Alexander I of Serbia
Alexander I (; 14 August 187611 June 1903) reigned as the king of Serbia from 1889 to 1903 when he and his wife, Draga Mašin, were assassinated by a group of Royal Serbian Army officers, led by Captain Dragutin Dimitrijević. Accession Alexander was born on 14 August 1876 to King Milan and Queen Natalie of Serbia. He belonged to the Obrenović dynasty. In 1889, King Milan unexpectedly abdicated and withdrew to private life, proclaiming Alexander king of Serbia. Since the king was only thirteen, three regents were appointed, head among them Jovan Ristich. His mother also became his regent. Alexander ordered the arrest of the regents on April 13, 1893, proclaiming himself of age and dissolving national assembly. On May 21, he abolished his father's liberal constitution of 1889 and restored the previous one. In 1894, the young King brought his father, Milan, back to Serbia and, in 1898, appointed him commander-in-chief of the army. During that time, Milan was regarded as the de facto ruler of the country. In 1898 penalties were brought down upon the Radical and the Russophil parties, which the court sought to tie to an attempted assassination of the former King Milan. Alexander's attitude during the Greco-Turkish War (1897) was one of strict neutrality. Marriage In the summer of 1900, King Alexander suddenly announced his engagement to Draga Mašin, a disreputable widow of an obscure engineer. Alexander had met Draga in 1897 when she was serving as a maid of honor to his mother. Draga was nine years older than the king, unpopular with Belgrade society, well known for her allegedly numerous sexual liaisons, and widely believed to be infertile. Since Alexander was an only child, it was imperative to secure the succession by producing an heir. So intense was the opposition to Mašin among the political classes that the king found it impossible for a time to recruit suitable candidates for senior posts. Before making the announcement of his engagement, Alexander did not consult with his father, who had been on vacation in Karlsbad and making arrangements to secure the hand of German Princess Alexandra Karoline zu Schaumburg-Lippe, sister of the Queen of Württemberg, for his son, or his Prime Minister Dr. Vladan Đorđević, who was visiting the Universal Exhibition in Paris at the time of the announcement. Both immediately resigned, and Alexander had difficulty in forming a new cabinet. Alexander's mother also opposed the marriage and was subsequently banished from the kingdom. Opposition to the union seemed to subside somewhat for a time upon the publication of congratulations of Nicholas II of Russia to the king on his engagement and of his agreement to act as the principal witness at the wedding. The marriage duly took place in August 1900. Even so, the unpopularity of the union weakened the king's position in the eyes of the army and the country at large. Politics and the constitution King Alexander tried to reconcile political parties by unveiling a liberal constitution of his own initiative in