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69-648: The origins of the dynasty are disputed. The early Georgian Bagratids gained the Principality of Iberia through dynastic marriage after succeeding the Chosroid dynasty at the end of the 8th century. In 888 Adarnase IV of Iberia restored the Georgian monarchy; various native polities then united into the Kingdom of Georgia , which prospered from the 11th to the 13th century. This period of time, particularly

138-698: A decade later. On April 25, 1804, the Imeretian king Solomon II , nominally an Ottoman vassal, was persuaded to conclude the Convention of Elaznauri with Russia, on terms similar to those of the Treaty of Georgievsk. Yet the Russian forces dethroned Solomon on February 20, 1810. Defeated during a subsequent rebellion to regain power, he died in exile in Trabzon , Ottoman Turkey, in 1815. Russian rule over Georgia

207-584: A degree of stability in Kartli-Kakheti and established political hegemony in eastern Transcaucasia . In the 1783 Treaty of Georgievsk , he placed his kingdom under the protection of Imperial Russia . The latter failed, however, to provide timely help when the Persian ruler Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar captured, sacked and ravaged Tbilisi in 1795 to compel severance of Georgian ties to Russia, as he sought to re-establish Persia's traditional suzerainty over

276-587: A divorced teacher and journalist with two daughters, married Prince Davit Bagrationi-Mukhraneli , on 8 February 2009 at the Tbilisi Sameba Cathedral . The marriage united the Gruzinsky and Mukhrani branches of the Georgian royal family , and drew a crowd of 3,000 spectators, officials, and foreign diplomats, as well as extensive coverage by the Georgian media . The dynastic significance of

345-759: A general acceptance until the early 20th century. The Jewish origin, let alone the biblical descent, of the Bagratids has been discounted by modern scholarship. Cyril Toumanoff 's research concluded that the Georgian Bagratids branched out of the Armenian Bagratid dynasty in the person of Adarnase , whose father Vasak (son of Ashot III the Blind , presiding prince of Armenia from 732 to 748) passed to Kartli following an abortive uprising against Arab rule in 775. Adarnase’s son, Ashot I , acquired

414-671: A given name of Iranian origin. The origins of the Bagratid dynasty is still matter of debate between Georgian and Armenian scholars. Georgian scholars argue that the Bagrationis were of Georgian origin, while Armenian and Western scholars believe them to be a branch of the Armenian Bagratunis . According to a tradition first recorded in the work of the 11th-century Georgian chronicler Sumbat Davitis-Dze and repeated much later by Prince Vakhushti Bagrationi (1696–1757),

483-517: A large polity conventionally known in modern history as Tao-Klarjeti . In 813, the new dynasty acquired, with Ashot I, the hereditary title of presiding prince of Iberia (Kartli), to which the emperor attached the honorific of kourapalates . Despite the revitalization of the monarchy, Georgian lands remained divided among rival authorities, with Tbilisi remaining in Arab hands . The sons and grandsons of Ashot I established three separate branches –

552-586: A largely Christian country. Therefore, when the Eastern Roman emperor Maurice embarked upon a military campaign against Persia in 582, the Iberian nobles requested that he helped restore the monarchy. Maurice did respond, and, in 588, sent his protégé, Guaram I of the Guaramids, as a new ruler to Iberia. However, Guaram was not crowned as king, but recognized as a presiding prince and bestowed with

621-545: A literary tradition in the native language, the rise of the Georgian Bagratid family, and the beginning of cultural and political unification of various feudal enclaves, which would be united to form the Kingdom of Georgia by the early 11th century. When the king of a great unified Iberia, Bakur III , died in 580, the Sassanid government of Persia under Hormizd IV (578–590) seized on the opportunity to abolish

690-707: A military officer of the Russian Imperial army. His father, who was born in Yerevan, was descended from the Armeno-Georgian princely family of Tumanishvili (Russified to Tumanov) whose ancestors had emigrated from their original homeland in Cilician Armenia in the 15th century. This family is on the list of the Georgian princes that was attached to the Treaty of Georgievsk concluded between

759-583: A quest to reunite a divided Iberia, but this cost him his life when the Byzantine emperor Heraclius attacked Tbilisi in 626. Heraclius reinstated a member of the more pro-Byzantine Chosroid house, which, nevertheless, was forced to recognize the suzerainty of the Umayyad Caliph in the 640s, but revolted, unsuccessfully, against the Arab hegemony in the 680s. Dispossessed of the principate of Iberia,

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828-574: A rival branch of the Bagrationi dynasty, and into five semi-independent principalities – Odishi - Mingrelia , Guria , Abkhazia , Svaneti , and Samtskhe – dominated by their own feudal clans. During the three subsequent centuries, the Georgian rulers maintained their perilous autonomy as subjects under the Turkish Ottoman and Persian Safavid , Afsharid , and Qajar domination, although sometimes serving as little more than puppets in

897-494: Is headed by Prince David Bagrationi (born 1948) (not to be confused with his younger namesake from the Mukhrani branch). The current claimant is Irakli Davitis Dze Bagrationi (Georgian: ირაკლი დავითის ძე ბაგრატიონი), head of the Georgian scion of the royal Bagrationi dynasty of Imereti, the direct male-line descendant of the kings of Imereti, the direct descendant of Alexander V (Georgian: ალექსანდრე V) (c. 1703/4 – March 1752), of

966-550: Is the most senior patrilinear branch of the Bagrationi dynasty, descending directly from King Constantine II of Georgia . Originally a cadet branch of the former Royal House of Kartli , they became the genealogically seniormost line of the Bagrationi family in the early 20th century; and although this elder branch had lost the rule of Kartli by 1724, it retained the Principality of Mukhrani until its annexation by Russia, along with Kartli-Kakheti, in 1800. This branch of

1035-586: The Abbasid preoccupation with their own civil wars and conflict with the Byzantine Empire . Although Arab rule did not allow them a foothold in the ancient capital of Tbilisi and eastern Kartli, the Bagratids successfully maintained their initial domain in Klarjeti and Meskheti and, under the Byzantine protectorate, extended their possessions southward into the northwestern Armenian marches to form

1104-615: The Alan prince David Soslan , of reputed Bagratid descent. The invasions by the Khwarezmians in 1225 and the Mongols in 1236 terminated Georgia’s "golden age". The struggle against the Mongol rule created a dyarchy , with an ambitious lateral branch of the Bagrationi dynasty holding sway over western Georgia ( Imereti ). There was a brief period of reunion and revival under George V

1173-624: The Eastern Roman title of curopalates . The Byzantine-Sassanid treaty of 591 confirmed this new rearrangement but left Iberia divided into Roman- and Sassanid-dominated parts at the town of Tbilisi . Thus, the establishment of the principate marked the ascendancy of the dynastic aristocracy in Iberia and was a compromise solution amid the Byzantine-Sassanid rivalry for the control of the Caucasus. The presiding princes of Iberia, as

1242-540: The North Caucasus to northern Iran , and eastwards into Asia Minor . In spite of repeated incidents of dynastic strife, the kingdom continued to prosper during the reigns of Demetrios I (1125–1156), George III (1156–1184), and especially, his daughter Tamar the Great (1184–1213). With the death of George III the main male line became extinct and the dynasty continued through the marriage of Queen Tamar with

1311-1316: The October Revolution in Saint Petersburg in 1917. His father joined the White Russian forces during the Russian Civil War , while his mother was executed by the Bolsheviks . Cyril Toumanoff was initially sheltered by his maternal grandparents in Astrakhan before the family fled to Serbia. In 1925, he and his father escaped to the United States. He graduated from the Lenox School in 1931 and went to Harvard University . He then studied Armenology in Brussels under Nicholas Adontz and Georgian in Berlin under Michael Tsereteli . During these years, Toumanoff converted to Roman Catholicism . A breach with his Orthodox Christian father ensued which ended when they reconciled at

1380-617: The Patriotic War of 1812 . His brother Prince Roman Bagration also became a Russian general, distinguishing himself in the Russo-Persian War (1826–1828) , and was the first to enter Yerevan in 1827. Roman Bagration was also known for his patronage of the arts, literature and theatre. His home theater in Tbilisi was regarded as one of the finest in the Caucasus. His son Prince Pyotr Romanovich Bagration became governor of

1449-519: The Principality of Iberia in 813 and thus founded the last royal house of Georgia. Accordingly, the legend of the Davidic origin of the Georgian Bagratids was a further development of the earlier claim entertained by the Armenian dynasty, as given in the work of the Armenian author Moses of Khorene . Once the Georgian branch, which had quickly acculturated in the new environment, assumed royal power,

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1518-775: The Tver region and later governor-general of the Baltic provinces . He was also a metallurgic engineer known for the development of gold cyanidation in Russia. Prince Dmitry Petrovich Bagration was a Russian general who fought in World War I in the Brusilov Offensive and later joined the Red Army . The majority of the Bagrationi family left Georgia after the Red Army took over Tbilisi in 1921. The House of Mukhrani

1587-453: The branch of Mukhraneli since 1658. In 1744, Erekle II and his father Teimuraz II were granted the kingships of Kakheti and Kartli respectively by their overlord Nader Shah , as a reward for their loyalty. Following Nader Shah's death in 1747, Erekle II and Teimuraz II capitalized on the eruption of instability, and declared de facto independence. After Teimuraz II died in 1762, Erekle II succeeded his father as ruler of Kartli, and united

1656-476: The 21st century. Aside from his unmarried elder brother Irakli, Davit is the heir male of the Bagrationi family, while the bride's father is the most senior descendant of the last Bagrationi to reign over the united kingdom of eastern Georgia . The marriage between Nugzar Gruzinsky's heiress and the Mukhrani heir may resolve their rivalry for the claim to the throne. Prince Davit and Princess Ana became

1725-591: The 730s. The dynasts of Iberia sat at Uplistsikhe whence they exercised only a limited authority over local Georgian lords who, entrenched in their mountain castles, maintained a degree of freedom from the Arabs. The Guaramids were briefly succeeded by the Nersianids between c. 748 and 779/80, and had vanished once and for all by 786. This year witnessed a bloody crackdown upon the rebellious Georgian nobles organized by Khuzayma ibn Khazim , an Arab viceroy ( wali ) of

1794-575: The Bagratids, who had emerged as a winner in protracted dynastic strife, succeeded in restoring the Georgian royal authority by assuming the title of the King of the Georgians. Church architecture in the principality Cyril Toumanoff Cyril Leo Toumanoff ( Georgian : კირილ თუმანოვი ; Russian : Кирилл Львович Туманов ; 10 October 1913 – 4 February 1997) was a Georgian -American historian, and academic genealogist who mostly specialized in

1863-834: The Bagrationi Dynasty, King of Imereti (western Georgia). Irakli is a son of David Bragationi and Irina Kobakhidze, born 10 July 1982 in Terjola, Imereti, Georgia. He is the future successor and head of the House of Bagrationi-Imereti. Irakli has been recognized by the Patriarch of Georgia , as well as the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople , as well as the Unione della Nobiltà Bizantina (Ένωση της Βυζαντινής ευγένειας). Prince Nugzar 's daughter, Princess Ana ,

1932-732: The Brilliant (1299–1302, 1314–1346), but the eight onslaughts of the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur between 1386 and 1403 dealt a great blow to the Georgian kingdom. About a century later, its unity was finally shattered by two rival Turkic federations; the Kara Koyunlu , and the Ak Koyunlu . By 1490/91, the once powerful monarchy fragmented into three independent kingdoms – Kartli (central to eastern Georgia), Kakheti (eastern Georgia), and Imereti (western Georgia) – each led by

2001-706: The Byzantine and Seljuk empires throughout the 11th century, flourished under David IV the Builder (1089–1125), who repelled the Seljuk attacks and essentially completed the unification of Georgia with the re-conquest of Tbilisi in 1122. With the decline of Byzantine power and the dissolution of the Great Seljuk Empire, Georgia became one of the pre-eminent nations of the Christian East , her pan-Caucasian empire stretching, at its largest extent, from

2070-496: The Caucasus. The extinction of the Guaramids and near-extinction of the Chosroids allowed their energetic cousins of the Bagratid family, in the person of Ashot I (r. 786/813–830) to gather their inheritance in parts of Iberia. Having accepted the Byzantine protection, the Bagratids, from their base in the region of Tao-Klarjeti , presided over the period of cultural revival and territorial expansionism. In 888, Adarnase I , of

2139-527: The Chosroids retired to their appanage in Kakheti where they ruled as regional princes until the family became extinct by the early 9th century. The Guaramids returned to power and faced the difficult task of manoeuvring between the Byzantines and Arabs. The Arabs, primarily concerned with maintaining control of the cities and trade routes, dispossessed them of Tbilisi where a Muslim emir was installed in

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2208-674: The Family Council and the Mukhraneli dynastic titles. The Bagration-Gruzinsky line, although junior to the Princes of Mukhrani genealogically, reigned over the kingdom of Kakheti , re-united the two realms in the kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti in 1762, and did not lose sovereignty until Russian annexation in 1800. Prince Nugzar Petrovich Bagration-Gruzinski (born 1950) is the most senior known patrilineal descendant of Kartli-Kakheti's last king, George XII , and is, as such, head of

2277-530: The Georgian king Erekle II and the Russian empress Catherine II in 1783. On December 6, 1850, the Tumanishvili were officially enrolled on the Russian Empire 's list of Georgian princely families as knyaz Tumanov. Toumanoff's mother, Yelizaveta Zhdanova, was a descendant of a number of Russian noble families, with genealogical ties with Western European nobility. Toumanoff's parents fled

2346-665: The Headship of the Royal House of Georgia. In 1942 Prince Irakli (Erekle) Bagrationi-Mukhraneli , of the genealogically senior branch of the dynasty, proclaimed himself head of the Royal House of Georgia. He founded the Union of Georgian Traditionalists in exile. His second wife, Maria Antonietta Pasquini, daughter of Ugo, Count di Costafiorita, bore him a son and heir , but died in childbirth in February 1944. In August 1946

2415-452: The Iberian monarchy. Iberia became a Persian province ruled by a marzpan (governor). The Iberian nobles acquiesced to this change without resistance, while the heirs of the royal house withdrew to their highland fortresses – the main Chosroid line in Kakheti , and the younger Guaramid branch in Klarjeti and Javakheti . However, the direct Persian control brought about heavy taxation and an energetic promotion of Zoroastrianism in

2484-413: The Iberian principate, the Byzantine emperors pushed to limit Sassanid and then Islamic influence in the Caucasus, but the princes of Iberia were not always consistent in their pro-Byzantine line, and, as a matter of political expediency, sometimes recognized the suzerainty of the rival regional powers. Guaram's successor, the second presiding prince Stephen I , reoriented his politics towards Persia in

2553-441: The Kakhetian branch of the dynasty which, although genealogically junior to the Mukhranelis, has reigned more recently over a part of Georgia, not having lost the throne of a Georgian kingdom until 1800. Nugzar is a theatrical and cinema director, while his father, Prince Petre Bagration-Gruzinski (1920–1984), was a poet, and authored "Song of Tiflis". As Nugzar has no male issue, Prince Evgeny Petrovich Gruzinsky (1947-2018),

2622-466: The Russians marched into Tbilisi. Negotiations of terms were still in process, when Paul signed a manifesto on December 18, 1800, unilaterally declaring the annexation of Kartli-Kakheti to the Russian Empire. This proclamation was kept secret until the death of King George on December 28. His eldest son, the Tsarevich Davit , had been formally acknowledged as heir apparent by Emperor Paul on 18 April 1799, but his accession as king after his father's death

2691-411: The Safavid royal capital of Isfahan for an extensive period spanning over 100 years, from 1618 to 1722. Despite being seated in Kartli starting from 1632, Rostom Khan , in particular, served as Isfahan's darugha for 40 years. Additionally, he appointed deputies to represent him in the Safavid capital. The line of Imereti, incessantly embroiled in civil war, continued with many breaks in succession, and

2760-406: The dynasty claimed descent from the biblical king and prophet David and came from Israel around 530 AD . The tradition had it that of seven refugee brothers of the Davidic line , three of them settled in Armenia and the other four arrived in Kartli (also known as Iberia ), where they intermarried with the local ruling houses and acquired some lands in hereditary possession, with one of

2829-485: The early-19th century. While the 3rd article of the 1783 Treaty of Georgievsk guaranteed continued sovereignty for the Bagrationi dynasty and their continued presence on the Georgian throne, the Russian Empire later broke the terms of the treaty and fully annexed the protectorate. The dynasty persisted within the Russian Empire as an Imperial Russian noble family until the 1917 February Revolution . The establishment of Soviet rule in Georgia in 1921 forced some members of

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2898-487: The family is related to the House of Borbón , the House of Wittelsbach , the House of Habsburg-Lorraine , and the House of Romanov . A member of this branch, Princess Leonida Georgievna Bagration-Moukhransky , married Vladimir Cyrillovich, Grand Duke of Russia , and became the mother of one of the claimants to the Romanov legacy, Maria Vladimirovna, Grand Duchess of Russia . The overwhelming majority of regnant and non-regnant Royal Houses recognize Prince Davit's claim to

2967-511: The family to accept demoted status and loss of property in Georgia. Other members relocated to Western Europe , but some Bagrations repatriated after Georgia regained independence in 1991. The earliest Georgian forms of the dynastic name are Bagratoniani , Bagratuniani and Bagratovani , changed subsequently into Bagrationi. These names as well as the Armenian Bagratuni and the modern designation Bagratid mean "the children of Bagrat " or "the house of/established by Bagrat", Bagrat being

3036-415: The four brothers, Guaram (died in 532), founding a line subsequently called Bagrationi after his son Bagrat. A successor, Guaram , was installed as a presiding prince of Iberia under the Byzantine protectorate, receiving on this occasion the Byzantine court title of Kouropalates in 575. Thus, according to this version, began the dynasty of the Bagrationis, who ruled until 1801. This tradition enjoyed

3105-481: The fourteen presiding princes held the dignity of curopalates , one of the highest in the Eastern Empire. The medieval Georgian chronicles make it clear, however, that these princes, although they enjoyed the loyalty of the great nobles, were of limited capabilities since they "could not remove the dukes of Iberia from their duchies because they had charters from the Great King and from the Emperor confirming them in their duchies". Through offering their protection to

3174-505: The great-great-grandson of Bagrat's younger brother Ilia (1791–1854), who lived in the Russian Federation , was considered to be an heir presumptive within the same primogeniture principle. But he died without issue and no male descent (recorded and official) is left in the Gruzinsky branch except Nugzar himself. Despite basing his claim on male primogeniture, Nugzar argues in favor of having his eldest daughter, Anna , designated as his heir. Various sources present three different lines as

3243-445: The hands of their powerful suzerains. In this period, in order to receive investiture from their suzerains, as a necessary prequisite, many Georgian rulers converted to Islam. Individuals from the Georgian royal family and nobility were frequently chosen for prominent administrative roles within the Safavid state. Members of the Muslim royals from the Bagrationi dynasty, amongst others, held the esteemed position of darugha ("prefect") of

3312-424: The head of the House of Imereti, potential claimants to the long-defunct Kingdom of Imereti , the last of the three Georgian kingdoms to lose its independence in 1810. The male line descending from the deposed David II of Imereti became extinct in 1978 when Prince Constantine Imeretinski died. He was survived by three daughters of his older brother. However, Prince Nugzar Petrovich Bagration-Gruzinski claims that

3381-408: The headship of the Imereti branch had – for one reason or another – transferred in the early 20th century to a cadet branch descending from an older son of Prince Bagrat of Imereti . Regardless, this branch died out in the male line in 1937 and in the female line in 2009. The third claim names another branch descending from Prince Bagrat's younger natural son. This line survives in the male line and

3450-416: The history and genealogies of medieval Georgia , Armenia , Iran , and the Byzantine Empire . Born in the Russian Empire into a princely family, Toumanoff escaped to the United States after the Russian Revolution . His works have significantly influenced the Western scholarship of the medieval Caucasus . Cyril Toumanoff was born on 10 October 1913 in Saint Petersburg , the son of Prince Leo Tumanov,

3519-437: The kingdom was only relatively spared from the encroachments of its Ottoman suzerains, while Kartli and Kakheti were similarly subjected to its Persian overlords, whose efforts to annihilate the fractious vassal kingdoms were in vain, and the two eastern Georgian monarchies, survived to be reunified in 1762 under King Erekle II , who united in his person both the Kakhetian and Kartlian lines, the latter surviving in male descent in

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3588-422: The kingship was restored by a member of the Bagrationi dynasty . Its borders fluctuated greatly as the presiding princes of Iberia confronted the Persians, Byzantines, Khazars , Arabs , and neighboring Caucasian rulers throughout this period. The time of the principate was climacteric in the history of Georgia; the principality saw the final formation of the Georgian Christian church , the first flourishing of

3657-430: The latter's deathbed in 1943. Toumanoff earned a doctorate from the Georgetown University in 1943 and soon accepted a position there which he held until his retirement as a professor emeritus of history in 1970. Thereafter he moved to Rome. An authority on nobiliary and dynastic questions, Toumanoff was also a Professed Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta , High Historical Consultant, Grand Magistry, and

3726-420: The leading local political authority, were to be confirmed and sanctioned by the court of Constantinople . They are variously entitled in Georgian sources, erist'avt'-mt'avari , eris-mt'avari , erist'avt'-erist'avi , or simply erist'avi (normally translated in English as "prince", "arch-duke", or "duke"). Most of them were additionally invested with various Roman/Byzantine titles. For example, eight out of

3795-514: The lines of Kartli , Tao , and Klarjeti – frequently struggling with each other and with neighboring rulers. The Kartli line prevailed; in 888, with Adarnase I , it restored the indigenous Iberian royal authority dormant since 580. His descendant Bagrat III was able to consolidate his inheritance in Tao-Klarjeti and the Abkhazian Kingdom , due largely to the diplomacy and conquests of his energetic foster-father David III of Tao . This unified monarchy maintained its precarious independence from

3864-399: The myth of their biblical origin helped to maintain their legitimacy and became a major ideological pillar of their millennium-long rule of Georgia. The generation-by-generation history of the Bagrationi dynasty begins only in the late 8th century. Toumanoff claimed that the first Georgian branch of the Bagratids may be traced as far back as the 2nd century AD, when they were said to rule over

3933-508: The old dynasty's princes and supporters, as historians and jurists debated which Bagrationi has the strongest hereditary right to a throne that has been vacant for two centuries. Although some monarchists support the Gruzinsky branch's claim, others — including most Royal Houses — support that of the re-patriated Mukhraneli branch. Both branches descend from the medieval kings of Georgia down to Constantine II of Georgia who died in 1505, and continue as unbroken, legitimate male lines into

4002-569: The parents of a boy on 27 September 2011, Prince Giorgi Bagration Bagrationi , who, in his person, potentially unites the Mukhraneli and Gruzinsky claims. If no other Bagrationi prince is born in either the Gruzinsky or Mukhraneli branch who is of senior descent by primogeniture, and he survives those now living, Prince Giorgi will become the heir male of the House of Bagrationi and the heir general of George XIII of Kartli-Kakheti . Principality of Iberia Principality of Iberia ( Georgian : ქართლის საერისმთავრო , kartlis saerismtavro )

4071-459: The princedom of Odzrkhe in what is now southern Georgia. The Odzrkhe line, known in the medieval annals as the Bivritianis, lasted until the 5th century AD. They cannot, however, be considered the direct ancestors of the later Bagratids who eventually restored Georgian royal authority. Pavle Ingorokva suggested that the Bagrations were a branch of the Pharnavazid dynasty of the Kingdom of Iberia . The Bagrationi family had grown in prominence by

4140-466: The region. After the death of Erekle in 1798, his son and successor, King George XII , renewed a request for protection from Emperor Paul I of Russia , and urged him to intervene in the bitter dynastic feud among the numerous sons and grandsons of the late Erekle. Paul offered to incorporate the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti into the Russian Empire, while reserving to its native dynasty a degree of internal autonomy – essentially, mediatisation , and in 1799

4209-453: The reigns of David IV the Builder (1089–1125) and of his great-granddaughter Tamar the Great (1184–1213) inaugurated the Georgian Golden Age in the history of Georgia. After fragmentation of the unified Kingdom of Georgia in the late 15th century, the branches of the Bagrationi dynasty ruled the three breakaway Georgian kingdoms, the Kingdom of Kartli , the Kingdom of Kakheti , and the Kingdom of Imereti , until Russian annexation in

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4278-408: The time the Georgian monarchy ( Caucasian Iberia ) fell to the Sassanid Persian Empire in the 6th century, and the leading local princely families were exhausted by Arab attacks. The rise of the new dynasty was made possible by the extinction of the Guaramids and the near-extinction of the Chosroids , the two earlier dynasties of Iberia with whom the Bagratids extensively intermarried, and also by

4347-448: The two kingdoms in a personal union as the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti , becoming the first Georgian ruler to preside over a politically unified eastern Georgia in three centuries. At about the same time, Karim Khan Zand had ascended the Iranian throne; Erekle II quickly tendered his de jure submission to the new Iranian ruler, however, de facto , he remained autonomous throughout the entire Zand period. Erekle II ( Hercules ) achieved

4416-404: The wedding lay in the fact that, amidst the turmoil in political partisanship that has roiled Georgia since its independence in 1991, Patriarch Ilia II of Georgia publicly called for the restoration of the monarchy as a path toward national unity in October 2007. Although this led some politicians and parties to entertain the notion of a Georgian constitutional monarchy , competition arose among

4485-468: The widower married Princess María Mercedes de Baviera y Borbón , a granddaughter of King Alfonso XII , and daughter of Don Fernando de Baviera y Borbón , who had renounced his royal rights in Bavaria to become a naturalised infante in Spain. Beginning in the 1990s, senior members of the Bagrationi-Mukhraneli descendants began re-patriating to Georgia from Spain, ending generations of exile. Irakli's elder son, Prince Georgi Bagrationi-Mukhraneli ,

4554-436: Was an early medieval aristocratic regime in a core Georgian region of Kartli , called Iberia by classical authors. It flourished in the period of interregnum between the sixth and ninth centuries, when the leading political authority was exercised by a succession of princes. The principality was established shortly after the Sassanid suppression of the local royal Chosroid dynasty , around 580; it lasted until 888, when

4623-428: Was eventually acknowledged in various peace treaties with Iran and the Ottomans and the remaining Georgian territories were absorbed by the Russian Empire in a piecemeal fashion in the course of the 19th century. In the Russian Empire , the Bagrationis became a prominent family of aristocrats. The most famous was Prince Pyotr Bagration , a great-grandson of King Jesse of Kartli who became a Russian general and hero of

4692-431: Was not recognized. On September 12, 1801, Emperor Alexander I of Russia formally re-affirmed Paul’s determination, deposing the Bagrationi dynasty from the Georgian throne. Although divided among themselves, some of the Bagrationi princes resisted Russian annexation, trying to instigate rebellion. Most of them were subsequently arrested and deported from Georgia. The reign of the House of Imereti came to an end less than

4761-474: Was officially recognized by government and church leaders when he brought his father's remains from Spain to rest with those of his ancestors in Svetitskhoveli Cathedral at Mtskheta in 1995, and moved to Tbilisi in 2005, where he died. His eldest son, Prince Irakli ( Erekle ), born in 1972, deferred his dynastic claim to his younger brother, Prince Davit (born 1976). Thus, Prince Davit — who moved to Tbilisi and reclaimed his Georgian citizenship — became Head of

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