Anka Obrenović

Princess Anka Obrenović (later Anka Konstantinović, ; 1 April 1821 – 10 June 1868 [29 May o.s.]) was a member of the Serbian royal Obrenović dynasty as the niece of the dynasty's founder Miloš Obrenović I, Prince of Serbia. She was also a society leader and writer whose translations in 1836 were the first literary works compiled by a woman to be published in Serbia. She was the inspiration for a poem by renowned Croatian poet Antun Mihanović, who had wished to marry her when she was 16 and he 41. In 1860, she established one of the first Serbian salons in her home in Belgrade. She was also known as "Anka pomodarka" ("Anka the fashionable").

She was assassinated alongside her first cousin Prince Michael III of Serbia, who was the ruling prince of Serbia at the time.

Family

Princess Anka was born on 1 April 1821, the third daughter of Prince Jevrem Obrenović and Tomanija Bogićević, daughter of Vojvoda Antonije Bogićević. Her father, who also served as Governor of Belgrade and Regent of Serbia (1839), was a younger brother of Serbian Prince Miloš Obrenović I. Her paternal grandparents were Teodor Mihailovic, who had been an impoverished land-owner originally from Montenegro, and Višnja Gojković. She had four sisters, Jelena, Simeona, Jekaterina, and Anastasia; and one brother, Miloš, whose son would later reign as Prince Milan IV and King Milan I.

Early literary achievements She was described as having been "very beautiful, very intelligent, and well-educated". She was evidently more modern than Prince Miloš's daughters Petrija and Savka, who still wore traditional Turkish garb. At the age of 13, Anka published a number of parables which she had painstakingly translated from the original German-a language in which she was also fluent. She went on to have her writings published in a variety of periodicals, including the literary journal Danica ilirska, in which she used her pseudonym, "An Illyrian woman from Serbia". Two years later, in 1836, she published a compilation of her translations which was the first literary work ever published by a woman in Serbia. and which was published in 1844 in the Danica ilirska.

Marriage and issue

In 1842, she married Alexander Konstantinović, son of Obrad Konstantinović (paternal first cousin of Konstantin Hadija, Prince Jevrem Obrenović's son-in-law) and Danica Gvozdenović, by whom she had two children:

Colonel Alexander Konstantinović (died 1914), married Milena Opuić, by whom he had one daughter, Natalija (wife of Prince Mirko of Montenegro), and one son, Vladimir. Katarina Konstantinovic (1848–1910), married firstly in 1868 General Milivoje Blaznavac (16 May 1824 – 5 April 1873), by whom she had issue; she married secondly, Mihajlo Bogićević (1843–1899).

In 1860, she established one of the first Serbian salons at her home. Anka's "art gathering" as it was called, "greatly influenced the spiritual rebirth of Serbian society in the 1860s". Anka's daughter Katarina was his mistress who nurtured hopes of one day becoming his wife as Mihailo's marriage to Countess Julia Hunyady de Kéthely was childless, and he had begun to consider a divorce, with the aim of making Katarina his consort. On 10 June 1868 Anka, Katarina, and Prince Mihailo were taking a stroll through the park of Košutnjak, near Mihailo's country residence on the outskirts of Belgrade, when they were shot by assassins believed to be in the pay of the Obrenović's rival dynasty, the Karađorđevićs. Mihailo was killed, and Katarina wounded; Anka allegedly fought bravely with her attackers before she was also shot dead. Anka Konstantinovic was also killed". the crown instead passed to Peter Karađorđević, who was viewed as pro-Russian, while the rival Obrenovićs were known allies of the detested Habsburgs. Peter was the preferred candidate for the throne in the tide of Pan-Slavic nationalism that had engulfed Serbia since the mid-19th century.

Princess Anka's descendants are the only known surviving line of the Obrenović dynasty, which became extinct in the male line upon the regicide of King Alexander. Nicholas, Crown Prince of Montenegro, modern pretender to the defunct Montenegrin throne is her descendant.