Vakhtang VI of Kartli
The first documented mention of the Ratishvili, in the person of Kaikhosro and his sons—Jesse, Bezhan, and Zurab—as princes occurs in the 1688 charter of Prince Royal Bagrat. A branch of the family was established in Russia in 1724 with the emigration of Prince Zurab Ratishvili (Igor Ratiev) in the suite of Vakhtang VI of Kartli. Those remaining in Georgia had their estate in Ksovrisi near the ancient capital of Mtskheta and were listed among the princes of Kartli in a document attached to the Russo–Georgian treaty of Georgievsk in 1783. After the Russian annexation of Georgia, the family was accepted among the princely nobility of the Russian Empire in 1825, with their members confirmed in a series of decrees from 1849 to 1858.