George VIII of Georgia
George VIII, of the Bagrationi dynasty, was the King of the Kingdom of Georgia from 1446 to 1465 and later ruled the Kingdom of Kakheti as George I from 1466 until his death in 1476.
A member of the Bagrationi dynasty, he was the third son of Alexander I of Georgia. In 1433, Alexander appointed George as co-ruler alongside his brothers Vakhtang IV, Demetrius, and Zaal, in an attempt to strengthen the royal authority against the growing power of the nobility. However, the young George soon fell under the influence of the nobles, leading to his father’s abdication in 1442. He subsequently assumed administrative control over the northeastern territories of the Caucasus under the supervision of his elder brother, Vakhtang IV. Upon Vakhtang’s death in 1446, George seized the throne, disinherited his elder brother Demetrius, and forced him into exile.
George VIII is remembered as the last monarch to rule over a united Georgian kingdom, although the formal division of the realm was not recognized until 1490. During his reign, he rapidly lost control of Samtskhe in the 1460s, when the atabeg Qvarqvare II Jaqeli declared independence. Subsequently, Western Georgia broke away during the Georgian Triumvirate War, a civil conflict that marked the fragmentation of the kingdom. In 1465, George was captured and imprisoned by the atabeg of Samtskhe, leading to a further weakening of royal power and the rise of semi-independent principalities across Georgia. After his release in 1466, he established control over Kakheti, declared it an independent kingdom, and ruled there peacefully until his death in 1476, laying the foundations for its early institutions.
On the international stage, George VIII witnessed major geopolitical upheavals in the Near East, including the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the fall of Trebizond in 1461. Despite appeals for assistance from the Byzantines, George chose not to intervene against the Ottoman Empire in either conflict. His plans to organize a crusade against the Ottomans, in cooperation with Rome, ultimately failed due to the reluctance of European states to participate in the campaign.
Early life
Born between 1415 and 1417, George VIII was the third son of Alexander I of Georgia. His mother, Tamar, was Alexander’s second wife and the daughter of Alexander I of Imereti, the rebellious monarch of Western Georgia.George was educated at the royal court alongside his elder brothers Vakhtang and Demetrius, and he is recorded as a prince in documents dating from 1417. He is mentioned together with his father in royal charters issued on 29 September 1417, 22 September 1419, 6 January 1424, in 1427, and on 21 January 1428. However, certain other documents from the same period omit his name while referring to his brothers.
During George’s youth, his father achieved several notable successes, including the capture of Lori in 1431. Alexander I subsequently sought to strengthen the central authority of the kingdom and extend royal influence over the Georgian Orthodox Church, preparing his son David, George’s brother, to become the future Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia.
Co-rulership of Georgia
During the 1430s, Alexander I of Georgia initiated a program of royal centralization, aiming to strengthen the monarchy and suppress the great feudal lords who continued to defy royal authority. After confiscating many of their estates, he appointed his four sons — Vakhtang, Demetrius, George, and Zaal — as co-rulers in 1433. According to historian Cyril Toumanoff, Alexander was influenced by the Byzantine model of shared sovereignty, delegating administrative duties among his sons. However, this interpretation was rejected by the 18th-century chronicler Vakhushti of Kartli, who denied any deliberate imitation of Byzantine practices. Alexander also promoted the military expansion of the kingdom and the reconstruction of numerous towns that had been devastated by centuries of warfare.Each of the co-rulers was represented in the Georgian delegation that participated in the Council of Ferrara in 1438 and the Council of Florence in 1439 — two ecumenical assemblies presided over by Pope Eugene IV. The king permitted his sons to send their representatives to these councils to balance the influence of Mingrelia and Samtskhe, both of which sought the support of Rome in their efforts to gain independence from the crown.
In 1439, Alexander I fell gravely ill, prompting his sons to assume control of the government. Although physicians expected his death, he recovered in 1440 to find that the royal court had slipped from his authority. Encouraged by the powerful nobility, divisions deepened within the royal family, and the king’s sons grew increasingly independent, refusing to obey their father’s commands. The disunity became evident when the royal council failed to agree on a strategy to repel the invasion of the Turcoman ruler Jahan Shah, whose forces subsequently massacred nearly two thousand Georgians.
By 1442, Alexander I could no longer maintain control over his fractious realm. After a reign of thirty years, he abdicated the throne and retired to monastic life under the name Athanasius. Before his withdrawal, he arranged the marriage of George VIII to Princess Nestan-Darejan Bagrationi, daughter of his uncle Bagrat, the son of Constantine I of Georgia. The throne was reserved for his eldest son Vakhtang IV, while the remaining brothers divided the kingdom among themselves. The youngest, Zaal, subsequently disappeared from historical records. Alexander I died in 1446.
Successor of Vakhtang IV
Following the abdication of his father Alexander I, Vakhtang IV succeeded to the throne with the title of King of Kings, which conferred seniority over his younger brothers. Demetrius and George VIII, however, continued to administer certain regions of the kingdom. The sources remain uncertain regarding their exact titles: historians Cyril Toumanoff and Donald Rayfield suggest that they may still have been styled as kings, whereas the Georgian Chronicles refer to them merely as princes ''. According to Vakhushti of Kartli, George VIII was not formally designated co-ruler until 1445. The Catholicos Anthony I, in his Twelfth Discourse on History, was the first to mention George as governor of a substantial portion of the kingdom under his brother’s authority.The 19th-century Georgian prince David recorded that Vakhtang IV assigned to George the northeastern territories of the Caucasus, including Derbent on the Caspian Sea. Vakhushti of Kartli, however, described the borders of his domains differently, extending from Ciscaucasia in the north, along the Aragvi River in the west to Mount Lilo on the Iori Plateau, the Kura River in the south, and the Caspian Sea in the east. Meanwhile, Demetrius and Vakhtang IV shared control over Western Georgia and Kartli. Vakhtang IV ruled only briefly before dying childless in 1446. Under circumstances that remain obscure—possibly in accordance with the late king’s will—George VIII assumed the crown and disinherited his elder brother, who was forced to retreat to Western Georgia.
The official royal chronology compiled in the 18th century nonetheless recognizes Demetrius as the legitimate monarch until 1452. Surviving royal charters indicate that George VIII’s reign began on 25 December 1446.
The Georgian army, strengthened by the military reforms of Alexander I, remained a formidable force, as demonstrated by its victories over the Turcomans at the battle of Akhaltsikhe in 1444. During his diplomatic missions, the king estimated that he could muster up to seventy thousand troops — a stark contrast to two decades later, when forty thousand Turcomans devastated the kingdom. This military strength gave Georgia a significant strategic role within an Orthodox world increasingly threatened by the Ottoman Empire.
In 1451, the Byzantine diplomat George Sphrantzes visited the Georgian court seeking a bride for Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos. The king agreed to marry his daughter to the emperor, but the negotiations became entangled in financial disagreements: while Sphrantzes requested a dowry, Georgian custom demanded a bride price, and the discussions even extended to the cession of several Byzantine towns. The proposed alliance alarmed the Ottomans, who, preparing for the siege of Constantinople, sought to eliminate potential Byzantine allies. In 1451, they launched a swift but devastating raid on the Abkhazian coast, to which the Georgians did not retaliate.
Ultimately, George agreed to provide fifty-six thousand ducats, along with jewels, fine furnishings, ceremonial robes, and an annual payment of three thousand ducats. The scale of this commitment threatened to bankrupt the Georgian treasury; however, the marriage proposal was rendered moot by the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Early challenges
From the very beginning of his reign, George VIII faced the separatist ambitions of Georgia’s major principalities, including Mingrelia, Guria, and Samtskhe, all of which had begun to pursue their own independent military and diplomatic policies. Although he was nominally sovereign over the entire Georgian realm, his actual authority was limited de facto to Kartli.In 1447, a civil war broke out in Samtskhe when the atabeg Aghbugha II Jaqeli, who was supported by the royal court, was overthrown by his brother Qvarqvare II Jaqeli. Aghbugha fled to Tbilisi, the royal capital, where he continued to be recognized as the legitimate ruler of his province until his death in 1451. After Aghbugha’s death, the king—persuaded by the “viziers” of the usurper—confirmed Qvarqvare II in his title as atabeg and officially recognized him as lord of Samtskhe. This, however, did little to ease the tension between the crown and its increasingly defiant vassal.
Qvarqvare II soon acted as a fully independent ruler, pursuing a policy of complete separation from the Georgian monarchy. He seized Vardzia and other royal estates and proclaimed the Autocephaly of the Samtskhe Orthodox Church, supported by a Greek metropolitan sent by the clergy of Jerusalem and Antioch. As a result, the names of King George VIII and the Catholicos David IV were omitted from regional prayers, and the governor elevated the bishop of Atskuri to the rank of Patriarch.
In response, the Catholicos excommunicated the priests who had supported this declaration of autocephaly and ordered a boycott of churches in Samtskhe loyal to Qvarqvare’s faction. Fearing financial collapse, the bishop of Atskuri eventually renounced the separatist movement and sought reordination in Mtskheta, marking a strategic defeat for the rebels.
Around 1452 or 1453, Demetrius died in a hunting accident, leaving George VIII as the sole monarch of Georgia. The late prince’s son, Constantine, was taken under the king’s protection and educated in military arts at court.