Constantine II of Georgia

Constantine II was the last king to claim the whole of Georgia and the first king of Kartli, and in his reign, from 1478 to 1505, the medieval Georgian kingdom finally dissolved into the separate states of Kartli, Kakheti, Imereti, and Samtskhe. He was born about 1447, the son of Prince Demetrius and a grandson of King Alexander I; George VIII was his uncle. From 1469 he ruled part of Kartli against the rival king Bagrat VI, failed in an attempt on Kutaisi, and only on Bagrat's death in 1478 gained the throne, driving Bagrat's son Alexander II out of Kartli with the help of the mountain militias.

His attempt to hold the kingdom together failed. In 1481 he briefly subordinated Samtskhe and styled himself king of all Georgia, but in 1483 Qvarqvare II defeated him at Aradeti, and in 1484 Alexander II retook Kutaisi and was crowned king of Imereti; Constantine's invasions of 1485 and 1487 could not dislodge him. From 1486 the Aq Qoyunlu Turkomans of Sultan Yaqub raided Kartli, and in 1488 and 1489 their commander Sufi Khalil besieged and took Tbilisi before Georgian forces under Sulkhan Baratashvili defeated them. Around 1490 Constantine convened a royal council to plan the recovery of the lost provinces, but the nobles counseled peace, and by 1491 he had recognized Alexander I as king of Kakheti and Alexander II as king of Imereti, retaining Kartli alone.

Constantine looked abroad for allies. Between 1492 and 1496 he sent envoys to the Mamluk sultan Qaitbay, to Pope Alexander VI, and to Isabella of Castile seeking help against the Ottomans and the rising Safavids, without result. In 1500 he sent three thousand men to join the campaign of Shah Ismail I against the Ottomans and helped take Nakhchivan by 1503, only for Ismail to make Kartli and Kakheti his vassals.

Constantine married Tamar, who died in 1492. Their sons included David X of Kartli, who succeeded him, George IX of Kartli, Bagrat, founder of the house of Mukhrani, and Melchizedek II, later Catholicos-Patriarch. Church records suggest that he abdicated in 1503 or 1504 and entered a monastery under the name Cyril; he died in 1505.