The much feared Queen Frederika of Greece, wife of King Paul, mother of the last sovereign Constantine II and her sister Sofia who became Queen of Spain (she was also the granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany) prophesied in 1967, when the Greek royal family was forced into exile a few months after the Colonels’ coup in Athens, “the kings of Greece always come back”.
It is true that in the history of the Hellenic monarchy established in the 19th century by a Danish prince, the dynasty often reigned over a volcano, leaving the country and returning there according to political upheavals. At the fall of the military dictatorship and the return of democracy in 1974, and at the end of a referendum which gave a majority to the Republic, Greece had not finished settling scores with its former royal family. As if the past did not pass, against a backdrop of rivalries with political clans equal to dynasties, the Papandreou and the Karamanlis.
At the height of the crisis between the Greek government and former King Constantine II in the 1990s, when the state had just confiscated royal property, the royal family was stripped of its Greek citizenship on the grounds that it refused to officially renounce the throne of Greece and recognize the Republic. From then on, the former King Constantine II was only called Mr. Glücksburg, in reference to the patronymic name of the Danish royal dynasty – the princes being reputed “princes of Greece and Denmark”. A Germanic connotation to better underline the foreign character of the royal family and make them appear less legitimately Greek!
A humiliation that was painfully experienced by the former sovereign who, over the years, gradually moved closer to the shores of Greece and reconnected the distended threads of memory. His death in January 2023 will have unconsciously marked a break in the state of armed peace between the government and the royal family. The Greek Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, already involved in the reconstruction of the royal palace of Tatoï victim of a fire to create a museum of the dynasty, and present at the funeral of the king which was celebrated with great fanfare with the approval of Prime Minister Kiriakos Mitsotakis, will have marked a turning point.
An important decree
A new step has just been taken as the Greek Minister of the Interior, Theodoros Livanios, signed the decree restoring Greek nationality to the ten members of the former royal family who claimed it.
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These are the five children of the late King Constantine II and Queen Anne-Marie – including his heir Pavlos, head of the family – and five of their grandchildren. The five children of Constantin and Anne-Marie are Alexia, 58 years old, Pavlos, 56 years old, Nikolaos, 54 years old, Theodora, 40 years old and Philippos, 37 years old. The five children of the heir, the Diadochi Pavlos, also obtained citizenship: Maria-Olympia, 27; Constantinos-Alexios, 25 years old; Achileas-Andreas, 23 years old; Odysseas-Kimon, 19 years old; and Aristidis-Stavros, 15 years old.
On official websites, the Royal Household released an official statement: “It is with deep emotion that, after thirty years, we once again possess Greek nationality. The 1994 law deprived us of our citizenship, rendering us stateless with all that that implies in terms of individual rights and great emotional distress. Our father and our family fully respected the result of the 1974 referendum. However, the provisions of the 1994 Citizenship Law, a result of the political status of the time, were not worthy of a former Greek head of state and an institution that served the country loyally. The passing of our father marked the end of an era. The prerequisite for restoring our nationality was to declare a surname. We therefore chose that of our late uncle, Michel De Greece, who was the only one who was familiar to us, our family never having had a last name. During the years when we were deprived of our citizenship, we were driven by the duty and honor to serve our country with loyalty and dedication, wherever we were and with all our means. The same principles will continue to guide our family’s journey.”
In fact, 50 years after the restoration of democracy, “we have a strong democracy and a protected constitution that can defend itself, with laws that apply without footnotes or exceptions,” the spokesperson said. of the government, Pavlos Marinakis, before the publication of the decision. Interior Ministry official Athanasios Balerpas said relatives of the late king, who died last year aged 82, had previously signed a declaration recognizing Greece’s republican government. “An outstanding historical question is being resolved,” he commented.
A gesture of appeasement between members of the royal family and the Greek government
The ten descendants of King Constantine II have thus adopted a new family name, “From Greece”, the surname under which the writer-historian of the family, Prince Michel of Greece, cousin of King Constantine who died last July, signed his bestsellers like “The Night of the Seraglio”, “The Sacred Woman”… Some politicians from the center-left and left opposition parties have spoken out against the surname chosen by the former members of the royal family , arguing that it resembled more to a title than to a classic surname, but did not oppose their right to citizenship. A protest for principle. Thus our dear and late historian Michel of Greece will have allowed post-mortem a gesture of appeasement between the members of the royal family and the Hellenic government by restoring to the descendants of the dynasty a name which is also an invitation to travel, “from Greece », in the French way.
