A son of King George XII of Georgia, Bagrat occupied important administrative posts in the last years of the Georgian monarchy, after whose abolition by the Russian Empire in 1801 he entered the imperial civil service.

Around the same time, he became involved in a dynastic feud among the numerous posterity of Erekle II and George XII.

The members of the Georgian royal family were deprived of their estates and deported to Russia proper.

Unlike many of his royal relatives, Bagrat did not take arms against the Russian regime and, in 1803, accepted his exile in Moscow, which he left the day before the city's occupation by the French troops in 1812, and then in St. Petersburg, where he would live until his death.

[2] During his life in Russia, Bagrat composed a continuation of the Georgian history written by his brother David, covering the period from the middle of the 18th century to the 1840s.