Georgia's last king asked Russia for protection, Russia abolished his dynasty, and his heirs were suing each other over the royal name in 2019

In September 1799 King George XII of Kartli-Kakheti asked Emperor Paul I to take his kingdom under Russian protection. He hoped to keep his royal rank and reign as his ancestors had. George died in 1800. Paul's manifesto of 30 January 1801 annexed the kingdom instead, and Alexander I confirmed it in September 1801. The Bagrationi were removed to Russia. On 12 April 1803 Russian troops came to deport George's widow, Queen Mariam, and General Ivan Lazarev died in her house. Accounts since the 19th century say she stabbed him with a dagger^†. A 2014 paper by the Georgian historian Ivane Imerlishvili calls that attribution unfounded. Mariam was held at a convent in Belgorod and died in 1850. She is buried in Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. Two branches of the family later claimed headship. On 8 February 2009 David Bagration of Mukhrani married Anna Bagration-Gruzinsky in Holy Trinity Cathedral, Tbilisi, before about 3,000 guests, a match meant to join the two lines. Their son Giorgi was born in 2011, was baptised by Patriarch Ilia II, and the Church declared him future heir. The couple divorced in 2013. In March 2019 Anna and her father Nugzar sued David in Tbilisi City Court, alleging that he used the name of the royal house without the right. David offered Nugzar a DNA test, and Nugzar refused. No verdict was found^†.