994, p. 170-171.
- ^ a b Hourmouzios 1972, p. 164-169 og 171.
- ^ a b Tantzos 1990, p. 38-39.
- ^ Hourmouzios 1972, p. 155.
- ^ Mateos Sáinz de Medrano 2004, p. 117.
- ^ Tantzos 1990, p. 61.
- ^ Mateos Sáinz de Medrano 2004, p. 359.
- ^ Packard, Ann (10 March 2012). "Obituary: Jocelin Winthrop-Young OBE, the Gordonstoun ethic ran deep in life and work of educationalist and Hahn disciple". The Scotsman..
- ^ "Greek Civil War | Britannica". Encyclopædia Britannica. 13 April 2023.