by Susan Flantzer  © Unofficial Royalty 2019

King Alexander I of Serbia was the last ruler of Serbia from the House of Obrenović. His reign ended with his and his wife’s brutal assassinations. The only surviving child of King Milan I of Serbia and his wife Natalija Keschko, Alexander was born on August 14, 1876, in a special maternity ward personally financed by his father. A brother, Sergei, was born in 1878 but he died soon after his birth.

Alexander’s parents had an unsuccessful marriage. His father had affairs and the couple had political differences. King Milan favored alliances with Austria-Hungary which the Russophile Queen Natalija could not tolerate. Young Alexander became a weapon his parents used in their personal vendetta against each other.

In May 1887, King Milan I and Queen Natalija, after years of personal and political conflicts, decided to separate. Queen Natalija took Alexander with her to a voluntary exile in the Crimea. Two months later, they returned to Serbia only to leave again for the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in August 1887. King Milan wanted to reconcile with his wife so that his son and heir would return to Serbia. He traveled to Budapest for a meeting with Queen Natalija and thought he had made the proper arrangements. However, instead of returning with her son to Serbia, Queen Natalija traveled to Wiesbaden in the Duchy of Nassau, now Hesse, Germany. At the request of King Milan, local police intervened, took Alexander away from his mother, and returned him to Serbia, under the control of his father. In 1888, Alexander’s parents divorced but the couple reconciled in 1893, and the divorce was overturned.

On March 6, 1889, the seventh anniversary of the elevation of the Principality of Serbia to the Kingdom of Serbia, King Milan unexpectedly abdicated in favor of his twelve-year-old son who became King Alexander I of Serbia. Because Alexander was a minor, a regency council would be in place until his eighteenth birthday. On June 15, 1889, the young King Alexander I of Serbia was anointed by Metropolitan Mihailo Jovanović, a political enemy of Alexander’s father who had exiled him, at the 13th-century Žiča Monastery near Kraljevo, Serbia, the traditional coronation site of Serbian rulers. Both Milan and Natalija were forced into exile. Natalija lived mostly in Biarritz, France, and Milan lived in Paris, France.

In 1893, 17-year-old King Alexander proclaimed himself of age and dismissed the regency council to take royal authority for himself. The following year, King Alexander abolished the 1889 liberal constitution and restored the former conservative 1869 constitution. Alexander’s mother returned to Serbia in 1895 and then in 1897 permanently. In 1897, Milan returned to Serbia and Alexander appointed him Commander-in-Chief of the Army, which he completely reformed and modernized.

On July 8, 1900, 24-year-old King Alexander suddenly announced his engagement to 36-year-old Draga Mašin, a widow and a former lady-in-waiting to his mother. The proposed marriage was met with great opposition. Draga was of unequal birth but more importantly, since Alexander was an only child, he needed to have a child to secure the succession and there were doubts that Draga could provide an heir. Milan was out of the country and making arrangements for the marriage of Alexander to Princess Alexandra of Schaumburg-Lippe. Prime Minister Vladan Đorđević was visiting the Paris Universal Exhibition at the time of the announcement. Milan and Đorđević immediately resigned from their positions, and Alexander had difficulty forming a new cabinet. Alexander’s mother also opposed the marriage and subsequently was banished from the kingdom along with Alexander’s father who died the following year from pneumonia in Vienna. On August 5, 1900, King Alexander married Draga Mašin at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Belgrade, Serbia.

King Alexander attempted to reconcile the political forces in Serbia by granting a new liberal constitution that introduced into Serbia for the first time a two-chamber national legislature system. On May 8, 1901, King Alexander announced that Queen Draga was pregnant and that Serbia would soon have an heir to the throne. However, it soon became apparent that Queen Draga was not pregnant. Whether Draga deliberately told a lie about being pregnant or whether she was the victim of a delusion by a doctor is not known. The incident completely undermined the reputation of King Alexander and Queen Draga.

On March 25, 1903, annoyed by the independence of the Senate and the Council of State, King Alexander suspended the constitution for thirty minutes which was enough time to publish decrees dismissing and replacing the members of the Senate and Councilors of State. This act greatly increased dissatisfaction in the country. In addition, the Serbian Government had decided to proclaim Prince Mirko of Montenegro, who was married to Natalija Konstantinovic, the granddaughter of Princess Anka Obrenović, an aunt of King Milan, as heir-presumptive to the Serbian throne, but King Alexander had his own ideas. Rumors began to circulate that Nikodije Lunjevica, one of the two unpopular brothers of Queen Draga, was to be proclaimed heir-presumptive to the throne.

The army had had enough.  A conspiracy, the May Coup, was organized by the military to replace King Alexander I of the House of Obrenović with Prince Peter Karađorđević of the rival House of Karađorđević.  Serbia still used the Julian Calendar (Old Style) that was behind the Gregorian Calendar (New Style) that most other countries used. The coup occurred on the night of May 28-29 Old Style (hence the May Coup) but on the night of June 10-11 New Style.

King Alexander, aged 26, and Queen Draga, age 38, were brutally shot, mutilated, and thrown out a window at the Stari Dvor (Old Palace), the royal residence of the House of Obrenović which now houses the City Assembly of Belgrade, Serbia. Queen Draga’s two brothers, Nikodije and Nikola Lunjevica, were executed by a firing squad on the same day. Draga and her husband were secretly buried at St. Mark’s Church in Belgrade, Serbia. The assassination resulted in the extinction of the House of Obrenović. Prince Peter Karađorđević was then proclaimed as the new King of Serbia and the House of Karađorđević reigned until the monarchy was abolished in 1945.

• Unofficial Royalty: Assassination of Alexander I, King of Serbia and Queen Draga

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The graves of King Alexander I of Serbia and his wife Queen Draga at St. Mark’s Church in Belgrade, Serbia

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Serbia/Yugoslavia Resources at Unofficial Royalty

• Kingdoms of Serbia/Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes/Yugoslavia Index
• Serbian/Yugoslavian Royal Burial Sites
• Profiles: Serbian/Yugoslavian Kings and Consorts
• Rulers of Serbia and Yugoslavia
• Serbian/Yugoslavian Royal Dates

Works Cited

• En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Alexander I of Serbia. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_I_of_Serbia [Accessed 9 Nov. 2019].
• Pt.wikipedia.org. (2019). Alexandre I da Sérvia. [online] Available at: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_I_da_S%C3%A9rvia [Accessed 9 Nov. 2019].
• Ru.wikipedia.org. (2019). Александр Обренович. [online] Available at: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%80_%D0%9E%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 [Accessed 9 Nov. 2019].
• Sr.wikipedia.org. (2019). Александар Обреновић. [online] Available at: https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%B0%D1%80_%D0%9E%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%9B [Accessed 9 Nov. 2019].