Constantine of Greece, the king who paid with the crown for his serious mistakes

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He will go down in history as the last king of the Hellenes.

(1940) was monarch between 1964 and 1973. Since then, the head of the

a branch of the Danish

has been one of those kings without a throne, one of those dethroned monarchs who over Everything in Europe after the Interwar period that completely reconfigured the geopolitical map of the

made the dream of one day recovering its crown practically its only vital objective.

Related to the main European dynasties - in addition to being the brother of Queen Sofía, he was linked by blood ties with the Windsors and a more than close relationship with the Danish royal family due to his marriage to the princess

has maintained privileged treatment in all the Cortes until her death, where she continued to be that de facto king that she ceased to be so long ago.

Son of who would be King

(1901-1964) and

Constantine was born in

He then reigned in the country his uncle

Although his sister, Sofía, was his eldest -Irene would come later-, there was no doubt that he was ahead in the succession to the throne.

When he was just one year old, Axis forces invaded Greece and the family had to remain in exile in Egypt and South Africa.

All the members of the dynasty went through moments of real hardship, as

In 1946, after

the royal family was able to return to their country.

And with the death of

in 1947, Constantine's father became king, which led to our protagonist being automatically proclaimed Diadocos, heir to the Crown.

While

Constantine was able to devote himself to his military training and enjoy his great passions, such as sports, something that would mark him for the rest of his life.

In 1960 he won the gold medal with the other two members of the Greek sailing team at the

the first time a Greek team had won that award in the modern stage of the Games.

The then young prince also stood out in other modalities such as karate or swimming.

And throughout his long period as an exile he would maintain his position as a leading member of the IOC, a body from which he tried to exert maximum diplomatic influence on him.

In 1964 King Pablo died, victim of stomach cancer.

Constantine had not yet married.

His wedding to Princess

who was 18 years old, brought two of the most important royal families in Europe together again.

Five children would be born from the marriage.

Marriage, in 1963.Erik PetersenAP

Constantine found great political polarization upon his accession to the throne.

His mistakes and not a few betrayals of him cost him the scepter.

He was barely 23 years old when he assumed the reins of the country, in March 1964. The new monarch was as inexperienced as he lacked character.

polarization, and great instability due to high parliamentary fragmentation.

Only a few days before the proclamation of Constantine

at the head of a weak government, in a minority.

To make matters worse, the clash with Constantine was immediate.

Anti-monarchy sentiment was already strong among broad social layers.

And there were not a few parties that took advantage of Constantine's weakness to try to strip the Crown of power.

The Constitution of 1952 was then in force, which, although it enshrined the democratic principle and a system of parliamentary monarchy, was reminiscent in many aspects of the European constitutions of nineteenth-century liberalism in which the

and the

continued to be the two true

and individual liberties were seriously restricted.

All the parties seemed interested in biting the monarchy in those troubled years, including the monarchist conservatives, although the interests of each one were far apart.

Let us not forget that the constitutional reform proposed by the monarchist

in 1963, which stripped the Crown of many powers,

but an authoritarian regression.

The king

barely a year after being crowned, when he carried out a palace maneuver that led to the resignation of Papandreou, after a crisis that revealed how things were beginning to go wrong in the Army.

Constantine, who did not want to limit himself to a ceremonial role,

and for two years completely wore himself out with political interventionism that did not, however, prevent misrule.

The parties in Parliament did not help him at all either, many of them happy that the monarch was cooked in his sauce.

The fact is that the resignation of Papandreou, in July 1965, highly contested in the streets by strong demonstrations against the king, was followed by almost two years of authentic blockade -Constantine refused to call elections- in which the monarch appointed up to five prime ministers who failed to win endorsement.

Politics collapsed and the sovereign was perceived as the great culprit.

In parallel, and in a Cold War context, all kinds of extra-parliamentary conspiracies developed.

As is well known, the one that triumphed, on April 21, 1967, was the coup of the colonels.

Constantine's initial support -an episode about which there are still as many gaps and literature as about our 23-F- would cost him the crown.

Especially since the United States left him sold in his counterattack a few months later.

He would also betray him in 1974,

Karamanlis, who had been so close to the king during the years of government in exile.

The conservative leader dealt him the final stab when he called the referendum for the Greeks to choose a monarchy or a republic, after a campaign without the participation of the monarchists.

Even so, the result was so devastating that Constantine, from

resignedly accepted that his days as king were over forever.

Constantine and his progeny would live a very long exile in London, after a short period in Rome, under the close protection of

The first time he set foot on Greek soil after his departure was in 1981, fleetingly, for just a few hours - due to the dishonorable treatment that the authorities at the time gave the royal family - to be able to be present at the funeral of his mother, the Queen Federica, in the Tatoi Palace family cemetery.

After spending almost half his life in exile in London, Constantine and his wife,

were finally able to take up residence in their homeland again, in 2013. Until very recently, staying in a beautiful mansion in

to the south of the Peloponnese,

and "sufficiently distanced from the political life of the capital", as the throneless king once declared to dispel any suspicion that his intention was to maneuver to destabilize the democratic system, as his ardent opponents blamed him.

But the Republic has kept Constantine deprived of his original nationality and passport until the end of his days since

to respect for human rights.

The Socialists coerced the monarch into giving up his royal aspirations and accepting the surname Glücksburg - from the Danish dynasty from which the Hellenic royal family descends.

Doña Sofía's brother refused, among other reasons because his true patronymic is Grecia.

With him goes the last king of the Hellenes,

a town that at this point has begun to make a much more condescending reinterpretation of the monarchical stage that he himself starred in, but that has never forgiven political errors that cost him so dearly.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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