At the beginning of February 1928, a delegation was sent from Županjac (present-day Tomislavgrad) headed by the parish priest Šimun Ančić who handed Alexander the resolution in which the population of the Srez of Županjac asks him to change the name of the srez to Tomislavgrad, in honour of his son and Tomislav of Croatia. Not long after, Alexander granted them their petition but dropped Tomislav of Croatia from his decree.[2]
He began his elementary education at the Belgrade Palace but in 1937 he started to attend Sandroyd School in Cobham, Surrey, and then, following the school's relocation, in Tollard Royal, Wiltshire. He stayed in the UK throughout World War II and after King Peter was deposed, moving on to Oundle School from 1941 to 1946 and Clare College, Cambridge, in 1946–1947, where he completed Part I of the economics tripos.[3].
Events in Yugoslavia
In 1934 when he was only six, Prince Tomislav's father, Alexander I, was assassinated and his elder brother Peter succeeded to the throne as King Peter II of Yugoslavia. As he was still only 11, because of his young age, a regency was established, headed by their father's cousin Prince Paul of Yugoslavia.[citation needed]
After initially declaring neutrality, on 25 March 1941, although King Peter and his advisors were opposed to Nazi Germany, the Regent, Prince Paul, under immense German pressure signed the Tripartite Pact originally signed by Germany, Italy, and Japan. Two days later, in a British-supported coup d'état opposing the Tripartite Pact, King Peter, then 17, was proclaimed of age, and the regency overthrown. Postponing Operation Barbarossa, Germany simultaneously attacked Yugoslavia and Greece. From 6 April Luftwaffe pounded Belgrade for three days and three nights, Operation Punishment. Within a week, Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary and Italy invaded Yugoslavia and the government was forced to surrender on 17 April. Yugoslavia was divided to satisfy Italian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and German demands and puppet Croat, Montenegrin and Serb states proclaimed.[citation needed]
King Peter was forced to leave the country with the Yugoslav government following the Axis invasion; initially the King went with his government to Greece, and Jerusalem, then to the British Mandate of Palestine and Cairo, Egypt. He went to England in June 1941, where he joined numerous other governments in exile from Nazi-occupied Europe. Local Yugoslav forces continued to resist the occupying Axis powers. Initially the monarchy preferred Draža Mihailović and his Serb-dominated Četnik resistance. However, in 1944, the Tito–Šubašić agreement recognised the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia as a provisional government, with the status of the monarchy to be decided at a later date. Three regents, Srđan Budisavljević, a Serb, Ante Mandić, a Croat, and Dušan Sernec, a Slovene, were sworn in at Belgrade on 3 March 1945. They appointed the new government, to be headed by Tito as prime minister and minister of war, with Šubašić as foreign minister, on 7 March.[4]
On 29 November 1945, while still in exile, King Peter II was deposed by the constituent assembly. The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was internationally recognized as Yugoslavia while Peter II became a pretender.[citation needed]
Life in exile
After Cambridge, and not being able to return to Yugoslavia following the abolition of the monarchy, Prince Tomislav remained in the UK and devoted himself to fruit growing. While he attended agricultural college, he worked summers as an ordinary field hand in an orchard in Kent. In 1950, he bought a farm at Kirdford, near Petworth, in West Sussex, and subsequently specialized in growing apples, having at one point 17,000 trees on 80 hectares of land.[5]
He died after five years of illness on 12 July 2000, on Ss. Peter and Paul Day in the Julian Calendar, the patron saints of the family crypt on Oplenac, where he was buried, in a funeral attended by several thousand mourners.[citation needed]
Prince Nikola of Yugoslavia[sr] (born 15 March 1958, London). He married to Ljiljana Licanin (b. 12 December 1957 in Zemun, Serbia) on 30 August 1992 in Denmark. They have a daughter:
Prince Michael of Yugoslavia[sr] (b. 15 December 1985, London). He married Ljubica Ljubisavljević (b. 1989 in Belgrade) on 23 October 2016 at Oplenac.[8][9] They have two daughters:
Princess Natalija of Yugoslavia (b. 26 December 2018, Belgrade).[10]
Princess Isidora of Yugoslavia (b. 17 May 2022, Belgrade).[11]
Krišto, Jure (2000). "Duvanjski kraj kroz povijest" [The region of Duvno through history]. In Krišto, Jure (ed.). Duvanjski zbornik[The collection of papers of Duvno] (in Croatian). Zagreb-Tomislavgrad: Hrvatski institut za povijest–Naša ognjišta–Zajednica Duvnjaka Tomislavgrad. ISBN9536324253.
