Vakhtang II of Georgia

Vakhtang II reigned as king of Georgia from 1289 to 1292, a Mongol appointee who for three years reunited, at least in title, the eastern and western halves of a kingdom split by the Mongol conquest. He was the son of David VI Narin, the Bagrationi king who had withdrawn to Imereti in 1259 and ruled western Georgia from Kutaisi, by his first wife Tamar Amanelisdze, and he was already his father's designated heir when events in the east called him away.

In 1289 the Ilkhan Arghun had King Demetrius II of eastern Georgia executed at the instigation of the Mongol commander Khutlubuga. On Khutlubuga's advice Arghun decided to fill the vacant throne with a prince of the western line, hoping to bring all Georgia under one ruler answerable to him. The Georgian chronicle relates that Khutlubuga traveled to Imereti to lay the proposal before David Narin, who escorted his son to Tashiskari, where the nobles of Kartli and the Mongol commanders swore allegiance to Vakhtang. Arghun then confirmed him as king and gave him in marriage his sister Oljath, a daughter of the Ilkhan Abaqa and a great-great-granddaughter of Genghis Khan, joining the Bagrationi house to the Mongol imperial family.

Once enthroned, Vakhtang governed with more independence than his sponsor had expected. He refused to let Khutlubuga act at will, and when the commander turned against him and promoted Demetrius II's son David as a rival, both Georgian nobles and Mongol officers stood by the king. The death of Arghun in 1291 did not shake him; the new Ilkhan Gaykhatu favored him and he kept his throne.

Vakhtang died unexpectedly in 1292, still young and after only three years as king. The chronicle gives no cause. His body was carried back to western Georgia and buried at Gelati, and he left no known children. The Ilkhan gave the crown to his cousin David VIII, the son of Demetrius II, who also married Vakhtang's widow Oljath. Vakhtang's father outlived him by a year, and the western kingdom passed to his brothers Constantine I and Michael of Imereti.