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
A former politician and leading Marxist theoretician, Djilas wrote a lengthy study of Njegoš's life and works in the late 1950s while serving a prison sentence after a row with Yugoslavia's communist leadership. The manuscript was smuggled out of the prison by Djilas' associates in the early 1960s and taken to the West, where it was edited, translated from the original Serbo-Croatian into English, and published under the title "Njegoš: Poet, Prince, Bishop", in 1966. The book remains the only English-language biography of Njegoš, and the subsequent Serbo-Croatian edition (1988) is likely the most extensive study of his life in that language, as well. Djilas himself was a great admirer of Njegoš, and later recounted that "Gorski vijenac" was the only text that he always carried by his side during the Second World War.