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 (1089–1125) and of his great-granddaughter Tamar the Great (1184–1213) inaugurated the Georgian Golden Age in the history of Georgia.

[5] According to a tradition first recorded in the work of the 11th-century Georgian chronicler Sumbat Davitis-Dze[6] and repeated much later by Prince Vakhushti Bagrationi (1696–1757), the dynasty claimed descent from the biblical king and prophet David and came from Israel around 530 AD.

[11] Once the Georgian branch, which had quickly acculturated in the new environment,[12] assumed royal power, the myth of their biblical origin helped to maintain their legitimacy and became a major ideological pillar of their millennium-long rule of Georgia.

[1] 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 the princedom of Odzrkhe in what is now southern Georgia.

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 a large polity conventionally known in modern history as Tao-Klarjeti.

The sons and grandsons of Ashot I established three separate branches – the lines of Kartli, Tao, and Klarjeti – frequently struggling with each other and with neighboring rulers.

[citation needed] 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).

[1] With the death of George III the main male line became extinct and the dynasty continued through the marriage of Queen Tamar with the Alan prince David Soslan, of reputed Bagratid descent.

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 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.

[citation needed] 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 the hands of their powerful suzerains.

[22] The line of Imereti, incessantly embroiled in civil war, continued with many breaks in succession, and 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 the branch of Mukhraneli since 1658.

[1] 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.

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.

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.

Prince Dmitry Petrovich Bagration was a Russian general who fought in World War I in the Brusilov Offensive and later joined the Red Army.

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.

Irakli's elder son, Prince Georgi Bagrationi-Mukhraneli, 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,[41] and moved to Tbilisi in 2005, where he died.

[citation needed] Thus, Prince Davit — who moved to Tbilisi and reclaimed his Georgian citizenship — became Head of the Family Council and the Mukhraneli dynastic titles.

[43] 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 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.

[citation needed] As Nugzar has no male issue, Prince Evgeny Petrovich Gruzinsky (1947-2018), 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.

[51] Although this led some politicians and parties to entertain the notion of a Georgian constitutional monarchy, competition arose among 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.