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Greece’s ex-king Constantine, end of a dynasty

Greece’s former king Constantine II, who died on Tuesday aged 82, was the last member of a century-long dynasty in power when a brutal army dictatorship seized control of the country in 1967.

A descendant of Denmark’s royal Gluecksburg family, Constantine ascended the throne in 1964 at the age of 23 during one of the most turbulent periods in modern Greek history.

The country was still bitterly divided 15 years after the Greek civil war, at the height of the Cold War and with anti-communist hysteria and fears of subversion rampant.

– Coup plots –

Most Greeks believe the young king, under the influence of his German-born mother Frederica, aggravated the country’s political instability.

His critics argue he enabled the rise of the army dictatorship by clashing with the democratically elected prime minister Georgios Papandreou, encouraging his resignation in 1965.

Declassified US diplomatic cables say Constantine himself may have been mulling martial law in 1967.

They suggest he wanted to head off Papandreou’s return to power, alongside his maverick son Andreas, the future firebrand socialist prime minister.

A 1967 State Department wire said Constantine’s head of cabinet approached the local CIA station chief three months before the coup, to ask how Washington would react if “extreme measures” were taken ahead of elections in May.

The envoy told the then CIA station chief John Maury “for the present, the loyalty of the army could be relied upon to support a temporary dictatorship”.

– ‘Worst day of my life’ –

In later years, the former king claimed he had done his utmost to avert the political crisis that led to the dictatorship.

He insisted that the putschists had “deceived” the Greek people by claiming to carry out the coup in his name.

Eight months after the colonels had seized power, Constantine organised a military counter-coup that failed.

“It was the worst day of my life,” he said in a 2015 memoir released by To Vima weekly. “That day, I saw my first white hair.”

Constantine fled to Rome with the royal family, and they moved to London in 1974.

He later said he had chosen not to pursue his counter-coup “because the risk of a general civil conflict was too great”.

A senior putschist saw it differently. The ex-king had “plotted clumsily”, he said.

But even after the dictatorship took hold, Constantine “seems to have been willing to return to Greece at practically any cost, including co-operation with the junta”, historian Mogens Pelt wrote in a 2006 study of postwar Greece.

– Suing the state –

When democracy was restored in 1974, nearly 70 percent of Greeks voted for the abolition of the monarchy in a referendum, ending a dynasty begun by Constantine’s Danish-born great-grandfather George I in 1863.

A long legal battle with the Greek state followed, with Constantine — derisively nicknamed “Kokos” by anti-royalists — determined to secure compensation for royal property and lands.

In 1991, he…

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