Greece: The Besieged King

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Politicians of the Papandreou stripe accuse Frederika of pushing her son to mix actively in Greek politics instead of counseling him to stay above the battle. Whenever the King's shiny Rolls-Royce is seen outside his mother's villa, the press almost invariably reports it as cloak-and-dagger news. Last week, just before the coup, King Constantine and his wife celebrated Frederika's 50th birthday at a private lunch at the villa, where she lives with Princess Irene, 24. Her other daughter, Sophia, is married to Juan Carlos, son of the pretender to the Spanish throne, Don Juan.

Liking for Rule. The monarchy in Greece was established in 1833 soon after the Turks were driven out and Greece achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire after four centuries in its bondage. The three protecting powers—England, France and Russia—decided that the Greeks should have a non-Greek king on the throne. Oddly, the Greeks readily agreed, giving rise to the later saying: "No Greek will ever tolerate another Greek for his sovereign." The first was a Bavarian, who was dethroned after a revolution.

The Glücksburg dynasty, to which Constantine belongs, was started in 1863. During a period of near-anarchy in Athens, a Greek delegation went to Denmark to beg King Christian IX to allow his son, Prince William George, to become their king. George I lasted on the throne for 50 years—until an assassin's bullet ended his reign. His son, Constantine I, had equally bad luck, was twice deposed by the politicians. Then came George II ("the unsmiling King"), who lost the throne to a republican coup in 1924, remained in exile for eleven years before returning, and went into exile again shortly after the Italians and Germans invaded Greece in World War II.

Unlike such dynasties as the Windsors in Britain and the Bernadotte kings of Sweden, Greek kings in this century have never been content to reign as figureheads; they like to rule too. Resentment over the Greek King's penchant for mixing in politics boiled over at the start of World War I, when the first Constantine exerted his influence on behalf of Greek neutrality. Constantine was forced into exile by a Cretan political wizard named Eleutherios Venizelos, and the feud went on for decades. The monarchy's popularity plummeted even further when George II backed the military dictatorship of General John Metaxas, who ruled Greece from 1936 until the Germans and Italians overran the country.