Former king of Greece, Constantine Glücksburg, passed away at the age of 82 in a private hospital in Athens late on Tuesday. He was suffering from several health issues, and had been hospitalized in the past seven days.
He had recently a brain stroke and a year ago he was hospitalized for Covid-19. He has been since bound to a wheelchair and nasal oxygen treatment.
His children and his sisters Irene and Sophia -queen mother in Spain – had rushed to Athens from abroad as his health condition was getting critical day by day.
Costantinos Glucksburg was his official name was after Greece abolished the monarchy in 1974 nad had a Danish passport.
Constantine II reigned as the last King of Greece, from 6 March 1964 until the abolition of the Greek monarchy in two referendums on 1 June 1973.
Constantine is the only son of King Paul and Queen Frederica of Greece.
Although the accession of the young monarch was initially regarded auspiciously, his reign saw political instability that culminated in the Colonels’ Coup of 21 April 1967.
The coup left Constantine, as the head of state, little room to manoeuvre since he had no loyal military forces on which to rely. As a result, he reluctantly agreed to inaugurate the junta on the condition that it be made up largely of civilian ministers.
On 13 December 1967, Constantine was forced to flee the country, following an unsuccessful counter-coup against the junta.
He remained (formally) the head of state in exile until the junta abolished the monarchy on 1 June 1973.As there were questions concerning the validity of this referendum and whether people were pressured to vote for a republic, a fresh referendum was held after the restoration of democracy in 1974.
This second referendum was held after the fall of the junta as the 1974 Greek republic referendum on 8 December 1974 and confirmed the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the Third Hellenic Republic.
69.2% of the Greeks chose the Sovereign Republic as the form of the state.
Most popular Caricature by Spyros Ornerakis right after the second referendum in 1974.
Newspaper front page: End of the Glucksburgs – Democracy festival in Athens
Constantine remained in exile for forty years after the vote in favor of the republic.
He was strongly discouraged from returning to Greece, and he did not return until February 1981, when the government allowed him to return for only a few hours, to attend the funeral of his mother, Queen Frederica, in the family cemetery of the former Royal Palace at Tatoi.
At some point, Constantine turned against the Greek State demanding 161.1 million euros as compensation. Following legal disputes he managed to be compensated with 13.7 million euros, which were collected in March 2003.
In 1994, the second government of Andreas Papandreou passed new legislation reversing the 1992 agreement and stripping Constantine of his property in Greece and his Greek citizenship.
Constantine sued Greece at the European Court of Human Rights for €500 million in compensation for the seized property. He won a much smaller amount, receiving a monetary compensation of €12 million for the lost property, with a far smaller sum awarded to his unmarried younger sister, Princess Irene, and his aunt Princess Katherine.[ The Greek government chose to pay out of the “extraordinary natural disasters” fund, but was not obliged by the court’s decision to return any lands (the Court of Human Rights awards only monetary compensation).
Constantine, in turn, created the Anna Maria Foundation, to allocate the funds in question back to the Greek people for use in “extraordinary natural disasters” and charitable causes. The court decision also ruled that Constantine’s human rights were not violated by the Greek state’s decision not to grant him Greek citizenship and passport unless he adopts a surname.
He later adopted the surname Glücksburg a descendant of the German House of House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, from his maternal line.
In 2013, Constantine returned to reside in Porto Heli, Peloponnese. Together with his wife he relocated to Athens in the spring of 2022 due to his health issues.
Constantine was married to Princess Anna Marie of Denmark, had 5 children and 9 grandchildren.
Now the big question is: Where will he be buried and who will pay for the funeral.
According to latest media information he will be buried in Tatoi, while ministers will meet on Wednesday to decide about the ceremony.
Some monarchists and conservatives claim he should be buried with the honors of a state leader and the funeral should be paid by the state.
Another question is whether his first born son Pavlos will claim any fictitious title as he presents him at international level as “crown prince of Greece” cleverly omitting the adjective “former”.
The former King is a common citizen known as Costantinos Glucksburg and it is incorrect to be using defunct titles for former royals. As a former King of Greece he has no royal Greek title, nor do any of in his family as the Greek monarchy was abolished (end) long ago, 1974 to be exact. Certainly none can be considered HRH by any definition nor Crown Prince or Princess.
To his final days, Constantine, while accepting that Greece was now a republic, continued to style himself King of Greece and his children as princes and princesses even though Greece no longer recognized titles of nobility. Former Greek royal family members hold the title of Prince or Princess of Denmark because of their link to King Christian IX. They even had succession rights to the Danish throne until 1953, but they have not rights to hold a royal title to Greece.
Correct:
“Constantine, the former and last king of Greece is survived by his wife, the former Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, youngest sister of Queen Margrethe II; five children, Alexia, Pavlos, Nikolaos, Theodora and Philippos; and nine grandchildren.”