Nerse

Nerse stands in Sumbat Davitis-dze's genealogy of the Bagratids as the son of Waraz-Bakur, the grandson of Guaram the kouropalates, and the grandfather of Ashot I the Great. Sumbat, writing in the eleventh century, records nothing about him beyond this position: after Waraz-Bakur, he writes, came Nerse and his sons Pilipe, Stepanoz, and Adarnase, and of Adarnase were born Gurgen the eristavi and Ashot the kouropalates. No title, date, or deed is assigned to Nerse himself.

A prince Nerse did rule Kartli in the eighth century. That Nerse, known from the Georgian chronicles and the Martyrdom of Abo of Tiflis, belonged to the family modern historians call the Nersianids. He was the son of Adarnase the curopalates, held the office of presiding prince from about 760, was imprisoned in Baghdad by the caliph al-Mansur in 772, was restored about 775, and fled to the Khazars and then to Abkhazia before the caliph gave his office to his nephew Stepanoz III in 779 or 780.

Cyril Toumanoff and most later scholars hold that the Bagratid Adarnase, father of Ashot, married this Nerse's daughter, making Nerse Ashot's maternal rather than paternal grandfather, and that Sumbat, seeking an unbroken male line back to King David, folded the Nersianid prince into the Bagratid stemma. The Nerse of this genealogy is therefore the chronicle's version of a real ruler whose true connection to the Bagrationi ran through his daughter.