Montenegro was admitted to the UN as its 192nd member in June 2006, thus recovering the independence it had lost nearly ninety years earlier at the Versailles Peace Conference. Realm of the Black Mountain is the first full-length history of the country in English for a century, tracing the history of the tiny Balkan state from its earliest roots in the medieval empire of Zeta through its consistently ambiguous and frequently problematic relationship with its larger neighbour Serbia, the emergence of a priest/warrior ruler in the shape of the Vladika and its emergence from Ottoman suzerainty state at the Congress of Berlin. More recently, the book focuses on its troubled twentieth century history, its prominent role in the Balkan wars, its unique deletion from world maps as an independent state despite being on the winning side in the Great War, its ignominious role in the wars leading to the disintegration of Yugoslavia and its final reemergence as a member of the international community on the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in 2006.
Lady Elizabeth Roberts is a Balkan scholar and former diplomat. She has taught Southeast European History at universities in the United States and Ireland. Roberts is also the co-author, with Kenneth Morrison, of The Sandžak: A History (2013)