Solomon II of Imereti

Solomon II was the last king of Imereti and the last reigning Bagrationi anywhere in Georgia, who accepted Russian protection under duress, rose against it, and died in exile. Born in 1772 and baptized David, he was the son of Prince Archil of Imereti, brother of King Solomon I, and of Helen, a daughter of Erekle II of Kartli-Kakheti. Solomon I, lacking a surviving son, named the boy his heir, but when the king died in 1784 the nobles set the will aside and enthroned a kinsman, David II.

Erekle II intervened for his grandson. In 1789 a Kartli-Kakhetian army defeated David II at Matkhoji, and David was crowned as Solomon II. His rival returned with Ottoman help in 1790 and was not finally driven out until 1792. Solomon then bound himself closely to his grandfather, joining a 1790 treaty of union among the Georgian rulers under Erekle's primacy and bringing Imeretian troops to his aid when Agha Mohammad Khan of Persia sacked Tbilisi in 1795.

Erekle's death in 1798 and the Russian annexation of Kartli-Kakheti in 1801 left him exposed. Quarrels with Grigol Dadiani of Mingrelia gave General Pavel Tsitsianov his opening, and on 25 April 1804 Solomon signed the Convention of Elaznauri, accepting Russian suzerainty in exchange for hereditary kingship and internal autonomy. The Russian authorities steadily violated its terms. In 1809 they occupied Kutaisi; in February 1810 an imperial decree deposed him, and in March he was arrested and taken to Tbilisi. He escaped in May to Ottoman Akhaltsikhe and raised Imereti in revolt, but the rising was crushed by September, plague and famine followed in 1811, and Imereti was annexed to Russia.

Solomon refused Alexander I's offers of amnesty and died at Trabzon on 7 February 1815. He had married Mariam Dadiani in 1791; the marriage was childless. In 1990 his remains were brought home and reinterred at Gelati, and on 27 July 2005 the Georgian Orthodox Church canonized him. With his deposition the Imeretian branch of the Bagrationi lost its throne, completing the Russian absorption of the Georgian kingdoms that had begun with his grandfather's realm.