David VIII of Georgia

David VIII spent most of his reign, from 1292 or 1293 to 1311, in open or latent rebellion against the Ilkhanate, holding out in the mountains while the Mongols set up his brothers as rival kings. Born in 1273, he was the eldest son of Demetrius II the Self-Sacrificing and his first wife, a Trapezuntine princess probably a daughter of Emperor Manuel I of Trebizond. After his father's execution in 1289 the eastern throne went briefly to his kinsman Vakhtang II, son of David VI Narin; the Ilkhan Gaykhatu then appointed David king as a reward for his service against a rising in Rum. Like his father he ruled only eastern Georgia, the west having been a separate kingdom under the Imeretian branch since 1259. In 1295 David backed Baydu in the Ilkhanid succession struggle. When Ghazan Khan prevailed and summoned him to Tabriz, David, mindful of his father's fate, refused to go and prepared for war, entrenching himself in the highland district of Mtiuleti, where Mongol punitive expeditions failed to dislodge him. Ghazan declared him deposed and in 1299 installed his younger brother George V as king, though George's authority scarcely reached beyond Tbilisi; in 1302 the khan replaced him with another brother, Vakhtang III. A truce followed under which David was recognized as joint sovereign with Vakhtang and received the principality of Alastani, and from 1308 his young son George VI was associated with him as co-king. The sources do not make clear how far he was ever formally reconciled with the Mongols. David married first Oljath, a daughter of the Ilkhan Abaqa, by whom he had Melchizedek and Andronicus; the marriage was dissolved in 1302. He then married a daughter of Hamada Surameli, mother of George VI, born in 1303 or 1304. David died in 1311, and the Ilkhan Oljaitu confirmed the child George VI as king. His burial place is not recorded in the sources consulted. The kingdom's eventual reunification fell to his half-brother George V the Brilliant.