09 — Legacy and Assessment
The close of the collection: Vakhtang’s legacy as founder of Tbilisi and defender of Georgian Christianity, the royal and ecclesiastical line that runs from his Iberia to David the Builder and Tamar; and a sober final assessment, held honestly between the saint, the historical king, and the national symbol.
Tradition: Georgian Orthodox
Having reconstructed Vakhtang as far as the sources allow and weighed the disputes that surround him, this final section steps back to consider what he left and how he should be judged. His legacy is real and enduring — a capital, a defended faith, a place at the head of the Georgian royal-sacred tradition — even where his biography is uncertain; and the assessment tries to state, without panegyric or debunking, what can honestly be said of the wolf-headed king of Kartli (Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994; Rayfield, Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia, 2012).
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Legacy | The founder of Tbilisi, the defender of Georgian Christianity, and the line that runs from his Iberia to David the Builder and Tamar — the enduring fruits of his reign in the city, the Church, and the national-royal tradition. |
| Assessment | A sober final weighing — what can and cannot be said of Vakhtang, how the saint, the historical king, and the national symbol relate, and what the collection concludes about a warrior-king reached mainly through epic. |
See Also
- The King and the Epic — the historical core the assessment rests on
- Vakhtang in Georgian Memory — the national memory the legacy feeds
- St. David the Builder and St. Tamar of Georgia — the later royal saints of the line
References
- Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Making of the Georgian Nation. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
- Rayfield, Donald. Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. London: Reaktion, 2012.
- Toumanoff, Cyril. Studies in Christian Caucasian History. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1963.
- Rapp, Stephen H., Jr. The Sasanian World through Georgian Eyes. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.