Constantine II: From Royal Coup to downfall

Constantine spent much of his life away from the throne or stripped of it, starting in 1967 as an exile and then in 1973 as a former king, after the monarchy was formally abolished. He lived in Rome and London, not returning to Greece until the early 2000s, and frequently looked back on the 1960s. He often, for example, referred to Vasileios Kardamakis, the military general many believed had spearheaded the campaign to tilt the result of the 1961 parliamentary elections in favor of Konstantinos Karamanlis and his conservative National Radical Union (ERE) party. He also remembered being present for a discussion between Karamanlis and King Paul, where the former insisted on his choice of Kardamakis as head of the Army General Staff. The name was important, because Kardamakis was the military chief responsible for later promoting the officers who orchestrated the 1967 coup to key...