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
Slapšak notes that Njegoš was born into a culture with an almost exclusively oral storytelling tradition, where the only written works were of a religious nature or recounted the history of Montenegro. Describing his mastery of the traditional oral epic, she asserts that it was the "only adequate, literary genre of his age", one that allowed him "to interpret [his] community for the world and for himself in the language of poetry." Multiple scholars have also noted similarities between the chorus of Ancient Greek tragedies and that of "Gorski vijenac" (the "kolo", which represents the collective voice of Montenegro's inhabitants, reflecting their hopes, fears and desires.) The epic also features similar character roles, such as that of the pensive ruler (Danilo), the hero (Vuk Mandušić), the blind prophetic monk ("iguman" Stefan) and the lamenting woman (Batrić's sister).