[1] The 19th-century French historian Marie-Félicité Brosset identified her father as the Lesser Kabardian chief Kilchiko[1]—Kul'chuk Kilimbetov of the Russian sources[2]—who in 1693 had tried to prevent Archil, Vakhtang's uncle, from visiting Russia.

This should have offended the Circassians, prompting, as Brosset conjectured,[1] Kilchiko to respond vigorously to the shamkhal of Tarki's call to seize George XI's brother Archil and his entourage on their way to Russia.

In 1703, Vakhtang acceded to the regency of Kartli for George XI and a successor, Kaikhosro, both reigning in absentia while serving in the Iranian ranks in Afghanistan, where they were both killed in separate campaigns.

[6] In April 1712, Vakhtang repaired to Iran to receive his investiture from Shah Sultan Husayn and was detained there until being forced to comply with the condition of accepting Islam in 1716.

Rusudan, living with his sons in Gori, west of the increasingly hostile capital of Tbilisi, eventually fled Jesse's oppressive regime to the mountains of Racha.

The queen, thus, saved the catholicos Domentius, suspected of being involved in political intrigues, from being blinded and averted the death of the general (spaspet) Luarsab Orbeliani.

In August 1716, Vakhtang, now also known by his Muslim name of Husayn-Qoli Khan, returned to Tbilisi as king and Rusudan sat on the throne by her husband, "a luminary, sunlike queen", as the contemporary Georgian historian Sekhnia Chkheidze put it.