Greece: Row Over Royalty

Hardly had the rose petals and champagne corks been swept up from the royal wedding of King Constantine and Princess Anne-Marie than the Greeks were back at their favorite political sport of monarchy baiting. The main target was not the popular newlyweds, still off on their island honeymoon, but the bridegroom’s pert mother, German-born Queen Frederika, 47, whose good looks and outspoken views have embroiled her in controversy ever since she came to Greece 26 years ago as the bride of the late King Paul.

The latest trouble started fortnight ago when the head of the King’s military household, General Constantine Dovas, suggested that the Greek army be renamed the “Royal Hellenic Army” as a wedding gift to the King. Defense Minister Petros Garoufalias approved, embodied the change in a decree. After all, the navy, air force and gendarmerie already bore the appellation “royal” in their titles, and Constantine was not only by law the commander in chief of the army but in fact had their loyalty —more than he could expect from any of the other factions in the Greek body politic. Nonetheless Greek newspapers from left to right erupted in denunciatory horror (“The crown must be kept in its place”), and Premier George Papandreou rescinded the decree.

Paper Ambush. The incident ended a truce between politicians and the royal family imposed by the death of King Paul last March, the Cyprus crisis, and the wedding. The next shot, aimed directly at Queen Mother Frederika, was fired last week from the ambush Athenian politicians typically employ: the rumor columns of the newspapers. A pro-Papandreou newspaper reported it had “learned” from government sources that the widowed Queen Mother had agreed to leave Greece and retire to an estate in Austria in return for a large pension from the government. Other papers quickly joined in to embroider the indelicate suggestion. It was said Frederika had demanded $150,000, but Papandreou had insisted on $100,000 and not a drachma more. Typically, too, there was no way to get official confirmation—or denial—of anything about the affair.

For Frederika, an exceedingly bright woman who takes the Greek throne seriously and speaks her mind about matters of state in the man’s world of the Mediterranean, this was the last straw. She fired back her own letter to Papandreou and had it delivered to all of the Athens papers. “The late King Paul and I,” she wrote, “lived our whole life inspired only by our unselfish love for our people and our family. After the cruel loss of my husband, it is with these happy memories that I wish to live, quietly and in peace. Yet in my desire to safeguard my dignity as Queen of the Hellenes for 17 years and as Queen Mother now, I feel it necessary to ask you not to proceed with the government’s already announced intention to grant me a personal allowance. I wish to add that I do not intend to leave our country, which my husband and I served with devotion to our beloved people, and this Greek soil which received so affectionately my unforgettable husband, the King.”

Pyrrhic Victory. With that, the newspapers erupted in a new frenzy, accused Frederika of everything from pathos, which in modern Greek can mean “evil stubbornness,” to being “unqueenly” in using the press to defend herself, warned that she had “hard days to live.”

But her riposte at least served to rally the rightist opposition to the monarchy’s side, and at that, the wily Papandreou finally spoke up, announced the whole matter of the pension would be dropped since Frederika did not want it. Papandreou had good reason for his caution: a year ago, when Premier Constantine Karamanlis, who in his eight years in power had been a close ally of Frederika and King Paul, vetoed a trip to Britain the royal couple wanted to make, he lost their friendship—and his premiership.

At week’s end the storm had subsided around the crown, whose motto ironically proclaims: “My power is in the love of the people.” But in the Byzantine tangle of Greek politics, the struggle was sure to go on and sooner or later erupt anew. For the Greeks can live neither with, nor without, their Kings.