The kings Felipe and Letizia have arrived this Sunday in Athens. This Monday they are going to attend the funeral to be held for Constantine of Greece, who died this Tuesday on the age of 82.
Queen Sofia, Constantine’s sister, is already in Athens. The emeritus king and the princesses Elena and Sofía additionally attend the funeral. It would be the first household reunion in lots of months.
Despite having been King of Greece for 9 years, between 1964 and 1973, Constantine shall be buried as a typical citizen in Tatoi, the previous summer season residence of the Greek monarchy, after the Greek authorities has rejected the celebration of a funeral for Condition as requested by the household.
Constantine II is taken into account a controversial determine within the historical past of Greece for his function through the navy dictatorship that dominated the nation between 1967 and 1974. After his loss of life on Tuesday, the Greek Prime Minister, Kyiriakos Mitsotakis, assured that the lifetime of the previous king ” marked and was marked by turbulent moments within the trendy historical past of the nation”.
“The formal epilogue of a chapter that has been definitively closed with the 1974 referendum is being written,” the Greek prime minister transferred, alluding to the vote through which the Greek inhabitants accepted by a big majority the top of the monarchy as a type of State .
Constantine’s life
Constantine II was king of Greece from 1964 to 1973, when the monarchy was abolished by referendum in 1974. Some 75.6 % of Greeks determined they needed a republic as a type of state. After that, he spent a time residing in London, though he later returned to his homeland, because the newspaper ‘Ethnos’ recalled.
The former monarch was the son of Frederica of Hannover and Paul I of Greece, who was the youthful brother of King George II, in addition to the primary cousin of the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and in addition the father-in-law of Juan Carlos I of Spain.
After King Paul I died in 1964, Constantine succeeded to the throne. That identical 12 months he would marry Ana Maria, youngest daughter of King Frederick IX of Denmark, whom he met as inheritor to the throne in 1959 in Copenhagen throughout a go to to Sweden and Norway.
Constantine lived his first years as king very turbulent on account of the riots that broke out in July 1965 after the resignation of George Papandreou as prime minister, in addition to the following coup d’état of 1967, led by George Papadopoulos, who deposed the king and imposed a navy dictatorship.
After the autumn of the dictatorship in July 1974, the politician Konstantinos Karamanlis returned from his exile in Paris to type a authorities. In December of the identical 12 months a referendum was held on the way forward for the monarchy.