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
Njegoš's influence parallels that of Shakespeare in the English-speaking world and his languagethough archaichas supplied modern Serbian with a number of well known quotations. The epic has become the basic educational text for Montenegrins and Serbs. In Montenegro it was (and still is) learnt by heart, and has been integrated into oral tradition. Njegoš's picture can often seen in taverns, offices, hospitals, on Yugoslav and Serbian currency and in people's homes in Montenegro and Serbia.
After the founding of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century, Njegoš was twice declared Yugoslavia's national poet, by the royal government in the 1920s and by the communist authorities following the Second World War. In 1947, the 100th anniversary of the publication of "Gorski vijenac", the government promoted Njegoš as a Montenegrin poet rather than a Serb. The change in Njegoš's ethnicity may have been related to the communist policy of Brotherhood and Unity and its promotion of a Montenegrin ethnic identity (which the communists had proclaimed distinct from that of Serbs in 1943). Njegoš' works, particularly "Gorski vijenac", have been sources of collective identity for Serbs, Montenegrins and Yugoslavs. Njegoš's works have been removed from school curricula in Bosnia and Herzegovina so as not to incite ethnic tensions, given the divisive nature of some of his works.