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Otto
(
Greek
:
?θων
,
Othon
,
German
:
Otto Friedrich Ludwig von Bayern
; 1 June 1815 ? 26 July 1867) was a
Bavarian prince
who ruled as
King of Greece
from the establishment of the monarchy in 1832, under the until he was overthrown in 1862.
The second son of King
Ludwig I of Bavaria
, Otto was elected
king
of
Greece
, the newly formed kingdom that gained independence from the
Ottoman Empire
in 1832. However, Otto did not reach Greece until on 6 February 1633. As a young man, the people of Greece were optimistic that Otto would be a great king as he was the first king of modern Greece after the Greeks suffered under the
Ottoman Empire
.
During his reign however, Greece was very unstable because he did not care about the people. He heavily
taxed
them, was not
Greek Orthodox
but was
Roman Catholicism
, invited more people from
Bavaria
to come to Greece, his closest advisors were Bavarian rather than Greek, and he could not speak
Greek
because he did not bother learning it. He only spoke his native
German
.
Otto was also an
absolute monarch
and never agreed to make Greece a
constitutional monarchy
as he was apparently a strong believer of
absolutism
. All of the bad things that Otto did in Greece made him highly unpopular and that the Greeks eventually overthrew him. Otto lived the remaining 5 years of his life in exile at his home country of
Bavaria
until he died in 1867 at the age of 52. When he was on his deathbed, Otto regretted treating the Greek people very bad. His last words were "Greece, my Greece, my beloved Greece!!!".