In the urgency of a situation, Georgian prince David III of Tao aided Basil II and after the decisive loyalist victory at the Battle of Pankaleia, he was rewarded by lifetime rule of key imperial territories in eastern Asia Minor.

When David died early in 1001, Basil II added his inheritance – Tao, Theodosiopolis, Phasiane and the Lake Van region (Apahunik) with the city of Manzikert – to the theme of Iberia.

He also entered in an alliance with the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt, Al-Hakim (c.996–1021), that put Basil in a difficult situation, forcing him to refrain from an acute response to George's offensive.

In the autumn of 1021 Basil, at the head of a large army reinforced by the Varangian Guards, attacked the Georgians and their Armenian allies, recovering Phasiane and pushing on beyond the frontiers of Tao into inner Georgia.

A bloody battle was fought near the village Shirimni at the Lake Palakazio (now Çildir, Turkey) on September 11 and the emperor won a costly victory, forcing George I to retreat northwards into his kingdom.

[1] The Byzantines overran the Georgian borderlands and besieged Kldekari, a key fortress in Trialeti province, but failed to take it and marched back on the region Shavsheti.

Constantine's death in 1028 rendered the Byzantine invasion abortive, and, in 1030, the regent, queen dowager Mariam paid a visit to the new emperor Romanos III (c.1028–1034).

In 1033, the royal court faced another dynastic trouble, this time with Bagrat's half-brother Demetrius of Anacopia, a son of George I of his second marriage with Alda of Alania.

[3] Pretenders enjoyed numerous successes against the royal armies, despite their efforts to take a key fortress Ateni went in vain, Liparit and the Byzantines won a major victory at the Battle of Sasireti, where Bagrat suffered a crushing defeat and was forced to withdraw from his eastern possessions to take refuge in the western Georgian highlands.

[3] Bagrat appealing to the emperor Constantine IX, it was arranged, through the Byzantine mediation, that Liparit should receive nearly a half of the realm (south of the Mtkvari River) only as a dutiful subject to the king of Georgia.

[3] The second half of the 11th century was marked by the strategically significant invasion of the Seljuq Turks, who by the end of the 1040s had succeeded in building a vast empire including most of Central Asia and Persia.

On this occasion, George II of Georgia was bestowed with the Byzantine title of Caesar, granted the fortress of Kars and put in charge of the Imperial Eastern limits.

Relations between the two Christian monarchies were then generally peaceful except for the episode of 1204, when Emperor Alexios III Angelos seized a sizable donation of the then Georgian regent Queen Tamar, that was meant for the monks of Mount Athos.

[9] The following year, David Komnenos commanded the Georgian troops in a successful campaign that resulted in the conquest of territories between Trebizond and Heraclea Pontica, while Alexios defeated the Seljuks and recaptured Amisos, Sinope, Oinaion and Chalybia.

In the subsequent Trepizuntine civil war the Greek party, supported by the Genoese, and by Byzantine mercenaries were opposed by the local nobles, who considered themselves the patriotic champions of native rights.

The opposition persuaded Anna, called Anachoutlou, the elder daughter of Emperor Alexios II of Trebizond and his Georgian wife Jiajak Jaqeli, to quit her monastic dress and escape to Lazia, where she was crowned empress and gained control over the region, and all the native Laz and the Tzan people,[11] recognised her as the legal heir to the throne for being nearest legitimate heir of her brother Basil.

The prevalence of the indigenous Amytzantarioi after Anna's ascension to the throne had provoked continuous attempts by the opposing Scholarioi to overthrow her with the support of other noble families.