His rule in Guria as well as in Imereti were result of coups and part of a chaotic civil war raging in these western Georgian polities.
His parentage is not directly attested in the surviving chronicles and documents; Demetre appears to have been a son of Simon I Gurieli,[1] a patricide, who was deposed and blinded in 1626.
Formerly an Orthodox monk, Demetre recompensed his act of unfrocking by donating the church of the Redeemer in Aketi as a metochion to the patriarchal see of Bichvinta.
Amid a series of coups and counter-coups, one part of the Imeretian nobles made Demetre king after the abdication of Vakhtang V's son Archil in 1663.
His rule proved short-lived: the Imeretians caught, blinded, and expelled him and restored Bagrat V.[2][3] According to the 18th-century Georgian historian Prince Vakhushti, Demetre's final downfall occurred in 1668.