Peter II of Yugoslavia

Biography

Peter was born in Belgrade in 1923, the eldest son of King Alexander I and Queen Maria. He was taught by tutors at the royal palace and then sent to Sandroyd School in Surrey. When his father was assassinated in Marseille on 9 October 1934, the eleven-year-old succeeded him, and a regency headed by his father's cousin Prince Paul ruled in his name.

On 25 March 1941 Paul committed Yugoslavia to the Tripartite Pact. Two days later officers led by General Dušan Simović overthrew the regency and declared the seventeen-year-old king of age. Germany and its allies invaded on 6 April, and Peter and his ministers fled by way of Greece, Jerusalem and Cairo to London, where he headed a government-in-exile from June 1941.

In exile he completed his education at Cambridge and was commissioned in the Royal Air Force. His government backed Draža Mihailović's Chetniks, appointing him minister of war in 1942, but Britain and the United States came to favour Tito's Partisans. In March 1944 Peter married Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark, and their son Alexander was born the following year.

In November 1945 the Yugoslav Constituent Assembly deposed him and proclaimed a republic. Peter settled in the United States, struggled with depression and alcoholism, and died of cirrhosis in 1970. He was buried in Libertyville, Illinois, and reburied in the royal mausoleum at Oplenac in 2013.