George XII of Georgia

George XII was the last king of Kartli-Kakheti, whose brief and ailing reign ended with the Russian annexation of eastern Georgia and the close of more than a thousand years of Bagrationi rule. Born in 1746, he was the second son of Erekle II and his first wife, Anna Abashidze. The deaths of his elder brothers made him heir, and the Treaty of Georgievsk of 1783 recognized his succession. But Erekle's third wife, Queen Darejan, pressed the claims of her own sons, and in 1794 the old king signed a decree of agnatic seniority under which George's half-brother Iulon, not George's son, would follow him.

Erekle died in January 1798 and George succeeded him and was crowned on 5 December 1799. Afflicted with severe edema and scarcely able to move, he faced a kingdom devastated by the Persian sack of Tbilisi in 1795 and threatened by Lezgin raids and renewed Persian claims. His half-brothers Iulon, Parnaoz, and Vakhtang, backed by Darejan, refused to recognize him. George had his son David proclaimed heir on 22 February 1799.

Unable to master these divisions, George turned to Russia. Late in 1799 the Russian minister Pyotr Kovalensky arrived with troops. In 1800 George's envoys presented Paul with sixteen Petitionary Articles asking that the kingdom enter the Russian Empire while keeping its laws and a hereditary king of his line. Russia signaled acceptance on 19 November 1800, but Paul had resolved on annexation, and on 18 December he signed a manifesto abolishing the kingdom. George died in Tbilisi on 28 December 1800, unaware of the decision, and was buried at Svetitskhoveli in Mtskheta.

The manifesto was published in January 1801 and confirmed by Alexander I on 12 September 1801. David governed provisionally until May 1801; he and the royal family were later taken to Russia. George had married Ketevan Andronikashvili in 1766, who died in 1782, and Mariam Tsitsishvili in 1783; the two marriages produced more than twenty children, including David, Ioane, and Bagrat. Contemporaries praised his piety and justice; later historians saw a ruler unable to hold his house together. Later claimants to the Georgian throne have descended from his son Bagrat.