Greeks who have the
means may be leaving in droves, but after 46 years in exile the former king,
Constantine II, has moved back to his crisis-plagued homeland.
"He and Anne-Marie have decided to move
here permanently," said a member of Greece's small circle of royalists,
referring to Constantine's Danish-born wife. "His son Prince Nikolaos and
his wife Princess Tatiana made the same move a few months back."
Soaring property prices in London apparently
spurred the move. But Constantine, who was dethroned by referendum on the return
of democracy in 1974 and stripped of his Greek citizenship by the then
socialist government 20 years later, is known to have been homesick.
More than a decade ago he told a Greek newspaper: "No one can keep me away. For so many years I have lived through my own Golgotha, now I am ready to return."
The 73-year-old, a first cousin of the Duke
of Edinburgh and Prince William's godfather, faced the double whammy of not
only being unwanted in his country but also being financially constricted: in
1994 he suffered the humiliating blow of also seeing his palaces and other
royal estates expropriated in a nation where republicanism runs deep. The
European court of human rights, to which the monarch was subsequently forced to
resort, did little to alleviate his plight when, more than a decade later, it
ruled that the Greek state compensate Constantine for a fraction of the £320m
he had originally sought in damages.
Earlier this year, however, Constantine
struck lucky when he sold his north London mansion, his home for the past 30
years, for £9.5m. By contrast, property prices in Athens have plummeted to the
point where real estate can be acquired for a song: studio flats, should the
ex-king want one, are selling for as little as €6,000 (£5,000) in the city
centre.
"From that point of view it was
considered the very best time for his majesty to not only downsize but
return," said another insider, adding that the royal was sending out
scouts to scour the property market with a view to buying a permanent residence
in Athens.
With Greece mired in a sixth straight year
of recession and unemployment at record heights, an estimated 300,000 Greeks -
the vast majority highly qualified professionals - have left the country since
the eruption of its debt crisis. The reversal of that trend by Constantine, who
has still not been forgiven for the support he initially gave the colonels -
the junior army officers who threw the country into seven harsh years of
military rule - is unlikely to be received lightly on the left.
The former monarch, who in recent months has
been spotted cane in hand walking the streets of Athens, has repeatedly denied
political ambitions. Instead he has long maintained that his former subjects
have been "deliberately misinformed".
Constantine's treatment by his homeland has
been an ongoing source of grievance for the British royal family with the Duke
of Edinburgh, who was born on the island of Corfu, expressing fury at the way
his cousin has been dealt with.
But the new generation of Greek royals
appear to have forgotten the past. Prince Nikolaos, it is said, is now renting
the apartment of the daughter of Andreas Papandreou, the late socialist leader
who gave his father so much grief.
