There was no official mourning, no gun salute, no slow march through the ancient streets of Athens, but when the coffin of King Constantine II of Greece arrived at the city’s Metropolitan Cathedral on January 16, it was to large crowds and an extraordinary show of royal solidarity.
Beneath the cathedral’s magnificent Byzantine dome stood a formidable array of crowned heads from around the world, including three kings, six queens, an empress, a tsar, numerous crown princes and princesses, and a grand duke. All had come from their various realms to honour a long-deposed and exiled monarch, now dismissively referred to by the Greek authorities as “Mr Constantine Glücksburg”.
Incense and prayer chants filled the air and warm tributes were paid, but it was the closing address of the late king’s heir, Crown Prince Pavlos, 56, that made a nation watching on live TV sit bolt upright: “My dear father,” he declared. “This is not the end.”
It would be tempting to say that the Greek royal family now reigns over nothing more than the covers of magazines. Pavlos, his mega-rich heiress wife, Princess Marie-Chantal, and their five photogenic children are familiar sights in the fashionable resorts of the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and the Alps. Their grand homes in London, New York, the English countryside and The Bahamas are cited as a testament to their taste and refinement.
Yet wealth and glamour don’t necessarily compensate for the loss of a kingdom, and the word from Greece’s royalist faithful is that Pavlos and his privileged kin are discreetly looking for something more.
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