Petru II
| Portrait | 
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| Title: | King of Moldova |
| Predecessor: | Aurel I |
| Successor: | Aurel II |
| Birth: | December 29, 1961 |
| Birth: | July 1, 1997 |
| Profession: | Royalty, amateur artist |
| Political Party: | None |
| Relgious Affiliation: | Romanian Orthodox |
| Family | Nadia Ivanova (wife), Prince Igor Nicolescu (uncle), Aurel (son), Illona and Olivia (sisters), Vlad (brother), Aurel I (father), Lilian (mother) |
Petru II (1961-1997) was the third King of Moldova. His given name was Petru Bragança-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. His father abdicated in his favor in 1991 following the collapse of the SNOR in Moldova and elsewhere.
Petru married Nadia Ivanova in 1989, and their only son Aurel was born a month before Petru's coronation. By all accounts the marriage, which had been arranged by the government, proved a comfortable one.
As a young man, Petru had had to live under constant observation by the government who were determined he should not vary from the figurehead position held by his father since the Second Great War. Unconfirmed reports state the his official tutors were authorized to use extreme forms of punishment including sleep deprivation. Certainly, Petru grew up into a man with a pronounced twitch. In public, he nearly always donned some kind of uniform, partially in an effort to make him a kind of unofficial "mascot" for the Russian overlords of the nation. It was a cause of actual controversy that he seemed to speak Romanian with a Russian accent--presumably the result of official staff, which had to be personally approved by Moscow. Indeed, as a child he was the center piece of a struggle between advocates of himself and of his older brother Crown Prince Vlad.
He reigned slightly less than six years, during which Moldova's government underwent a series of major changes, a process that has continued to this day.
On September 11, 1997 King Petru II was found to have died in his sleep. The official cause of death was heart failure due to an undiagnosed flaw in a valve. However, rumors persist of his being assassinated or even committing suicide. It wasn't until after his death that a series of watercolor paintings he'd done since childhood became public knowledge, resulting in a posthumous increase in sympathy for someone who--in the popular imagination--never wanted to wear a crown.
| Preceded by: 'Aurel I' |
 King of Moldova 1991-1997 |
Succeeded by: 'Aurel II' |
