Tamar of Georgia
Exactly how Alexios and Queen Tamar of Georgia were related is not clear. According to Michael Panaretos, Queen Tamar was Alexios' "paternal relative" (προς πατρός θεὶα), a phrase that has baffled scholars. As early as 1854 the Russian scholar Kunik proposed that this phrase meant that Alexios' mother was Rusudan a little-known sister of Tamar, a theory Vasiliev endorsed. Cyril Toumanoff argued that their grandfather Andronikos, while in Georgia, had married an unnamed sister of king George III. More recently Michel Kuršanskis has argued against Toumanoff's theory, producing evidence that Alexios' mother and/or grandmother were daughters of the houses of Palaiologos or Doukas, yet failing to offer an explanation why Panaretos describes Tamar as Alexios' paternal aunt.