Constantine, the former and last king of Greece, dies at 82

The former King of Greece, Constantine, has died in a hospital in Athens

Constantine, the former and last king of Greece, has died at a private hospital in Athens, his doctors announced late on Tuesday. He was 82.

Staff at the private Hygeia Hospital in Athens confirmed to The Associated Press that Constantine has died after treatment in an intensive care unit but had no further details pending an official announcement.

When he acceded to the throne as Constantine II at the age of 23 in 1964, the youthful monarch, who had already achieved glory as an Olympic gold medalist in sailing, was hugely popular. By the following year he had squandered much of that support with his active involvement in the machinations that brought down the popularly elected Center Union government of Prime Minister George Papandreou.

The episode, still widely known in Greece as the “apostasy,” or defection from the ruling party of several lawmakers, destabilized the constitutional order and led in 1967 to a military coup. Constantine eventually clashed with the military rulers and was forced into exile. The dictatorship abolished the monarchy in 1973 while a referendum after democracy was restored in 1974 dashed any hopes that Constantine had of ever reigning again.

Reduced in the following decades to only fleeting visits to Greece that raised a political and media storm each time, he was able in his waning years to settle again in his home country, when opposing his presence no longer held currency as a badge of vigilant republicanism. With minimal nostalgia for the monarchy in Greece, Constantine became a relatively uncontroversial figure from the past.

Constantine was born June 2, 1940 in Athens, to Prince Paul, younger brother to King George II and heir presumptive to the throne, and princess Federica of Hanover. His older sister Sophia is the wife of former King Juan Carlos I of Spain. The Greek-born Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh and husband of the United Kingdom’s late Queen Elizabeth II, was an uncle.

The family, which had ruled in Greece from 1863 apart from a 12-year republican interlude between 1922-1935, was descended from Prince Christian, later Christian IX of Denmark, of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg branch of the Danish ruling family.