Elizabeth’s unknown trip to Greece at the age of 24
Elizabeth’s special relationship with Greece has always been one of the most interesting, perhaps even with a dose of “mystery”, topics of discussion for decades. And now, after her death, as part of an account, this relationship is one of the most colorful chapters, since it is one of those old stories that sound like a fairy tale.
The curious thing was that as Queen Elizabeth II never visited Greece, even though she had managed to pass through 200 countries around the world. The exact ones are that he never traveled to our country after assuming royal duties, however, as prince and heir to the British throne, he arrived in Greece at the beginning of December 1950.
Watch the BBC video of Elizabeth’s visit to Greece in 1950
She was only 24 years old, newly married for three years and already a mother twice. The young princess wasn’t even dying at work in Buckingham when she accepted the invitation of the Greek royal couple Paul and Frederick for a private visit to the immortal land of the bright orange tree.
He took her husband Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who served there as a British naval officer, from the then British possession of Malta, together with the warship from Valletta and landed in Faliro. On its quay the domestic royal couple welcomed the princely couple of England with honors. So, on a sunny Wednesday, December 6, 1950, Saint Nicholas Day, hundreds of citizens, apparently tested for their pro-monarchist views, had set up early to witness and benefit from the blue-eyed succession of the other state of five empires. and the seven seas.
In Greece the civil war had just ended, and the defeated communists had necessarily taken the path of exile, displacement and persecution, whenever the class was not shaken by disapproval of itself. In calm surroundings with touches of restrained excitement the princess and her husband boarded an open limousine and were driven to the summer palace at Tatoi. They would not be more or less staying in Athens for a week, with a gaggle of English journalists and a larger pack of Scotland Yard men following them round the clock.
Their first ride in Athens was accompanied by mounted officers. On the way the polite Athenians welcomed him, while Philip assumed the duty of translator for his wife. Since he himself was of Greek origin, born in Mon Repo, Corfu, son of Prince Andreas of Greece, who, after being judged to have messed up as general commander of the Second Army Corps in the Asia Minor campaign, was arrested and sentenced to death. However, with the intervention of free and bound blue-bloods and mainly due to the influence in the country of the English royal House of Windsor, in the end, he was simply exiled from the country. He was followed by his family, while Philip’s youngest son, an infant at the time, was carried to the fleeing ship in a makeshift cardboard cradle.
However, the kinship ties of Philip – who was not harmed by his escape from his homeland – with his relatives, the blue-blooded representatives of the reigning republic of Greece, remained unbreakable. After all, he was a first cousin of the then king of the Greeks Paulus. And of course a member of the Schleswig – Holstein – Soderburg – Glicksburg dynasty.
Afterwards, the princely couple, with or without interpreters, and without an official program, visited the Hellenic Parliament and the monument of the Unknown Soldier, where they laid a wreath. He willingly ascended the Acropolis, and moved with emotion they visited the chapel of St. Philip on the Hill of the Cistern at Nicaea, which had been erected in their honor after their betrothal. There he was welcomed by the mayor of Nicaea, K. Panagiotopoulos, who presented them with unprecedented gallantry, as if they came from his possessions of two ancient vessels which had been found during the excavations of the site, before the temple was built.
With a similar simple generosity, the then serving mayor of Athens, Antonis Ragousis, donated to the princely couple a rare Byzantine icon of Saint Philip, in the full presence of the virtuous Archbishop of Athens Spyridon and many ambassadors in the democratic palace. And after being fed up with honors, guided tours and gifts, it is assumed, but not verified, that Elizabeth and Philip were hosted on a piano cruise on the “Creoli”, the famous trio of 55-meter ebony yachts owned by Stavros Niarchos. As soon as the week of the gifted holidays in Greece was over, the honored couple returned to the palaces of London, and since then Elizabeth threw a black stone behind her. Three years later, after the death of her father George VI, she would be crowned Queen of the United Kingdom on 2 June 1953 at Westminster Abbey.
The fact that he avoided returning to Greece in the 1950s is certainly due to the struggle of Cyprus for independence and union with Greece. Ussa queen at the time when the British occupying forces in martyred Megalonisos decided to defeat the fighters Karaolis and Dimitrios, she received many requests to grant them a pardon and serve a prison sentence instead of being executed. On the pretext, or at any rate, of an obligation not allowing the queen to be involved in politics, the pardon was never granted.
Logically, a visit to Greece at that time was considered unthinkable, because it would mean a general upheaval in the country. In the decade of the 60s, the afro-demeanor towards the Republic and its elected representatives by the former king, Constantine, again played a negative role. Then came the coup of the colonels and finally the ignominious and dishonorable end of the reign in Greece which was ratified by a referendum during the post-colonial period. Inevitably, he probably got angry.
In any case, however, it was not the case that he held a grudge against the Greeks because the royal husband was forced out of soft claws by his father’s adventure in the country. In principle, the compared historical past did not stifle Philip himself, who in 1964, together with his older children Prince Charles and Princess Anna, attended the wedding of King Constantine and Anna Maria. Villages that worshiped family and publicly to a common goddess of tourists and flash on the Acropolis. Philip is even said to have made a secret surprise visit to Athens after the junta was imposed in May 1967 to take Alice’s elderly mother to Buckingham Palace.
Where, until she died in 1969, she took care of her grandchildren, the youngest children of Elizabeth II. Regarding, finally, the longest-lived queen in world history, either because at some point she “went wrong” with the Greeks or because over the years she forgot that there is a country called Greece, she tacitly preferred for 72 consecutive years “potassium away and loved ones”.
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