David VI Narin

David VI, called Narin, "the Junior," founded the separate kingdom of Western Georgia, known as Imereti, and with it the Imeretian branch of the Bagrationi dynasty. Born in 1225, he was the son of Queen Rusudan of Georgia and her Seljuk husband Ghias ad-Din, a prince of Erzurum who had converted to Christianity for the marriage. His mother crowned him joint sovereign at Kutaisi in 1230 and in 1243 sent him to Batu Khan to secure Mongol recognition as heir. He returned in 1246 to find that the nobles had proclaimed his cousin David, the illegitimate son of George IV Lasha, as king. At Karakorum that year Guyuk Khan divided the kingdom between them, making the cousin senior king, Ulu, and David junior, Narin. They ruled together from 1247 until 1259, when David rose against the Ilkhanid levies. Defeated in Imereti, he escaped through Armenia to Kutaisi, proclaimed the secession of the lands west of the Likhi range, and was accepted as king by the western nobility. His western kingdom controlled the Black Sea coast from Guria to Abkhazia, with the ports of Batumi and Poti. He cultivated friendly relations with the Golden Horde and Mamluk Egypt, the Ilkhanate's enemies, and repulsed Ilkhanid attacks. In 1278 he abolished the rebellious duchy of Racha and annexed it to the crown; in April 1282 he invaded the Empire of Trebizond and seized several provinces, though the capital held out. David married first Tamar Amanelisdze, mother of Vakhtang II, Constantine I, and Michael, and then Theodora, a daughter of the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, mother of Alexander, renewing the Bagrationi tie to Constantinople. In 1289 the Ilkhans installed his eldest son Vakhtang II as king in the east, in an attempt to reunite Georgia that ended with Vakhtang's death in 1292. David himself died at Kutaisi in 1293 and was buried in the chapel of St. Andrew at Gelati. His sons Constantine and Michael divided the western kingdom between them.