Constantine II of Greece

According to Greek naming practices, being the first son, he was named after his paternal grandfather, Constantine I, who had died in 1923.

Prince Constantine had an elder sister, Princess Sofia, born in 1938.

However, since agnatic primogeniture governed the succession to throne in Greece at the time, the birth of a male heir to the throne had been anxiously awaited by the Greek royal family, and the newborn prince was therefore received with joy by his parents.

His birth was celebrated with a 101–gun salute from Mount Lycabettus in Athens, which, according to tradition, announced that the newborn was a boy.

Constantine II (Κωνσταντίνος Βʹ, ; 2 June 1940 – 10 January 2023) was the last King of Greece, reigning from 6 March 1964 until the abolition of the Greek monarchy on 1 June 1973.

Constantine was born in Athens as the only son of Crown Prince Paul and Crown Princess Frederica of Greece.

Being of Danish descent, he was also born as a prince of Denmark.

As his family was forced into exile during the Second World War, he spent the first years of his childhood in Egypt and South Africa.

Constantine was born in the afternoon of 2 June 1940 at his parents' residence, Villa Psychiko at Leoforos Diamantidou 14 in Psychiko, an affluent suburb of Athens.

He was the second child and only son of Crown Prince Paul and Crown Princess Frederica.

His father was the younger brother and heir presumptive of the reigning Greek king, George II, and his mother was the only daughter of Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, and Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia.

At his baptism on 20 July 1940 at the Royal Palace of Athens, the Hellenic Armed Forces acted as his godparent.

Constantine was born during the early stages of World War II.

He was just a few months old when, on 28 October 1940, Fascist Italy invaded Greece from Albania, beginning the Greco-Italian War.

The Greek Army was able to halt the invasion temporarily and push the Italians back into Albania.

However, the Greek successes forced Nazi Germany to intervene and the Germans invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941 and overran both countries within a month, despite British aid to Greece in the form of an expeditionary corps.

On 22 April 1941, Princess Frederica and her two children, Sofia and Constantine, were evacuated to Crete in a British Short Sunderland flying boat along with most of the Greek royal family.

The next day, they were followed by King George and Prince Paul.

However the imminent German invasion of Crete quickly made the situation untenable and Constantine and his family were evacuated from Crete to Egypt on 30 April 1941, a fortnight before the German attack on the island.

In Alexandria, the exiled Greek royals were welcomed by the Greek diaspora, which provided them with lodging, money and clothing.

The presence of the Greek royal family and government began to worry King Farouk of Egypt and his pro-Italian ministers.

Constantine and his family, therefore, had to seek another refuge where they could get through the war and continue their fight against the Axis powers.

George VI of the United Kingdom opposed the presence of Princess Frederica, who was suspected of having Nazi sympathies, and her children in Britain, but it was decided that Constantine's father and uncle could take up residence in London, where a government-in-exile was set up, while the rest of the family could seek refuge in the then-Union of South Africa.

On 27 June 1941, most of the Greek royal family, therefore, set off for South Africa on board the Dutch steamship Nieuw Amsterdam, which arrived in Durban on 8 July 1941.

After a two-month stay in Durban, Prince Paul left for England with his brother, and Constantine then barely saw his father again for the next three years.

He returned to Greece with his family in 1946 during the Greek Civil War.

After Constantine's uncle George II died in 1947, Paul became the new king and Constantine the crown prince.

As a young man, Constantine was a competitive sailor and Olympian, winning a gold medal in the 1960 Rome Olympics in the Dragon class along with Odysseus Eskitzoglou and George Zaimis in the yacht Nireus.

From 1964, he served on the International Olympic Committee.

Constantine acceded as king following his father's death in 1964.

Later that year, he married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, with whom he had five children.

Although the accession of the young monarch was initially regarded auspiciously, his reign saw political instability that culminated in the Colonels' Coup of 21 April 1967.

The coup left Constantine, as head of state, with little room to manoeuvre since he had no loyal military forces on which to rely.

He thus reluctantly agreed to inaugurate the junta, on the condition that it be made up largely of civilian ministers.

On 13 December 1967, Constantine was forced to flee the country, following an unsuccessful countercoup against the junta.

Constantine formally remained Greece's head of state in exile until the junta abolished the monarchy in June 1973 (a decision ratified via a referendum in July).

While Constantine had contested the results of the 1973 referendum, he accepted the verdict of the 1974 vote, even though he had not been allowed to return to Greece to campaign.

After the restoration of democracy a year later, a second referendum was held in December 1974, which confirmed the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the Third Hellenic Republic.

After living for several decades in London, Constantine moved back to Athens in 2013.

He died there in 2023 following a stroke.