Tsar Czar Alexander II Serbia Signed Document Autograph The Crown Dowton Abbey

  

Tsar Czar King Alexander I Autograph Signed Signature Yugoslavia Serbia Croatia. Alexander Karadordevic was born on 16 December 1888 in the Principality of Montenegro as the fourth child (second son) of Petar Karadordevic (son of Prince Alexander of Serbia who thirty years earlier in 1858 was forced to abdicate and surrender power in Serbia to the rival House of Obrenovic) and Princess Zorka of Montenegro (eldest daughter of Prince Nicholas of Montenegro).

Despite enjoying support from the Russian Empire, at the time of Alexander's birth and early childhood, the House of Karadordevic was in political exile, with different family members scattered all over Europe, unable to return to Serbia, which had recently been transformed from a principality into a kingdom under the Obrenovices, who ruled with strong support from Austria-Hungary. The antagonism between the two rival royal houses was such that after the assassination of Prince Mihailo Obrenovic in 1868 (an event Karadordevices were suspected of taking part in), the Obrenovices resorted to making constitutional changes, specifically proclaiming the Karadordevices banned from entering Serbia and stripping them of their civic rights. Alexander was two when his mother Princess Zorka died in 1890 from complications while giving birth to his younger brother Andrija, who also died only 23 days later. Alexander spent his childhood in Montenegro; however, in 1894 his widower father took the four children, including Alexander, to Geneva where the young man completed his elementary education.

Alongside his older brother George, he continued his schooling at the imperial Page Corps in St Petersburg, Russian Empire. In 1903 while young George and Alexander were in school, their father Petar along with a slew of conspirators managed to pull off a bloody coup d'état in the Kingdom of Serbia known as the May Overthrow in which King Alexander I Obrenovic and his consort Queen Draga were murdered and viciously dismembered.

The House of Karadordevic thus retook the Serbian throne after forty five years and Alexander's 58-year-old father became King Peter I of Serbia, prompting George's and Alexander's return to Serbia to continue their studies.