Mariam of Vaspurakan

Mariam of Vaspurakan, queen of Georgia, was the Armenian princess who governed the kingdom for a decade in her son's name and secured its peace with Byzantium. She was a daughter of Senekerim-Hovhannes Artsruni, the last king of Vaspurakan, who surrendered his realm around Lake Van to the emperor Basil II. Around 1014 she married George I of Georgia, son of Bagrat III, and bore him Bagrat IV and, according to Georgian tradition, the daughters Gurandukht, Kata, and Martha. George later also took Alda, daughter of the king of Alania, and some accounts say Mariam was set aside to permit that union.

When George died in August 1027, Bagrat was about eight years old, and Mariam shared the regency with the great nobles, above all Liparit of Kldekari and Ivane Abazasdze, until about 1037. Her outstanding act was the embassy of 1031 or 1032 to the court of Romanos III Argyros in Constantinople. George's war for the inheritance of David of Tao had ended in defeat, and Byzantine forces had invaded again after his death; Mariam returned with a peace treaty, the high dignity of kouropalates for her son, and a Byzantine bride, Helena, the emperor's niece, whose father Basil Argyros had been the first imperial governor of Mariam's own homeland. The Byzantine connection she renewed was later carried further by her granddaughter Martha, empress in Constantinople as Maria of Alania.

Mariam remained a force after the regency ended. She accompanied Bagrat to Constantinople when Liparit drove him from the kingdom around 1050, and Georgian encyclopedic tradition credits her with influence in the upbringing of her grandson George II as well. Fluent in Georgian, Greek, and Armenian, she was a benefactor of the Georgian monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos and in old age took the veil under the direction of George the Hagiorite. She was at her son's deathbed in November 1072; the exact date of her own death is unrecorded, but by 1103 she was being commemorated among the departed.