The King Takes a Wife

A red carpet spanned the sidewalk in front of London's Yugoslav Embassy. Sleek limousines nudged up to the curb through a cluttered street.

The bride--tall, graceful Princess Alexandra of Greece--arrived first: a flash of silken hose under a mink coat. Twenty minutes later came the bridegroom--slim, impulsive King Peter of Yugoslavia, in the light blue uniform of his air force. Other limousines brought the witnesses: Britain's George VI, the bridegroom's godfather, and Greece's George II, the bride's uncle. Among the guests: Britain's Queen Elizabeth, Norway's King Haakon, Holland's Queen Wilhelmina.

Inside the Embassy, while candles of the Serb and Greek Orthodox churches lighted the scene, 20-year-old Peter and 23-year-old Alexandra exchanged their wedding vows.

The King Makes a Choice. It had happened suddenly. Only the day before one of Peter's secretaries was certain there would be no ceremony yet. Everyone thought that the King and Princess, engaged last summer, would not be married until after the war and the end of their peoples' suffering.

Royalist Serbs shook their heads over Peter's impatient ardor. They remembered the dynasty's unwritten law: while the country is held by an enemy, the ruler must stay in mourning. Peter I had imposed the rule in World War I; he had marched with his Serb troops into exile, observed the ritual of grief, not even shaving, until the day of liberation. Serb emigres, already uneasy lest Peter II throw in his lot with Tito, now feared that he would further shake his standing among those still loyal to him in the faction-split homeland.

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