After the death of
George I, some
Georgian nobles wished to enthrone Demetrius instead of his half-brother
Bagrat IV (r. 1027–1072), but to no avail.
Alda and Demetrius lived in their fief at
Anakopia, a fortified maritime town in
Abkhazia, which had been bequeathed to them by the late king George I. The efforts by Bagrat's mother
Mariam to win Demetrius's loyalty to the crown went in vain. Threatened by Bagrat, Alda defected to the
Byzantines and surrendered Anakopia to the emperor
Romanos III who honored her son Demetrius with the rank of
magistros. This happened in 1033. In 1039, Demetrius returned to Georgia with Byzantine troops.
Liparit IV, of the
Liparitid clan, the most powerful noble in Georgia, supported the rebellious prince and launched initially a successful campaign against Bagrat's army. However, Demetrius died unexpectedly in 1042. Alda, with Demetrius’s son David, fled to her native
Alania. The 18th-century Georgian scholar
Prince Vakhushti argues that David’s descendants flourished in Alania and produced a line of local princes of which came
David Soslan, the second husband of Queen
Tamar of Georgia (r. 1184–1213). According to
Cyril Toumanoff, Demetrius also had a daughter,
Irene, the mistress of the Byzantine emperor
Constantine IX Monomachus and then the wife of
sebastokrator Isaac Komnenos. Anakopia, ceded by Alda and Demetrius to the emperor, would remain under the Byzantine sway until being recovered by Bagrat’s son and successor
George II in 1074. This happened after the
Battle of Manzikert (1071). Profiting by the defeat of the Byzantines at the hands of the
Seljukids, Georgia regained a number of key territories lost to the Empire in the course of the 11th century, including Anakopia as well as the fortresses located in the
Thema of Iberia. == References ==