Gurgen of Iberia

Gurgen was the last Bagrationi king of the Iberians before the union of the Georgian crowns and the father of Bagrat III, the first king of a unified Georgia. He was the son of Bagrat II of Iberia, called the Simple, of the Kartli line of the dynasty that traced its royal title to Adarnase IV. His marriage was the pivot of Georgian history in his generation: his wife Gurandukht of Abkhazia was a daughter of George II of Abkhazia, and when her brothers Leon III, Demetrius III, and Theodosius III died without male heirs, the succession to the western kingdom fell to her son.

That son, Bagrat, born about 960, was adopted around 976 by the childless David III of Tao, the most powerful of the Bagratids, who installed him in Kartli in 976 and on the Abkhazian throne in 978 while Gurgen and Gurandukht acted on his behalf during his minority. Gurandukht held Uplistsikhe and part of Kartli in her own right. Gurgen himself became king of the Iberians on his father's death in 994, taking the style king of kings of the Kartvelians, so that for fourteen years father and son ruled side by side, one in the old Bagratid lands of Lower Tao and Javakheti and the other in Abkhazia and Kartli.

The death of David III in 1000 or 1001 brought Gurgen into conflict with Byzantium. David had promised his domains to the emperor Basil II, who marched east to collect them; Gurgen and Bagrat met the emperor but could not prevent the annexation of Tao. Basil granted Gurgen the title of magistros and gave Bagrat the higher rank of kouropalates, a distinction the Georgian chronicle says was meant to set father against son, though it failed to do so. Later in 1000 Gurgen tried to seize David's inheritance by force and was driven back by the Byzantine commander Nikephoros Ouranos.

Gurgen died in 1008, or 1009 according to some sources. With his death Bagrat III added the kingdom of the Iberians to Abkhazia and Kartli, and the union of the Bagrationi and Abkhazian inheritances that Gurgen's marriage had made possible became a single Georgian kingdom.