[2][3] He succeeded his father Gagik I of Ani (989–1020) being the king's elder son and legal heir to the throne.

But following a compromise agreement between the two feuding brothers, he agreed to withdraw his rebel forces from Ani and let the legal heir Hovhannes-Smbat III to return to power continuing as Hovhannes-Smbat III of Ani on limited areas around the capital, whereas Ashot (known as Ashot IV) would be enthroned a concurrent king and rule in further Armenian provinces closer to Persia and Georgia.

Despite the agreed compromise, conflicts, sometimes military, continued between the two brother kings thus greatly weakening the Armenian Bagratid kingdom.

In the winter of 1021/2 Hovhannes-Smbat was compelled to make the Byzantine emperor Basil II his heir, an arrangement imposed on him on account of the Armenian support to King George I of Georgia in the Georgian-Byzantine war.

Hovhannes-Smbat's heritage eventually passed to the Byzantine Empire in 1042, long after Basil had died.