Tamar of Georgia - Second Marriage

Second Marriage

In 1187, Tamar persuaded the noble council to approve her divorce with Yuri who was accused of addiction to drunkenness and "sodomy", and sent off to Constantinople. Assisted by several Georgian aristocrats anxious to check Tamar’s growing power, Yuri made two attempts at coup, but failed and went off to obscurity after 1191. The queen chose her second husband herself. He was David Soslan, an Alan prince, to whom the 18th-century Georgian scholar Prince Vakhushti ascribes descent from the early 11th-century Georgian king George I. David, a capable military commander, became Tamar's major supporter and was instrumental in defeating the rebellious nobles rallied behind Yuri.

Tamar and David had two children. In 1192 or 1194, the queen gave birth to a son, George-Lasha, the future king George IV. The daughter, Rusudan, was born c. 1195 and would succeed her brother as a sovereign of Georgia.

David Soslan's status of a king consort, as well as his presence in art, on charters, and on coins, was dictated by the necessity of male aspects of kingship, but he remained a subordinate ruler who shared throne with and derived his power from Tamar. Tamar continued to be styled as mep’et’a mep’e – "king of kings". In Georgian, a language with no grammatical genders, mep'e ("king") does not necessarily imply a masculine connotation and can be rendered as a "sovereign". The female equivalent of mep'e is dedop'ali ("queen"), which was applied to queens consort or the king's closest, senior female relatives. Tamar is occasionally called dedop'ali in the Georgian chronicles and on some charters. Thus, the title of mep'e might have been applied to Tamar to mark out her unique position among women.