[1] A soldier at the Serbian court, he helped overthrow the Obrenović dynasty with the assassination of King Alexander I of Serbia (11 June), which was orchestrated by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, the founder and leading member of the secret nationalist organization Black Hand.

[2] In 1921, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia appointed Živković commander of the Royal Guard, but he was briefly demoted due to accusations by a young guardsman that he tried to seduce him.

Živković held the office as a member of the Yugoslav Radical Peasants' Democracy (JRSD), which became the only legal party in Yugoslavia, following electoral reforms.

In 1946 he was tried in absentia in the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia at the Trial of Mihailović et al. and sentenced to death by the communist authorities.

[6] He was forced into exile, leaving for Italy and eventually settling in France, dying in Paris in February 1947, aged 68.