Petar II Petrović-Njegoš
Petar II Petrović-Njegoš was born Radivoje "Rade" Petrović on in the mountain village of Njeguši, near Cetinje. His father, Tomislav "Tomo" Petrović (b. 1762–63), was a member of the Petrović clan of the Njeguši tribe of Katuni "nahiya". Njegoš's mother, Ivana Proroković, hailed from the hamlet of Mali Zalaz and was the daughter of Njeguši captain Lazo Proroković. There is no reliable information about her exact year of birth, but it is believed that she was about ten years younger than her husband. Tomo and Ivana had five children; their eldest son was Petar ("Pero"), Rade was their middle son and Jovan ("Joko") was their youngest. The couple's daughters were named Marija and Stana; Marija was married to a Montenegrin chieftain named Andrija Perović, the "serdar" (count) of Cuce, while Stana was married to Filip Đurašković, the "serdar" of Rijeka Crnojevića.
Petar II Petrović-Njegoš
In 1838, Njegoš hosted Saxon King Frederick Augustus II, a keen naturalist who had come to Montenegro to study the country's diverse flora. The king was housed at the Cetinje Monastery, and Njegoš was forced to move from room to room to accommodate him. Displeased by this state of affairs, and irritated by German press reports that described Montenegro as "primitive", Njegoš ordered the construction of a secular dwelling that was to serve as both a royal palace and seat of government. Designed by Ozeretskovsky, the residence was a long, two-storied stone building with twenty-five rooms nestled behind a fortified wall and flanked by defensive towers at all four corners. Located just northeast of the Cetinje Monastery, and facing east towards Constantinople, it was soon dubbed the "Biljarda", after the central room on the second floor which contained a billiard table that Njegoš had ordered transported to Montenegro from the Adriatic coast. The residence was within view of an unfinished stone watchtower intended to protect the monastery from cannon fire and whose construction had begun five years earlier, in 1833. When Njegoš realized that its location was unsuitable for a fortress, he ordered that its construction be abandoned, and it was converted into a tower where the heads of decapitated Turkish warriors were impaled on spears and left exposed to the elements. Turkish heads had previously been impaled beside the monastery walls. Dubbed the "Tablja", the tower was meant to rival Ali Pasha's citadel in Mostar, where the severed heads of four to five Serbs were displayed at any given time. John Gardner Wilkinson, an English traveler and Egyptologist, saw the "Tablja" while visiting Cetinje in 1844. He noted the "acrid stench" that the structure exuded and recalled how dogs would tear pieces of flesh and bone away from the rotting heads and drag them across Cetinje. Wilkinson met with both Njegoš and Ali Pasha on separate occasions over the course of his travels and attempted to persuade them to cease beheading their prisoners. Njegoš agreed in principle, but maintained that ceasing to sever the heads of Turkish warriors would be perceived as "weakness" and serve only to invite attack. Ali Pasha objected along similar lines and said that he doubted the good faith of the Montenegrins, whom he claimed were known for their "wanton cruelty".