page_title: Bagrationi dynasty
section_title: Last monarchs
hierarchical_section_title: Bagrationi dynasty / History / Last monarchs
caption_attribution_description: English: face crop
context_page_description: The Bagrationi dynasty is a royal dynasty which reigned in Georgia from the Middle Ages until the early 19th century, being among the oldest extant Christian ruling dynasties in the world. In modern usage, the name of the dynasty is sometimes Hellenized and referred to as the Georgian Bagratids, also known in English as the Bagrations.
  Historian Cyril Toumanoff claims a common origin with the Armenian Bagratuni dynasty. However, other sources claim that dynasty had Georgian roots. Early Georgian Bagratids through dynastic marriage gained the Principality of Iberia 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 the reigns of David IV the Builder and of his great-granddaughter Tamar the Great inaugurated the Georgian Golden Age in the history of Georgia.
context_section_description: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
caption: Erekle II, king of the eastern Georgian kingdoms of Kakheti and Kartli-Kakheti
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