LIBERAL fans of the dead Queen and new King argue Britain’s constitutional monarch guards against the dangers of presidential power. It’s the argument that you can’t ask for anything better, because you’ll just end up making it worse.

Royalty promotes a general sense of deference and tradition but doesn’t hold much political power. By having a ceremonial head of state, we avoid a powerful president, who could be worse. In an extreme version of this argument, monarchy can save a country from fascism.

George Orwell argued this during WWII: “A French journalist said to me once that the monarchy was one of the things that has saved Britain from fascism.

“What he meant was that modern people can’t get along without drums, flags and loyalty parades and that it is better that they should tie their leader-worship on to some figure who has no real power.”

Orwell’s 1944 words are being trotted out now to defend monarchy. But you learn more by looking at the Queen’s funeral guest list.

It included a bunch of fake royals like the “prince of Venice” and “the margrave of Baden” — their titles are lies because they come from places where monarchy was abolished long ago.

The BBC and Channel 4 annoyed Greeks by interviewing one fake royal, Pavlos, who they called the “crown prince of Greece.” Greeks abolished the monarchy, overwhelmingly rejecting Pavlos and his dad in a 1974 referendum. Pavlos was at the Queen’s funeral representing his dad, “king” Constantine who is a close friend of Charles, but was too poorly to go.

Constantine’s actions can tell you how much use a monarchy is for resisting fascism: he swore in the fascist junta in Greece when the colonels seized power in a coup in 1967. His role in enabling Greek fascism is why his attempt to re-establish the monarchy was rejected in 1974.

In the 1960s when George Papandreou and his liberal-to-soft-left Centre Union got elected, ending years of right-wing domination of Greek politics, this was too much for Constantine and the Greek hard right. Papandreou wanted to sack army officers who were in a secret hard-right organisation called the Sacred Bond of Hellenic Officers. In response, Constantine forced Papandreou to resign, in what was called the 1965 “royal coup.” This led to huge demonstrations for 90 days, with the Guardian reporting Athens crowds chanting: “King, take your mother and get out.”

Constantine’s move against the left was too soft for some Greek officers. They launched a full-blooded coup in 1967, putting tanks in the streets, suspending parliament, arresting politicians and rounding up and torturing thousands of left-wing activists.

Constantine would have preferred an upper-class “generals’ coup” to the less-posh colonels taking the initiative. As the Observer reported at the time, the king and his “own circle of advisers and high-ranking officers of the ‘aristocratic’ right-wing were worried enough by the deadlocked state of Greek politics and the threat of communist action to consider a military intervention” but were beaten to the punch by the “lower-middle class officers” who “pushed the button” with their coup.

Constantine disliked the jumped-up colonels, but supported them as the best “solution” to stopping Greece going leftwards, backing the coup by swearing in their new ministers.

The Times reported in 1967 that Constantine “reached a form of reconciliation or working arrangement” with the junta. The paper said “the fact is he has lent his authority” to the regime “by swearing in the new government.”

At the swearing in Constantine made a song-and-dance about how protesters had “undermined” the “nation, the monarchy, the armed forces” and so “endorsed the action of the leaders of the coup by saying the political situation before the coup had undermined democracy.” The colonels claimed their military takeover was necessary to preserve democracy, by suspending it and arresting and torturing those who complained.

Eight months after backing the coup, Constantine found the colonels too pushy, so launched his own counter-coup, calling on armed forces loyal to him to overthrow the colonels in the name of “democracy” — although as the coup itself was supposedly preserving democracy, this doesn’t mean much. Constantine’s counter-coup was a pathetic failure. He had little support and fled Greece within a day.

Even after running away, Constantine did not openly denounce the colonels and instead tried to negotiate returning to Greece. The Observer commented: “Although the easy victory of Greece’s brutal and repressive military junta is disappointing, the failure of king Constantine is not surprising.

“As the man whose intrigues helped to subvert Greece’s constitution, he was not particularly convincing as the symbol of a return to constitutionalism. Indeed, the junta’s willingness to take him back suggests he may become a fig leaf of the dictatorship.”

Press reports say one compromise between the colonels and crown would be Constantine stepping down as king with “the installation of eight-month-old crown prince Pavlos as a regent-in-exile, but destined to return as king in the future” — that baby now being “crown prince” Pavlos who was at the Queen’s funeral. In the end negotiations failed and Constantine remained in exile.

Constantine helped Greek fascists take over until he had an ineffectual tantrum. Democracy returned because people kept fighting for it — especially in the 1973 Athens Polytechnic uprising when students spurred protests which were savagely repressed but weakened the regime.

By 1974, worried about popular support during a possible war with Turkey, the Greek military ended the dictatorship and started a transition to democracy.

Greeks remembered their royals were not — as liberals imagine — a bastion against fascism. In 1974 there was a referendum on the return of the monarchy and it was rejected by 69 per cent to 31 per cent, thanks in large part to anger over Constantine’s role ushering in a military dictatorship.

Even the Daily Telegraph, while expressing “much sympathy” for Constantine, admitted he was rejected because he “did interfere with parliament before the military coup and then appeared to acquiesce in the coup at first, only later making a botched attempt to overthrow the junta.”

The Telegraph was relieved because, if Constantine returned, he “would almost certainly have attracted now disreputable extreme right-wing elements towards him, discrediting anyone associated with him, including Britain.”