The eldest child of King Alexander I and Maria of Romania, Peter acceded to the Yugoslav throne in 1934 at the age of 11 after his father was assassinated during a state visit to France.

Prince Regent Paul took the view that he must not change the kingdom from the way that King Alexander had left it so that his son could take possession of it unaltered when he turned 18 in September 1941, and resisted any attempts to revise the 1931 constitution.

[2] On 20 August 1939, Paul permitted the prime minister, Dragiša Cvetković, to sign an agreement with Vladko Maček, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, which created a new Banovina of Croatia with substantial autonomy and a much greater size, covering much of what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, and satisfying at least in part the long-standing demands of the Croats.

[4] The unpopularity of the agreement and the Cvetković government, was one of the reasons for the coup d'état of 27 March 1941 as many Serbs believed that Peter, the son of King Alexander, would continue with his father's centralising policies when he reached his majority.

[10] In Jerusalem on 4 May 1941, Peter affirmed in a press statement the Cvetković–Maček agreement of 23 August 1939, which turned Yugoslavia into a semi-federation as the basis of the post-war political system he was planning to introduce once his nation was liberated.

[12] The politicians took the view that the 1941 coup d'état had been a popular revolution which had restored democracy, but as long as the 1931 constitution was technically still in effect, King Peter had very broad executive powers.

[14] The British press presented what the Serbian historian Stevan K. Pavlowitch called a "romanticized" picture of the young Peter, who became a "symbol of his country's struggle to keep its freedom in alliance with Great Britain".

Outside of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia was the only place in Europe in 1941 that a full-scale guerrilla war was being waged against the Axis, leading as Pavlowitch put for Mihailović "...being built up by Yugoslav and British propaganda into an Allied superman".

[17] The popularity of Mihailović in Britain helped to seal the end of Simović's political career as the latter had been turned into a hero by the British press for leading the 27 March coup d'état, which made Peter for a long time reluctant to dismiss him.

[18] The Chetniks were most active in Serbia and Montenegro while the Communist Partisans drew most of their support from the prečani Serbs in Bosnia and in the Krajina and from anti-fascist Croats, Slovenes and Bosnian Muslims.

[16] On 19 January 1942 at the Dorchester Hotel in London, the king and President Beneš together with the rest of the Yugoslav and Czechoslovak cabinets had lunch together to discuss a post-war regional association.

[33] As in Yugoslavia, the Greek resistance was divided between communists and royalists, and Tsouderos objected to Peter that his friendship with Beneš and his plans to link the "Balkan Union" with the Polish-Czechoslovak confederation would cause the Soviets to cease recognizing George II as the king of the Hellenes.

[35] In 1942 Peter made a diplomatic visit to America and Canada, where he met American President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.

[17] Pavlowitch summarized the importance of Mihailović to King Peter by noting: "There was no other instance of the leader of a resistance movement being taken directly into an exiled government while remaining in occupied territory".

[39] Finally, the allegations, which first appeared in the press in 1942, that the Chetniks were not engaging in resistance, but instead collaborating with the Germans and the Italians in order to fight against the Communist Partisans proved to be extremely damaging to the image of King Peter in the West.

[23] Jovanović at first tried to mediate an end to the civil war, arguing that the Partisans and Chetniks should be co-operating in fighting the Axis instead of each other, and when that failed, he tried to promote a "neutrality" agreement that would commit both movements from refraining from attacking each other that was likewise futile.

[23] Pavlowitch described Peter as an "immature" young man who was easily manipulated by the feuding politicians within the cabinet of his government-in-exile, and as a result, he was highly inconsistent in his policies as he changed his mind depending on who had last spoken to him.

[21] Peter always spoke of enjoying "ruling" rather more than he did the duty of "reigning", and did not behave as a strict constitutional monarch, becoming the focal point of the culture of intrigue which characterised the cabinet of the government-in-exile.

[41] While the Western media portrayed a "fairy tale romance" across the backdrop of wartime London between the young Yugoslav king and a Greek princess, the announcement of Peter's engagement to Alexandra in July 1943 caused immense controversy in his homeland.

[43] However much Peter was in love with Alexandra, his engagement and "fairy tale" wedding in the relative comfort of London while his subjects were suffering so much was seen as a callous break with Serbian traditions.

[51] At the same time, Stalin, anxious to allay Western fears about the future of Eastern Europe, ordered a very reluctant Tito, in a meeting in Moscow, to allow Peter to return to Yugoslavia though with the advice that he "should slip a knife into his back at the appropriate moment".

Prime Minister Šubašić arrived in Belgrade in November 1944 and shortly afterwards, went to Moscow to negotiate an agreement with Stalin; that Peter would not be allowed to return until a plebiscite was held on if Yugoslavia should become a republic or remain a monarchy.

[44] Šubašić also agreed to Stalin's demand for a three-man regency council to govern until the plebiscite, which enraged Peter who noted that he was 21 years old and did not require a regent anymore.

[44] The National Liberation Front government was in theory a coalition, but in fact it was a Communist-dominated regime with the non-Communist ministers there only as a "window dressing" to disguise the extent of Communist dominance.

[40] In the elections for the constituent assembly on 11 November 1945, there was widespread voting fraud and intimidation; with opposition newspapers prevented from having the truth published by the government denying them a voice.

[53] In 1953, the Sunday Express newspaper in London reported that Peter, who was living in France, was suffering from "money tangles", had a "cheque bounce in Paris" and was involved in an "unpleasant scene" in a party in Biarritz hosted by the Marquis de Cuevas.

[55] While living in France in the 1950s, Peter, whose lifestyle was beyond his means, had a problem with the "bouncing cheques" he kept writing and which led him to being banned from the expensive French restaurants and hotels he loved so much, as he spent money that he did not have.

[40] The actress Ilka Chase, who met the former king and Queen Alexandra on the French Riviera in 1955, wrote: Much of his behavior in futile pursuit of his lost throne was so shabby, ill-advised, and stupid as to seem incredible.

I should think the poor devil would hate to see it in black and white, but apparently he did squander his entire fortune, accumulate staggering debts, desert his wife, lie to her, try to have their son taken from her, and in general behave in a manner far from loveable.

The former king also met Waukegan’s weather prophet, Mathon Kryitsis, a fisherman who for many years has forecast the severity of the winter by gauging the depth at which perch are feeding.