He was known as Eskandar Mīrzā (اسکندرمیرزا) in Persia, tsarevich Aleksandr Irakliyevich (Царевич Александр Ираклиевич) in Russia, and Alexander Mirza in Western Europe.

At age 12 or 13, he was tutored by and served as an aide to the Tiflis-based German adventurer and physician Jacob Reineggs, who played a role in the Russian–Georgian diplomacy until his retirement to the Russian Empire in 1783.

[3] Fighting by his father's side, Alexander witnessed the sack of Tiflis in a disastrous attack by Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, who resented Heraclius's rapprochement with the Russian Empire and demanded Georgia's reversal to traditional allegiance to Iran.

[9] After King George XII's death in December 1800, the Russian government prevented his heir Prince David from assuming the throne and brought Kartli-Kakheti more closely under its control.

In response, Tsistianov, a loyal servant of the Russian Empire who saw no future for Georgia apart from Russia,[11] sent General Vasily Gulyakov to the conquest of Jar-Balakan, the mountainous communities sheltering Alexander and Teimuraz.

Both fled to Tabriz and joined the ranks of the reformed Persian army, Alexander as a senior adviser to the Crown Prince Abbas Mirza and Teimuraz as a commander of artillery.

[13] At the same time, Alexander sent letters to all principal dignitaries in Georgia as well as the rebellious Georgian and Ossetian highlanders, promising them that he would be arriving with Persian armies to end the Russian rule.

Barely escaping from captivity, Alexander fell back to Tabriz and Solomon retired to Trabizond, where he, the last reigning Georgian king, died in 1815.

[14] Alexander's disillusioned nephew Teimuraz, prompted by his tutor the poet Petre Laradze, escaped from the Persian camp and surrendered to the Russian authorities.

His force of Georgian rebels and Dagestani auxiliaries fought a series of engagements with the Russian troops until its final defeat at the hands of General Dimitri Orbeliani in November 1812.

[16] In the meantime, in October 1812, General Pyotr Kotlyarevsky decisively defeated Abbas Mirza's attempt to advance towards Georgia in the battle of Aslanduz.

[17] According to the British officer William Monteith, who knew Alexander personally and accompanied him during his raid into Georgia, the rebellious prince, finding it impossible to raise the means of paying his Lezgin auxiliaries, had to consent to their carrying of Georgian slaves.

The Russians under General Stahl proceeded with ravaging the Khevsur villages, putting Alexander into flight to the Avars and other mountainous tribes of the Caucasus.

The Russian authorities vainly pressured the mountaineers into surrendering the fugitive prince; they evinced toward him, in the words of Monteith, "a fidelity equal to that of the Highlanders towards Charles Edward under similar circumstances after the battle of Culloden.

"[18] Alexander's association with the Avars gave origin to a legend widespread in the area in the 19th century, according to which Imam Shamil, the future leader of Caucasian resistance to the Russian expansion, was his natural son.

The Russian commander-in-chief Aleksey Yermolov wanted Alexander if not alive, then dead so as to have his remains interred "with some honors" in Tiflis and preclude “all sorts of concoctions”.

The prince served to Wolff as a source of information about the genealogy of the Bagrationi dynasty, including a claim of descent from David, and the presence of the Jews in Georgia.

[23] Sir Robert Ker Porter, who saw Alexander in Tabriz in 1819 and noted his "bold independence of spirit" and irreconcilability to the Russian possession of Georgia, compared the refuge prince to "the royal lion hunted from his hereditary waste, yet still returning to hover near, and roar in proud loneliness of his ceaseless threatening to the human strangers who had disturbed his reign".

[24] William Monteith recalled that Alexander "never showed any pride of birth, nor did he gave way to useless regrets for the loss of his fortune and princely dignity, though he had no hesitation in talking of his adventures, or giving any information that was asked for concerning them.

A report in The Asiatic Journal from that period noted that Alexander, "one of the principal refugee chiefs" in Iran and "a man of an enterprize", had lost confidence among the Georgians who were suspicious of his use of Dagestani auxiliaries and showed no "disposition to rise on the present occasion against their rulers.

In 1790, King Heraclius himself began making arrangements for Alexander to marry Nino, the daughter of a Circassian chief from Greater Kabarda, of the Muslim clan of Misostov.

[36] In 1820, on May 20, Alexander (age 50) married Mariam (12 August 1808 – 7 October 1882), the 12-year-old daughter of the Armenian dignitary Sahak Melik-Aghamalyan, in Etchmiadzin Cathedral, Erivan, Persia.

[36] The Iranian governor of the Erivan Khanate, Hossein Khan Sardar, maintained good relations with Sahak and played an instrumental role in arranging the marriage.

After the demolition of the cathedral by the Soviet government in 1930, her marble gravestone with a trilingual Russian, Armenian, and Georgian epitaph was moved to the State Museum of the History of Georgia in Tiflis (now Tbilisi).

[42] Alexander's daughter, Princess Elizabeth (13 July 1821 – 17 September 1836),[39] who was the second wife of Samson-Khan (Samson Yakovlevich Makintsev; 1770–1853), a Russian defector and a high-ranking commander in the Qajar army.