Philip, Prince of Greece by Constantinos Lagos

Philip, Prince of Greece by Constantinos Lagos

Author:Constantinos Lagos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Royalty
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter 9

Three Funerals, a Crown and a Boy

In November 1936 a week-long ceremony took place in Athens, a ceremony deemed to be of the highest importance for the Greek state, but long since forgotten. From Tuesday 17 to Sunday 22 November, the funerals of ex-King Constantine I, his wife queen Sophia and his mother Queen Olga were held. All three had died years before their funerals: Constantine in 1923, Olga in 1926 and Sophia in 1932. Constantine had barely lived past the banishment of the royal family in 1922 and the latter two passed away in the years of the republic. The Greek governments of 1923 and 1932 rather pettily did not allow Constantine and Sophia to be buried in Greece (though they had no problem with Olga’s 1926 funeral), apparently fearing that the traditional royal burial ground at Tatoi might become a place of royalist pilgrimage. As a result the caskets of the three royal deceased were placed in the crypt of the Russian Orthodox Church of Florence to await the hoped-for time when they could be moved to their proper place at Tatoi.

The governments’ refusal to admit Constantine’s remains for burial rankled bitterly with Greek royalists, who mourned ‘the great unburied deceased’ along with his mother and wife. This term had a strong emotional value for many Greeks as it harked back to the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, who had died fighting the Turks during the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and whose body was never accounted for. According to a popular legend, Constantine XI’s body turned into a marble pillar, and his spirit would not find eternal peace until Constantinople was reclaimed by the Greeks. And as we have seen, Constantine I of Greece consciously viewed himself as the successor of Palaiologos, unofficially adopting the title Constantine XII.

Thus a great deal of emotional and historical symbolism swirled around the issue of the long-delayed royal funerals. It was also quite high on the political agenda as another potential battleground for republicans and royalists. The issue of ‘the great unburied dead’ emerged in 1933 at the height of economic depression. With the electoral victory of the Populist Party in March 1933 thousands of royalists signed a petition addressed to Prime Minister Tsaldaris to allow the funerals to be held in Athens. But Tsaldaris was in a tight spot; though a monarchist himself, in 1932 he had pledged in the parliament to support the republic. While privately sympathetic to the return of the deceased royals to Greece, he held off granting permission during his tenure of two and a half years, until October 1935. Tsaldaris also feared that if he gave permission, his own government might well be thrust into the shadow of a restored George II. Adding to his confusion and hesitation was the fact that many royalists in his own government and Populist Party were working secretly to undermine him. By May 1936 the petition had gathered more than two million signatures – something like one-third of the population of Greece at the time.



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