Carol was the eldest son of Ferdinand I and became crown prince upon the death of his great uncle, King Carol I in 1914. He was the first of the Hohenzollern kings of Romania to be born in the country (both of his predecessors were born and grew up in Germany and only came to Romania as adults). Carol, by contrast, spoke Romanian as his first language and was the first member of the Romanian royal family to be raised in the Orthodox faith.

Possessing a hedonistic personality that contributed to the controversies which marred his reign, his life was marked by numerous scandals. Among them, marriages to Zizi Lambrino and Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark, daughter of King Constantine I of Greece. His continued affairs with Magda Lupescu, obliged him to renounce his succession rights in 1925 and leave the country. Princess Helen eventually divorced him in 1928. King Ferdinand died in 1927 and Carol's five-year-old son ascended the throne as Michael I.

Carol returned to Romania in 1930 and replaced the regency that had been in place. His reign was marked by re-alignment with Nazi Germany, adoption of anti-semitic laws and ultimately evolved into a personal dictatorship beginning with 1938. On 6 September 1940, he was forced by his Prime Minister Ion Antonescu to leave the country and withdraw abroad into exile. He was succeeded by his son Michael.

Carol was born in Peleș Castle. Carol grew up under the thumb of his dominating great-uncle King Carol I, who largely excluded his parents, the German-born Crown Prince Ferdinand and the British-born Crown Princess Marie from any role in bringing him up. Romania in the early 20th century had a famously relaxed "Latin" sexual morality, and in this environment, Princess Marie pursued a series of love affairs with various, predominantly Romanian men who offered her more emotional and sexual satisfaction than her husband Ferdinand could. For his part, Ferdinand fiercely resented being cuckolded. The stern Carol I felt that Marie was unqualified to raise Prince Carol because of her love affairs, whereas Marie regarded the king as a cold, overbearing tyrant who would crush the life out of her son. The childless Carol I (who had always wanted a son) treated Prince Carol as his surrogate son and thoroughly spoiled him by indulging his every whim. Ferdinand was a rather shy and weak man who was easily overshadowed by the charismatic Marie, who would become a much-loved member of the Romanian royal family. Growing up, Carol felt ashamed of his father, whom both his great-uncle and mother pushed around. Carol's childhood was spent caught up in an emotional tug-of-war between Carol I and Marie, who had very different ideas about how to raise him. The Romanian historian Marie Bucur has described the battle between Carol I and Princess Marie as one between traditional 19th-century Prussian conservatism, as personified by Carol I, and the 20th-century liberal values of a modernist and sexually-liberated "New Woman," as personified by Princess Marie. Aspects of both Marie's and Carol I's personalities were present in Carol II. Largely as a result of the battle between the king and Marie, Carol ended being both spoiled and deprived of love. From Carol I, he certainly acquired a "profound love of German militarism" (in the words of the American historian Margaret Sankey) and the idea that all democratic governments were weak governments, but he was also influenced by the intense Francophilia that prevailed in Romania of his day. Romania in the early 20th century was perhaps the most Francophile nation in the entire world; the Romanian elite obsessively embraced all things French as the model for perfection in everything.

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