Bagrat III of Georgia

Bagrat III was the first king of a united Georgia, the ruler in whom the Bagratid inheritance of Tao and Kartli and the crown of Abkhazia came together. Born around 960, he was the only known son of Gurgen, of the Bagratid line of northern Tao, and Gurandukht, daughter of King George II of Abkhazia. As a child he was adopted and named heir by his father's kinsman David III Kuropalates of Upper Tao. In 975 or 976 David installed the boy as ruler of Kartli under the regency of his parents; about 978, when Gurandukht's brother Theodosius III proved unable to hold Abkhazia, the nobles of both lands, led by Ioane Marushisdze, agreed on a single strong ruler, and Bagrat was invested with the Abkhazian crown at Kutaisi.

His early years were spent mastering his own realm. The Kartlian nobility held to his mother rather than to him, and Bagrat had to take Uplistsikhe from her by force; an Armenian inscription at Ateni even speaks of her part in a conspiracy against him. The greatest challenge came from Rati of Kldekari, whom Bagrat brought to submission before 994 and pardoned. In 999 he and Gurandukht completed the cathedral of Bedia in Abkhazia, and in 1003 the Bagrati cathedral at Kutaisi; both carry inscriptions naming mother and son together.

David III died in 1000, and Basil II annexed his lands, granting Bagrat the rank of kouropalates and his father the lesser rank of magistros. When Gurgen died in 1008 Bagrat inherited the title king of the Kartvelians with Lower Tao and Javakheti, and the union of the crowns was complete. He annexed Kakheti and Hereti by about 1010, and in 1012, allied with the Armenian king Gagik I, made the emir of Ganja his vassal. The Bagratid princes of Klarjeti, Sumbat and Gurgen, who refused to submit, were imprisoned in Tmogvi and put to death. He styled himself king of the Abkhazians, Kartvelians, Rans, and Kakhs.

Bagrat died on 7 May 1014 at Panaskerti in Tao, white-haired after a reign of thirty-six years, and was buried at Bedia. By his wife Martha he left a son, George I; the Georgian church canonized him in 2016. The kingdom his great-great-grandson David IV would raise to dominance was the one Bagrat had assembled.