Marriages Different sources mention David's two wives of whom one, unnamed, was an Armenian lady; the other, Gurandukht, a
Cuman-
Kipchak, is the only one who can be precisely identified. The Armenian chronicler Matthew of Edessa says that David's eldest son
Demetrius was born from an Armenian woman. She is not mentioned in the surviving Georgian documents. A reference to the former wife of David, a king of Georgia, is found in the letter of Ansellus,
cantor of the
Holy Sepulchre, dating from 1120, with which he was sending a relic of the
True Cross to the
bishop of Paris. Ansellus reports that he acquired the relic from a convent of Georgian nuns only recently established in
Jerusalem under the patronage of the
Latin patriarch Ghibbelin. Ansellus names the founder of the nunnery as King David's "widow". Since David died only in 1125, the lady of Ansellus's letter may have been his first wife, whom he divorced for political reasons in order to marry a Kipchak princess. According to the modern historian
Cyril Toumanoff, David's repudiation of his first marriage occurred 1107. The same author hypothesizes that David's Armenian wife was called Rusudan and she mothered all of David's children. The modern Georgian genealogists Ioseb Bichikashvili and Yuri Chikovani assume that David's elder children were born of his first marriage and at least one son, called
Vakhtang, was produced from the second marriage to Gurandukht. Gurandukht, a daughter of "the supreme leader of the Kipchaks"
Otrok (Atraka), was the only wife of David mentioned by his medieval Georgian biographer. He married her years before the
recruitment of around 40,000 of the Kipchaks in the Georgian service, which David effected c. 1118.
Gurandukht is a
Persianate name popular in medieval Georgia; her original Turkic name is unknown as are the details of her life. The chronicler of David praises Gurandukht's virtues and points out that the marriage helped David to secure the transfer of the Kipchak families as allies of the Georgian crown.
Children , dated to 1140. The
Life of King of Kings David mentions David's four children, two sons—
Demetrius and
Vakhtang—and two daughters—
Tamar and
Kata. Demetrius (Demetre), born c. 1093, was the eldest son of David IV and succeeded him to the throne of Georgia (). Vakhtang, whose birth c. 1118 is mentioned in passing by David's chronicler, is further known only from the
Will of King David, a 12th-century document of questionable authenticity, which also gives his possible sobriquet Tsuata. There is a reference to David's other possible son "Gorgi" (George, Giorgi) in the 13th-century Armenian chronicle of
Vardan Areveltsi, but the passage, relating a conspiracy against Demetrius I in 1030, was corrupted by the later copyists and it remains open to more than one interpretation. David's daughter Tamar was given in marriage to the
Shirvanshah Manuchihr III. She founded the
Monastery of Tigva in Georgia and became a nun in widowhood. Kata married into the Byzantine imperial family c. 1116. The identity of her husband is not revealed by the medieval sources. He may have been
Isaac Komnenos (a son of the emperor
Alexios I Komnenos),
Alexios Bryennios (a son of
Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger and
Anna Komnene), or
Alexios Komnenos (a son of the emperor
John II Komnenos). If the first theory is true and Helene, a daughter of Isaac and Kata, was indeed the wife of the
Rurikid Rus' prince
Yuri Dolgorukiy, then this marriage may have provided, through
descent from antiquity, a Bagratid ancestry to numerous Russian and Polish descendants. The 13th-century Georgian chronicle,
the Histories and Eulogies of the Sovereigns, mentions yet another daughter of David who was married off in Alania, "Ovset'i" of the Georgian sources. According to the modern genealogists such as Ioseb Bichikashvili and Cyril Toumanoff, she was named Rusudan and married into the family of Alan kings, which is claimed by the 18th-century Georgian author
Vakhushti of Kartli to have been a collateral branch of the Georgian Bagratids through their descent from
Demetrius, son of King
George I of Georgia (), and of which
David Soslan, consort of Queen
Tamar of Georgia (), was the most famous representative. According to Cyril Toumanoff, Rusudan wed the Alan king Jadaron, David Soslan's father, of Vakhushti's account, while Ioseb Bichikashvili makes her the wife of David, Jadaron's hypothetical grandfather. In total, Cyril Toumanoff tentatively identifies seven of David's children: Demetrius, George, Rusudan, Zurab, Vakhtang, Tamar and Kata. Zurab, otherwise unknown, is mentioned, along with David's successor Demetrius, in a brief chronology of the Georgian history attached to an 18th-century manuscript found and published, in 1912, by
Ekvtime Takaishvili. Takaishvili, however, himself rejected his earlier identification of Zurab and Demetrius as two different sons of David IV and concluded that Zurab, derived from
Sohrab, the name of a character from the Persian epic
Shahnameh, might have been applied to Demetrius as an epithet just like the medieval poet
Ioane Shavteli compared David IV's valor to
Rostam, another hero from the
Shahnameh. ==Notes==