The Abolition of Monarchy | Constantine: A King's Story | Real Royalty With Foxy Games

these frenzied scenes could be the victory rally of a politician or perhaps a grand birthday party for a Hollywood film star actually the man at the center of all this attention is King Constantine of Greece but Greece has been a republic for nearly 30 years these scenes of rampant royalism and fervor are not in Athens but in London where the King lives in exile Constantine is the king who lost his throne [Music] [Applause] [Music] a royal wedding reception Crown Prince Pavlos the eldest son of King Constantine of Greece is marrying marie-chantal Miller daughter of one of the world's richest men it's our royal watchers paradise but guests at this royal wedding are a who's who have look great and be good to prepare the whole thing was quite difficult and but it was a very enjoyable day I must say and I enjoyed every moment of it was great from whole family was there the whole family is the cream of European royalty many are known as the relatives can I just have your attention for a minute as you know the queen is the godmother of our daughter and prince charges to cut out of my son and I'm regard for his sanity so it's all very closed society photographer Lord Litchfield pushes protocol aside for practicality as monarchs and heads of state are handed into place straight to camera everybody [Music] that's how [Applause] after the wedding royal guests will head back to the comfort of palaces all over Europe but King Constantine will not be travelling home to Greece or even going home to a palace [Applause] with his wife Queen Anne Marie the king's home for the past 30 years has been here in a North London suburb this is a famous drawing of my grandfather where who was commanded chief of the Greek forces in the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 he's just receiving a telegram the victory against the enemy in the naval battle Constantine is a man whose ancestors fought battles and liberated cities in his house it's hard to forget the past royal relics tell potent tales of Greek history and hold painful memories of how things might have been that's my grandfather King Constantine and you can barely see that it's a last look painting you can barely see he's got a black band because his father had been assassinated King George the first of these King George the first as you know was the brother of Queen Alexandra and Empress Marie of Russia and that's my grandfather's mother my great-grandmother Queen Olga and this bracelet is gone down for generations and was stolen from my wife at Geneva Airport so it's a ruby under my sofa and we're trying to persuade the authorities now to try and find them that's my mother and these two are old King George the first of these that was as a young man just after he came through Greece from Denmark and that's in in later life this is the Queen when she came as Princess Elizabeth Prince Philip they came to this and this is taken at the cafe in Cape Sounion that's my father and that's Prince Philip sister married to my mother's brother Prince George of Hannover and that's his two sons is Carlo Heston and Prince Reina this sweet little boy hears me [Music] this was painted by the Prince of Wales it's the island of Crete then he painted from the Britannia as they were passing on his honeymoon and this is painted by him Mount Athos and it's one of the monasteries which i think is very beautiful and you can see the evolution of the painter [Music] that's 40 years ago things were going to be very different thousands of Greeks lined the streets as the young handsome King a national hero for winning an Olympic gold medal married a beautiful princess from Denmark the future must have seemed so certain but this fairytale beginning was to go wrong and it would lead to the end of over a hundred years of Greek royalty so how did a family with such impeccable credentials such an illustrious ancestry come to lose everything [Music] crown prince constantine was selected to represent Greece in the Rome Olympics of 1960 here he is leading the team at the opening ceremony his sport was sailing his boyhood friend Costas remembers the prince when they were still at school together he always wanted to do things for the good of a team I was in charge of the athletics and perhaps sometimes I needed somebody to participate too who would only get one point come fifth for six he always wanted to do it it was a real sportsman we hoped going to the Olympics that if we were lucky and if we could be working very well we might get a sixth place this was our aim not to really humiliate our country we never expected we're gonna win the Roman [Music] wonderful I mean we felt fantastic and the idea of getting up onto the podium and having the medal program view and seeing the great flag go up and listen to Greek national anthem was I always say say that that was the best feeling my life other than getting engaged so I mean that was a fantastic situation gold medal or not King Constantine has not been welcomed in Greece for half his lifetime unlike the boat in which he won gold which is the pride of the Greek Yacht Club in Piraeus I was with my crew this afternoon and we were talking about it and we thought that were actually putting the boat into the water one day I'm having a girl but she's lovely she's absolutely beautiful back at the club for the first time since he was exiled in 1967 it's an emotional time for Constantine I have been waiting you know exactly 36 years to be able to say - I said welcome to the club or which I remember and welcome to the club that I have known of the yadu road nearly half a century earlier the gold medal-winning crown prince was greeted by his father King Paul on the tarmac at Athens air for Constantine was killed by his country as a national year they estimated that because it was your first medal in 50 years I think they were estimating something about a million and a half people came into the states and what sharing the two members of my crew and myself to win a gold medal it's an incredible thing and for the crown prince at that time to win a gold medal was an amazing thing and you can never take that away from you can take almost anything away from a person but you can never take his gold medal away just about everything else was taken away from him 26 kilometers north of Athens is a ten thousand acre estate called Tatoi [Music] at its center is this house which has been unoccupied since December in 1967 it was once the family home to generations of the kings and queens of greece constantine was only 27 and on the throne for less than three years when the nightmare of every monarch came true overthrow of the established order by military force the queen was expecting our eldest son and well we heard about it about two o'clock at night and I called my aide who lived in the house up there and he came down not knocked on this door lovely old door and I just went to the telephone and tried to find out what was going on and tried to call the government and the government had been arrested and tried to call different commanders telephone lines were being cut all the time and then we heard that the tanks had reached the gate so I sent my security officers to go and call the commanding officer of the tank squadron doesn't come up here to come speak to me but they just arrested my security officer I realized that they had very unfriendly intentions and I asked my security to withdraw up till here they're only about 20 men and we they had on that bit there they had about I think four submachine guns and couple revolvers that's about it wait were you afraid you know your life no you don't have time for that I mean you have to you're so busy you have to be in a terrible try and work out what's going on and try to solve the problem and then I were down to Medi headquarters to try and work out what to do next and how to get my country out of this mess this mess was a result of Greek politics in the mid-1960s which were in turmoil the cool came about a month before a general election for a left-wing victory was certain afraid of civil chaos and their own loss of political power a section of the army led by a brigadier in two Colonels took the country by force over 10,000 people were arrested the former King Constantine has never talked in detail about those dangerous days and rarely gives interviews I was invited to meet him at his home in North London okay can you explain to us in the most simple and straightforward terms possible what exactly happened in 1967 it's the most ghastly feeling you can have to see your country disintegrate in front of your eyes within hours my whole aim that day was to try and find a system whereby we wouldn't end up killing each other and in the Civil War we had just been through all that in the 40s and I tried to find a way to solve this problem without getting any blood spilled not an easy task the King's strategy surprised many this formal photograph was taken just after the coup when Constantine still his official head of state swore in the Colonel's as the new legitimate government many people have wondered that maybe you gave the new government after the coup a sense of legitimacy by recognizing them how would you answer those critics well the legitimacy came because I swore in the government that day and the reason I swore that government in that day is that I felt that if I didn't do that and then try to gain time after the swearing-in we would go into as I said before a possibility of civil strife between the military units the prime minister of the day who was arrested also I managed to get him out of his confinement and I forced the comes to releasing because I wanted to talk I'm gonna get his advice and he also thought that maybe I should arrest all these people so I said to her look how did you expect me to arrest him I don't have any units at my disposal am I gonna I can't physically arrest them he said what are you gonna do and I said well what I thought I'd do is swear in a government with a few military people as possible more civilians as possible and then try to gain time to organize a counter-coup and go to democracy and he said well I suspect that that's probably the only sensible way of going about it many people say that the king should have used his rights actually to dismiss the military regime not to put up with it and if necessary actually draw his pistol on officers who were creating a revolutionary situation against the established order military commanders and political leaders were among those arrested within hours of the Colonel's coup the king was alone what were the options open to him it's very easy with hindsight or even from the sidelines to criticize somebody for what they did or didn't do I feel that the King always acted rightly but an extraordinarily difficult situation you expected some sacrifice from your King and the sacrifice would have been necessarily to expose his life or to expose to his family to any danger but to stand up and say no I do not accept this military coup in fact he did the opposite Constantin claims he did the opposite to create a smokescreen to mask his real intentions of a fight back against the coup but exposed to the harsh glare of international newsreels his behavior looked like collaboration cracking eggs at Easter the king appeared to be on best terms with the military hunter he says his mindset was very different somebody asked me one day when did I planned to overthrow them and I said 10 minutes after I heard that they were making the coup which was 10 o'clock 2 o'clock in the morning from day one he was thinking how can i extricate myself from this situation how can I actually save Greece from this fate the trouble with making a coup is that you have to have a devious mind and the generals the senior Jones and myself hadn't a clue how to do this so it was a really an improvised situation he had one card in his hand if he didn't Trump them he lost it took me 8 months to try and set it all up and then in December before Christmas on the 13th of December I moved and tried to overthrow the counts he didn't succeed so I had to leave the country and then went into exile I chose to leave for the simple reason that if I did stay it would end up with military units shooting at each other the Brother killing brother father killing son there was no purpose in that if my efforts to overthrow the Colonel's and restore democracy were to be successful then they had to be successful in the first two hours you can track that sort of thing on if you could wind back the clock bigger and older and much wiser man is there anything you would have done differently I would have done most of the things the same way but far better in the small hours of a chilly Thursday the 14th of December 1967 the Greek royal family fled into exile the royal plane landed in Rome with only 5 minutes of fuel remaining the family took few possessions with them the few people knew the Queen was in the early stages of pregnancy under intense media scrutiny the king maintained his characteristic silence in a strange country cut off from all that was familiar the royal refugees had a little idea of what the future might hold an old friend of the King remembers this stressful time well I went to Rome tried to find him and grant the bail not knowing what to expect and he opened the door it was very moving I was very moved he was very moved he thought that I was arrested but I was not and it was a very difficult moment of his life because it was the night the day that the Queen had lost a baby she was expecting when she left on the 13th of December from Greece and she lost her baby on the 16th we decided to stay in Rome initially because that's enough fuel that I had in my plane when I left Greece I couldn't go any further so we landed there and so I wanted symbolically to show the Greek people that while they were under dictatorship we were they were not forgotten and we would work for their freedom two weeks after his failed fight back newsreel cameras recorded this the royal family apparently without a care in the world enjoying Christmas at the Greek ambassador's residence in Rome this show of normality might have fitted with royal protocol but it wasn't doing the Kings image any favors the next step you would have expected from the king of Greece from a king of any country was to condemn the status quo existing in his country he never did that while he was in exile while he was abroad and that counts a lot that counts a lot as time passed the Colonel's hunter tightened its grip and became increasingly brutal crushing any opposition gruesome stories of torture and oppression emerged there were worldwide protests the king in exile remains silent finally in July 1973 the military regime declared that Greece was now a republic and the king was formally deposed once they abolished the monarchy I had to find means of my for survival and so I left Rome and the family went initially to Denmark I came to London to find a place to stay and then the whole family joined me here and we've been here since nineteen well at the end of the 1974 le but you mentioned there means for survival that's an intriguing point I mean I have no idea what a person in your situation that does for sustenance what do you do to support yourself and you and your family it's difficult it's difficult but slowly slowly one has to adapt and one has to find means of doing that but initially it was quite a problem but these things happen and are you willing to tell me how you overcame the problems well it's it's very private that so but which we managed to survive in 1974 the king and queen settled into the Surrey village of Chobham with their three children alexia pavlov's and Niklaus later that same year the hunter collapsed naturally the Greek royal family were optimistic about a return to Greece but the new democratic government ordered a referendum on the future of the Constitution and the monarchy claiming it might cause civil unrest the new Prime Minister said he would telephone the king when he could return the call never came and the King campaigned from exile in England Greece voted 2 to 1 for the abolition of the monarchy up until you lost your place in Greek life how did you feel your relationship was with the public it was pretty much the same as it is in England I mean in all the big state functions and going let's say on the national days there were huge crowds in history it's identifying the king over the crown but the seconds of our life changed you know when the dictator should happen and then I had to leave the country then I was away from the public for so long it was very difficult for the for me and for them because you can't equate with him and since the referendum by 1974 he's officially being ex king of Greece although even today in the court circular which is published in British newspapers he's always referred to his King Constantine of the Hellions today the ex king of the Hellenes keeps in touch from England with events in Greece through satellite television had technology like this been available during the time of the Colonel's coup and the referendum Greek royal destiny may have been very different deposed in 1973 in living in exile ever since the former king of Greece Constantine has never formally renounced his status as a mana one of the reasons for this lies deep within the Greek tradition in the Greek Orthodox tradition the king is anointed actually at his coronation so once a king always a king he will never until his dying day lose his status as a king it is a reigning king obviously at the present time he is not a reigning king he's an ex king that's his official status and I think is a status which he himself accepts do you think you are the last king a very good do you think that you will indeed be the last king of Greece well according to the constitution of my country that is that is the case and according to you I don't no idea what's happening in the future is very hard to say the court of king constantine resides here on the sixth floor of this london building it's a far cry from life in a palace the business of being an ex King has been conducted from these modest offices since the late 1970s Constantine still signs with the royal signature the King's office receives around a hundred and fifty thousand letters a year most address to his majesty or King Constantine no surprise then that he still thinks he's a king always they wish to be very well with his family and the most important wish for them is to see him in Greece just like members of most royal families the King gets muntins of gifts all these items come from members of the public in Greece who come to England and come and want to come and see me and then they bring all these different icons as a gift and they come from clergymen or students or just anybody and they always bring an icon just for protection and blessings if I keep them here as a collection the soldiers if my memory serves me correctly they were collected by Prince Philip what a nice something it's at all God the former king of Greece has redefined his life whether he's shivering Queen Elizabeth the second on a golf buggy at his son's wedding reception or joining Prince Phillip and other royals on the dance floor the former King Constantine remains firmly at the center of the royal merry-go-round [Music] and was in this elite group he plays a vital role King Constantine as former king of Greece is one of the most important linchpins in European aristocracy specifically because he was freed by this exile and by the referendum how is he used as a linchpin well he's the Clapham Junction of monarchy which means that his private family occasions became natural gathering pools for everyone to come from Spain from Denmark from Britain and it was a good occasion for inter European royalty to me [Music] for instance on his 60th birthday he invited a number of high-profile guests including royalty who with whom their family one of them - two people were Prince Charles and Camilla Bowles and that was the first time that the couple Charles and Camilla was seen together in public it was a happy occasion for me and I just asked him if he would join I mean you know it was my birthday and he very sweetly hosted the the lunch and so I asked if they would all be there you know and but it served its purpose because after that the Charles and Camilla trained to sort of gather some momentum and perhaps be tested in the media and on the British public [Music] it seems to me that talking to people and reading things but before speaking to you that you occupy a unique position you're almost a sort of a diplomat if you like for European royalty are behind the scenes mover and shaker I mean how do you regard your role well it's a funny way of putting it I I don't feel it that way I feel that they're all my family and I was in in in a position many years ago I'm not in that position now but I still equate with them and I can get on with them very well and it's much more from my point of view looking at them as a family with the knowledge that they have a very important job to do in the final analysis or what we all try to do is service to the people that's basically what monarch is all about although he no longer has a throne there is evidence that Constantine still holds real influence in Greece and that he can provoke the Greek government in 1993 the family went on a yachting holiday around the Greek islands having reportedly agreed to avoid populated areas he sailed into this port in southern Greece for fuel the Royal party was shadowed by Greek naval destroyers and buzzed by a Hercules aircraft he was tracked all over the place until he was finally obliged to sail away and not to disturb their peace and longer their nerve the Greek government's nerves couldn't take and that may be why a year later the Greek government seized the Kings ten thousand acre estate at Tatoi for the king returning to Tatoi the home he was forced to abandon nearly 40 years ago it's a sentimental journey Tatoi is now a national park this was my home this was where we this was what I called home this is where we lived there's a lot of emotion in this old place because it was originally bought by my great-grandfather King George the first who came to this country from Denmark as a young man of aged about 17 and became the king of the Hellenes and he reigned for 50 years it was not bought by money that came to him as a salary it was come money that came from Denmark he bought it himself so he could have his own private place since it was bought in 1871 the estate of Tatoi has passed down through several generations of the Greek royal family since being in exile constantine has had to fight to establish his right to his own land before the house on the right was where all the vineyards were and that by the Stags used to love coming in there and all this I don't know what they've done we're doing this for this is just for the public don't know what it is but all this was vineyards and I had to put up huge fences because they used to go and eat all the grapes and they would roll like mad and that whole area that's what you see down there that that patch but if you can see it behind that lovely tree that's when I had my helipad needs to learn my helicopter to come home from my office to have lunch with the Queen in my little daughter and then I would fly back again to work [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Royal processions are better for hot potater who do they belong to they belong to the throne ergo to the state or do they belong to the person which means private possessions it's difficult to sort of clarify for certain what belongs to whom well maybe not that difficult the one occupied throughout the 1970s and 80s the king paid ownership tax on Tatoi so as far as the Greek tax authorities were concerned it did seem to be his house it's difficult to describe I mean why do they do why did they take it away it's oh it's very hard to describe whether it's a spite or envy I have no idea it is really very difficult to understand there's no logic to it at all and it was in a state that was bought by the family this is where we lived this was our home most of our family were born here and died here my son our son was born here I'm trying to figure out which room was it done he is not officially pond and there was a swimming pool the pond is underneath here and there's the swimming pool which was a massive failure it wasn't very good and then further down in behind the trees is a small place where there was a tennis court it's very thick all this you see all these things my father used to come out in the mornings every day it was live and clear on the undergrowth so you could see quite far away he was asking to be allowed to go to his home to use his property not the palace it is a private residence this was deliberately misconstrued by the Greek socialist government as being a threat as being an attempt to return by the back door into Greece and no amount of assurance by the king that there was not his intentions seemed to be able to move them after ten years of negotiation paying all taxes and reaching agreement on the house a new government you turned and seized Tatoi in 1994 the royal family was stripped of passports and had to apply for Greek citizenship King Constantine's patience finally snapped he went to the European Court of Human Rights I consider it the greatest insult in this world for a Greek to be told that he's not a Greek all that a Greek to be told that he has to apply for Greek nationality I was bonding I am Greek and I will tag League and there are certain things that every human being will not go further you cannot push an individual further and that's my limit I was born in my country I served in the Greek Armed Forces I paid big taxes I won a gold medal for the East the first gold medal Greece's ever won in any spot in 15 years and I became the head of state of Greece and I think that anything beyond that is totally nonsense that's my father and that's my mother and these thieves I brought them here in the beginning of March because it was the 40th anniversary of my father's passing away and I had a memorial service so we put the leaves here of my family and my sister's family from Spain and now they'll have to clear them all away because they both looked rather sad after long deliberation the European Court ruled that the human rights of King Constantine had been violated Tatoi was his but he still didn't get the house back because the ruling allowed for compensation to be paid rather than returning the Kings seized property and in this chapel is both my grandfather King Constantine and also my grandmother in Queen Sofia who was the sister of Kaiser villain today as he walks around his family's graveyard the king is just a visitor it's as if the Greek government had wished to wipe oil history from the records princes under there if you wanted all the Greece's there whose miss Phillips father my grandmother is there who's the sister of the Kaiser my Gangamma is there who was the son of the King of Denmark Queen Sophia was also the granddaughter of Queen Victoria Victoria so you see everybody comes from two two sides Denmark King Christina 9th Britain Queen Victoria and they all sort of crisscross the double committee asked if you get the book of all the families it'll take you a long time along to work it alone so I think Vince Andrews over there [Music] in the spring of 2003 with all five of their children the king and queen felt able to visit Greece for the first time in nearly 40 years [Music] having won his case in the European Court King Constantine clearly felt relaxed about returning home with all disputes resolved he was keen to test the reaction of the Greek government [Music] I think with the case finished in November and we took the plane and went back to Ruiz in February which I think took a lot of people by surprise but at least we broke ties I was with him every board in the States was nice to them everybody was agreed everybody greeted them all the media was after them they worried about ten television cameras following them so the government could not react any more though apparently relaxed meeting the people of northern Greece some issues remained unresolved one of these was that the funds the government used to pay the king in compensation for Tatoi had a political sting in the tail thing that upset me a lot was that the compensation that they gave me came from the budget that deals with natural catastrophes like earthquakes and and and floods and I thought that was perhaps below the belt to take money away from people who would need it because of this sort of catastrophe we have a request from a village in just north of our time it's there about four four or five villages that were very badly affected by earthquake and spurred on by their sense of injustice the royal family sought a way to get the money back to the Greek disaster fund they formed a foundation to fund the rebuilding of shattered communities it's named after the Queen the Anna Maria Foundation I would like to see it and then check with the board if they approve for what which in which means actually that the sooner we can go to see it he's developed his life as best he can but always having as the touchstone what he can offer to Greece and the people of Greece he remains to all intents and purposes their king in Waiting if they need him and there's no doubt that is one of the veterans of the International Olympic Committee the King helped get the Olympic Games to Greece in 2004 yeah I think he did everything he could I know that during the bid he went to his friends at the IOC and the IOC is a strange group I'm an IOC member there was only a hundred and twenty of us so it's a very close for turnit II and so you know you do have your friends and he went to them I'm sure he went to 30 or 40 of them and said look at time for athletes I think he worked very hard though looking like an ordinary family out shopping or on a sightseeing trip even a casual stroll around Athens become something of a royal walkabout when you go back to Greece then do you have any sort of protection do you have caught on sobriety or you just walk down the street which is what some suits do people talk to you all the time and they are very honest about it because they'll come up to you on that either cheer you or kiss you or argue or tell you that they voted against you in the referendum with a big smile on their face and you know you just tell them well that's just fine but I mean the only you tell em it's fine you don't take that person no no no you can't take these things personally I mean the decision of people was final they took it and that I have to live with that so what am I supposed to do I can't cry every day these days the ex king of Greece travels by tube today he's showing his younger daughter Theodora and her friend where he got married in 1964 all the troops land up and the character would came out through here stop there and your mother went in through here with her long waiting this and there will it fail I mean just before so I didn't she turned on and with everything [Applause] [Music] it's all new to me anyway so it was in a way quite strange what the movie action was inside falling down from up there and that's what we tried to emulate for my both my heart my sons and my wedding and no rice in the church and outside driving around the carriage people throwing rice a little bit the horses ever got a little bit excited the static noise which I wasn't too happy about but at least it was an open carriage that's all if anything happens I can always jump resort interjection me I will invite you in the new opening if she finds a nice husband we can have the wedding here she will find a nice husband for princess Theodora there is the tantalizing prospect of a wedding in the same Cathedral as her parents the former king of Greece remains philosophical about his chances of a return to the throne it's difficult for we are not politicians politicians strive for this chair strive for this position of power and they do everything they can to get it the very few exceptions of politicians who realize the time is up and they have to leave I've had this privilege this I've had this a sense of responsibility before it's not my aim to try to get it back again for me the predominant thing in my mind is that my country should live in peace my country should be happy and successful and my job is to do whatever I can to help it as a private citizen Konstantin could never really be just a private citizen in Greece when three generations of the monarchy turned up for the first royal christening in Greece for 40 years it was a media scrum [Music] the Brothers Grimm might have the king returning to reclaim his throne but in the real world of a modern Greek democracy such a simple fairytale ending is unlikely [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Real Royalty

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Keywords: real royalty, real royalty channel, british royalty, royalty around the world, royal history, constantine of greece, king constantine of greece interview, king constantine of greece 2019, greek history documentary, greek monarchy, greek monarchy family tree, greek republic, abolition of monarchy, princess anne marie of denmark, european monarchy documentary, european monarchy family tree, european royal families

Id: tDv95oFQhaU

Length: 47min 56sec (2876 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2020

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