• Obituary Dies Constantine of Greece

  • His relationship with Spain Brother of Queen Sofía and one more in Zarzuela

  • The new 'kings' of Greece Pablo and Marie-Chantal: when the aristocracy of money joined the aristocracy of blood

It is said that during one of the official visits to Denmark by the Kings Paul I of Greece and Federica of Hannover in 1959, their son

Constantine of Greece

(82) and

Ana Maria of Denmark

(76), youngest daughter of the Kings Frederick IX of Denmark and Ingrid from Sweden met their eyes for the first time.

He was 19 years old and she was 13. As those pompous meetings used to be quite boring, they took all the young people to the circus and, in one of the numbers, King Pablo commented to his wife: "Look, it's like a butterfly.

I hope Tino marry her someday

."

The monarch was obviously referring to Ana María, sister of Queen Margaret of Denmark.

The following year, at the wedding of Edward of Great Britain (87) - Isabell II's first cousin - with the aristocrat Katharine Worsley (89), the history of three families would come together forever.

After the famous ride on the Agamemnon yacht that Queen Federica of Greece had organized for kings and princes to get to know each other after the disaster of World War II, Juan Carlos (85) -Franco named him Prince of Spain in 1969 and successor as king - began to make eyes at the young princess Sophia of Greece (84).

GTRES

Between the two of them it was noticeable that there was so much chemistry that in one of the calls that Constantino made to his father he gossiped that they were both making eyes at each other.

It was not going wrong because in 1962,

Juan Carlos and Sofía were married in the Orthodox cathedral of Athens where Princess Ana María was one of the bridesmaids

.

During the betrothal dance it also became clear that Constantine and Ana María felt butterflies in their stomachs, so it was not surprising that the now King Constantine II -his father died in 1963- regularly visited the Danish court.

The press suspected that he was seeing Princess Benedicta (78), when in fact he was secretly dating her sister Ana María.

Shortly after

they met again on a summer vacation in Norway in which the impetuous Constantine proposed to Ana Maria

, but King Frederick IX proposed that they wait because he wanted his youngest daughter to finish her studies.

Constantine had to make a great effort to keep the romance a secret since he felt the urgent need to shout it from the four winds.

For this reason, to see his beloved as many times as he wanted,

he used as an excuse that her visits to Copenhagen were due to her commitments in the regattas

.

Constantine had won the gold medal in the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.

Also Prince Harald, who would soon become

King Harald V of Norway (85), was one of the accomplices so that the love of young people

revived in the Norwegian court.

On January 23, 1963, the Norwegian court announced the engagement between Princess Anne-Marie and Constantine of Greece and

on September 18, 1964, they were married in the Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Annunciation in Athens

.

In principle the link had been scheduled for January 1965, but the death of King Paul I of Greece on March 6, 1964 precipitated the splendors.

On the day of the "yes, I do", the 24-year-old boyfriend was already King Constantine II of Greece and the 18-year-old princess Ana Maria of Greece was the new queen of the Hellenes.

From that moment

they became the youngest kings in the world , but their happiness would not take long to crack when the

Coup of the Colonels

took place on April 21, 1967

, which meant the end of the Greek monarchy.

The so-called queen of 1,000 days had two children, Alexia of Greece (57) and Pablo (55), whom she protected from the military dictatorship until they finally set out on their way to exile.

GTRES

As had happened years before when most of the royal houses deposed after World War II had to leave their countries and settle in places as exclusive as Estoril (Portugal),

the exile of the kings of Greece was a pilgrimage through several countries.

.

The royal family left the country practically with their clothes on and since the plane they were traveling in had hardly any fuel, they landed in Rome.

Stress caused Ana María to lose the baby she was expecting

.

They stayed in the eternal city for six years, where her son Nicolás (53) was born and later they were welcomed in Copenhagen.

When Karamanlís, President and Prime Minister of Greece called a referendum that proclaimed the Republic on December 8, 1974. From that moment on,

the Greek royal family moved to London after receiving the approval of Queen Elizabeth II

.

In the capital the other two children of the kings were born, Teodora (39) and Felipe (36), the latter married to the billionaire Nina Flohr (35) in the same cathedral as his parents.

For thirty-nine years,

Constantine II and Ana María of Greece lived in the elite neighborhood of Hampstead,

on the outskirts of London, where they bought a mansion of almost 900 square meters with 13 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms and a swimming pool, located on a plot of 3,000 square meters where Lady Di used to spend very happy evenings.

The confidence of the former princess of Wales was such that she left her children Guillermo (40) and Enrique (38) in charge of the Greeks while she made official trips to Europe.

At all times, Queen Elizabeth II protected them.

Not in vain, her husband, Felipe, Duke of Edinburgh, had been born as a Greek prince on the island of Corfu.

In the British capital, Constantine and Ana María attended the most important social events together with the Windsors and other aristocratic and billionaire friends.

In fact,

King Constantine is godfather to Prince William (40), the current Prince of Wales

, and a close friend of King Charles III (74).

GTRES

Finally, in 2013 they were allowed to return to Greece, where they settled in a mansion in Porto Jeli, the Greek Riviera in the Peloponnese, which they bought from relatives of the Aga Khan (86), the same one who has been protecting the infanta Cristina (57) in Switzerland since the Nóos case exploded.

Two years ago the London mansion was sold for 7.5 million dollars.

As a result of the progressive deterioration in the health of the king of the Hellenes,

in April 2022 they put their Greek mansion up for sale for about 12 million euros

to move to a huge apartment in the exclusive Kolonaki neighborhood in Athens with the intention of being close to all required sanitary services.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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