The pretender to the Georgian throne, Prince David Bagrationi Mukhrani, has been sued by his former wife according to various media outlets, among them Aurasianet.org. The lawsuit is described as another part of the internal fight for power in the Georgian Royal Family. This is because two families are claiming the right to the title of King of Georgia.

In 2009, Prince David Bagration married Princess Anna Bagration-Gruzinsky. The marriage united the two branches of the Georgian Royal Family with competing claims to the rights to the throne of Georgia. The dynastic significance of the wedding lay amid the turmoil in political partisanship that has roiled Georgia since its independence in 1991.

The couple’s only child, a son, Giorgi, was born in Madrid on 27 September 2011. On 15 December 2013, the official statement from Prince David was posted on the website of the Royal House of Georgia that confirmed his divorce from Princess Anna. Giorgi remains the only son of either spouse and the only grandson of the rival Bagrationi pretenders, Prince David and Prince Nugzar.

Judges in Georgia have now been assigned the task of selecting a rightful heir to Georgia’s throne. The Tbilisi City Court has stated that they may need to exhume the bodies of two kings from a medieval church to prove the right of succession. Princess Anna Bagration-Gruzinsky has made claims that she is more pure-blooded than her ex-husband, Prince David. The couple’s son, Giorgi, was seen as the perfect candidate to be crowned king one day by Georgian monarchists. Now the monarchical unrest has grown again.

The court in Tbilisi heard historians’ testimonials on 12 March to help them come to a conclusion. According to Eurasianet.org, a Georgian judge has suggested that the dispute is inconsequential as Anna and David’s son was anointed heir to the kingdom. Despite this, Princess Anna still insists on stopping her former husband from acting as head of his branch of the Royal Family.

The Kingdom of Georgia, also known as the Georgian Empire, was a medieval monarchy that emerged in the year 1008 and fell in 1490. As of today, there are two pretenders to the Georgian throne. They are David Bagration Mukhrani of the Bagrationi Dynasty and Nugzar Bagration-Gruzinsky of the House of Gruzinsky.

In 2017, the Republic of Georgia was considering a restoration of the monarchy and turning the nation into a parliamentarian constitutional monarchy under the same model as the western European monarchies.

The Georgian church also has recommended looking at the possibilities to see if this is possible. The monarchists in Georgia today make up an enormous political group. In 2013, a survey was conducted questioning the people on their opinions of the monarchy being reinstated; then, 78.9% of the respondents favoured sovereignty over the modern republic.