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

  

Tsar Czar King Alexander I Autograph Signed Signature Yugoslavia Serbia Croatia. Alexander Karaorevi was born on 16 December 1888 in the Principality of Montenegro as the fourth child (second son) of Petar Karaorevi (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 Obrenovi) 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 Karaorevi 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 Obrenovies, 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 Obrenovi in 1868 (an event Karaorevies were suspected of taking part in), the Obrenovies resorted to making constitutional changes, specifically proclaiming the Karaorevies 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'tat in the Kingdom of Serbia known as the May Overthrow in which King Alexander I Obrenovi and his consort Queen Draga were murdered and viciously dismembered.

The House of Karaorevi 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.