Count among the many wonders of Chicagoland I was unaware of: King Peter II of Yugoslavia was buried in Libertyville, the only such European monarch to be buried in this country. Now his body is on the way back to his homeland. How did the king—Cambridge-educated, husband of a Greek queen, and employee of a Los Angeles savings and loan—get here? And why is he on his way back after four decades of rest in the suburbs?
King Peter II was something of an accidental king. His father was the second son of Peter I of Serbia (1903-1918) and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (1918-1921); Alexander I only became crown prince because his temperamental brother George was pressured out of the role after kicking and killing his servant. As you might expect from the name of his kingdom, Alexander I ruled over a culturally tense land, and in 1934 he was killed (along with French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou) by a member of the International Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, which supported the autonomy of Yugoslav Macedonia, which it eventually obtained in 1991.
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