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Bad News. Its claims were ridiculed by the small group around Constantine in the north. In Kavalla, Queen Anne-Marie and Queen Mother Frederika kissed the King goodbye and waved him off as he climbed aboard a helicopter for a short flight to the town of Alexandropolis to stir up more support. He returned in midafternoon and took off almost immediately for Salonica, where handbills proclaiming his coup had been dropped from air force planes. While he was in the air, he received the news that Salonica was under junta control. As he turned back to Kavalla, he faced a shattering situation. In its months in power, the junta had carefully placed junior officers loyal to it on all general staffs, just in case their commanding officers should prove too royalist. Now a young major named Nicholas Petanis had raced from a base on the Greco-Turkish border to Kavalla and brought a column of tanks with him. He and other junior officers loyal to the junta arrested the three generals who were the King's chief supporters. That ended Constantine's coup. The major gave the King a choice: return to Athens or flee.
"My strength is the love of the people," is the motto of the Glicksburg dynasty from which Constantine springs. No Greek king should take it too seriously. The army is the royal source of strength in Greece. Constantine had on his side some of the generals who had won their stars by royal favor, but he underestimated the degree to which the junta had won the junior officers over to its side. Constantine also miscalculated his own popularity among the people. Danes, not Greeks, the royal family draws a $566,000 annual income in a land that, despite recent economic progress, remains one of Europe's poorest. The royal way of life—a swirl of parties and yachting with Athens' small Establishment of shipowners and industrialists—is a source of resentment to the average Greek. Most resented is Queen Mother Frederika, who is regarded by most Greeks as an incurable meddler in the country's politics. Since the April coup, Greeks had rallied to Constantine mainly because the crown was the one legal institution that the junta had not destroyed; Greek politicians looked to Constantine to steer the counry back to representative government. But he did not command the love or devotion that makes men willing to die for a king.
After reaching Rome, the King spent the day at the Greek embassy, then moved his family into the nearby villa of his cousin, Prince Henry of Hesse. While the royal ladies called in Rome Designer Federico Fourquet and ordered warmer clothes for the colder climate, King Constantine got on with what his father, Paul, once called the business of kingship. He refused to make any public statement, explained to friends that he was still "working to save my country." He made it plain that he would not under any circumstance abdicate, and that he as King still represented Greece's only legitimate government. He met with U.S. Ambassador to Italy G. Frederick Reinhardt and urged that, to give him leverage, the U.S. withhold its recognition from the junta government. He reportedly telephoned Karamanlis in Paris, and members of the King's small entourage conferred with representatives of George Papandreou's Center Union Party about the possibility of setting up a government in exile.