According to the anonymous 14th-century
Chronicle of a Hundred Years, Esukan was a daughter of the
Mongol general
Chormaqan and sister of
Shiramun Noyan. David VII married her in 1263, after
Hulegu Khan put his previous wife,
Gvantsa, to death in response to David's abortive rebellion against the
Ilkhanate. A lavish wedding was celebrated in the royal capital of
Tbilisi. The marriage was childless and marred by a scandal in 1264, when Basil, a royal chancellor and bishop of
Chqondidi and of
Ujarma, was accused of
adultery with Queen Esukan. David, habitually gullible and prone to hasty decisions, promptly had Basil executed by
hanging in the middle of his capital. Modern scholars such as
Ivane Javakhishvili doubt the truthfulness of these accusations, seeing in them a plot to remove Basil, the author of a controversial project of
secularization of a part of the
church's land holdings, from the political scene of Georgia. The medieval annals give no information about the later years of the marital life of David and Esukan, but mention that, when David died (in 1270), rumors held Esukan responsible for poisoning her husband as a revenge for the death of Basil. The chronicler compares these rumors to those that had
Alexander the Great murdered by
Antipater. ==Notes==