The Two Marriages

Tamar’s marriages were affairs of state before they were anything else: the crown needed an heir and a war-leader without surrendering the sovereign’s authority. The first, to the Rus’ prince Yuri (George) Bogolyubsky, failed and ended in his expulsion and two armed attempts to seize the throne; the second, to the Alan prince David Soslan, gave her a true consort, a great general, and two children. This file treats both marriages soberly, following the sources and flagging where they are hostile or one-sided.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox

Marriage as Statecraft

For a reigning female sovereign the marriage question was acute and double-edged. Tamar needed a husband to secure the dynasty with an heir and to lead her armies — a war-leader was expected of a Georgian king, and a woman could not personally command in battle in the manner the age required. But a husband might also try to make himself the real ruler, reducing the mepe to a consort in her own kingdom. The story of Tamar’s two marriages is the story of that danger realized in the first union and averted in the second (Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012; Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation, 2nd ed., 1994, ch. 3).

The First Marriage: Yuri (George) Bogolyubsky

Under pressure from her nobles, who wanted an heir secured and a warrior at the head of the army, Tamar was married — against, the tradition says, her own inclination — to Yuri (in Georgian, George; Rus’ Yuri), a prince of the Rus’. He was a son of Andrei Bogolyubsky, the prince of Vladimir-Suzdal, and had fled south after his father’s assassination in 1174, living among the Qipchaqs before the Georgian nobility fetched him as a suitable royal husband for their queen (Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012, on Yuri’s origin and the marriage; Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994). The marriage is usually dated to 1185 (the Tamar of Georgia entry gives 1185–1187 for the union).

Yuri proved, by the Georgian account, a disaster. He won early military successes at the head of Tamar’s armies, but his personal conduct — the sources charge drunkenness and grave vice — and, more fundamentally, the political impossibility of the arrangement, made the marriage untenable. After roughly two years Tamar obtained its dissolution, in what modern historians describe as effectively a royal divorce carried through with the backing of the church and the nobility who had come round to her, and Yuri was expelled from Georgia, sent away to Constantinople (Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012, on the divorce and expulsion; Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994).

[Disputed: the character of Yuri Bogolyubsky and the grounds for the divorce reach us only through pro-Tamar Georgian sources, which are frankly hostile to him and charge him with drunkenness and vice (the “Histories” of Tamar; summarized in Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012). Because these are the sources of a court that had expelled him and needed to justify a highly irregular act — the divorce and repudiation of a reigning queen’s consort — their portrait cannot be taken at face value as neutral fact. That the marriage failed and ended in Yuri’s expulsion is well attested; the fullness of the moral indictment against him is the winners’ account, and is flagged as such.]

Yuri did not accept his expulsion. Twice he returned at the head of forces raised among discontented Georgian nobles and neighbouring powers, attempting to seize the throne in his own right (in risings usually dated to c. 1191 and again a few years later); both attempts were defeated, and after the second he disappears from the record (Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012, on Yuri’s two revolts; Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994). His risings are a reminder that the divorce was not merely a domestic episode but a political crisis, and that the loyalty Tamar had built among her nobles (see The Queen and the Nobles) was strong enough to defeat a claimant with a real dynastic grievance.

The Second Marriage: David Soslan

Tamar’s second marriage was of an entirely different character. She married David Soslan, a prince of the Alans (Ossetians) — and, by the Georgian tradition, himself of Bagrationi blood through an earlier branch of the family, so that the union both gave her a war-leader and kept the dynasty within itself (Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012; Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994). The marriage is usually dated to c. 1189, with some sources giving 1191.

[Disputed: the date of the marriage to David Soslan is given as c. 1189 by some sources and 1191 by others (the Tamar of Georgia entry gives 1191); the Alan David’s precise pedigree, and the claim that he was himself a Bagrationi, rest on the Georgian tradition and cannot be independently verified (Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012; Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994). This collection gives the marriage as c. 1189/1191 and treats the pedigree as the tradition’s claim.]

David Soslan was the consort the first marriage had failed to be. He became Tamar’s leading general — commanding her armies at the great victories of Shamkor (1195) and Basiani (c. 1203) — while remaining, in title and in fact, her co-ruler and not her master: the coinage and the “Histories” keep Tamar as the sovereign, David as the king-consort who acts for and with her (Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012, on David Soslan as general and co-ruler; Eastmond, Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia, 1998, on the co-rulership imagery; see The Military Triumphs). Crucially, the marriage produced the heirs the dynasty needed: a son, George (Giorgi) IV Lasha, born c. 1192/1194, who would succeed Tamar, and a daughter, Rusudan, born c. 1194/1195, who would reign after her brother (Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012; Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994; on the birth-years the sources vary slightly). David Soslan died in 1207, some years before Tamar herself (Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012).

Reading the Two Marriages Together

The contrast between the two marriages is the contrast between the danger and the solution. Yuri represents the peril of a female sovereign’s marriage — a foreign prince who might, and by the Georgian account did, try to turn consort into master, and who could raise a real claim against her when repudiated. David Soslan represents its successful management — a war-leader who won her wars and gave her heirs while leaving the sovereignty where it belonged, with the mepe. The soberest reading keeps both facts in view: that the divorce and expulsion of Yuri was an irregular and politically risky act, justified to us only by the winners, and that the success of the second marriage was as much a matter of David’s loyalty and Tamar’s political skill as of the providence the “Histories” ascribe to it.

See Also

References

  • Rayfield, Donald. Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. London: Reaktion Books, 2012. (Yuri Bogolyubsky’s origin, the marriage, divorce, expulsion, and two revolts; David Soslan as consort and general; the children; David’s death in 1207.)
  • Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Making of the Georgian Nation. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. (The politics of the marriages; David Soslan and the heirs.)
  • Eastmond, Antony. Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1998. (The co-rulership imagery of Tamar and David Soslan; Tamar retained as sovereign.)
  • Tamar of Georgia, encyclopedic entry (used to locate the marriage dates: Yuri 1185–1187; David Soslan 1191; and the divorce grounds as stated in the Georgian sources).
  • The Georgian Chronicles (Kartlis Tskhovreba), the “Histories” of Tamar — the pro-Tamar source of the hostile portrait of Yuri, read source-critically per Methodology.