Irakli Bagration of Mukhrani


Irakli Bagration-Mukhraneli was a Georgian prince of the Mukhrani branch of the former royal dynasty of Bagrationi.

Early life

He was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, to Prince George Bagration of Mukhrani and his wife Helena Sigismundovna, née Nowina Złotnicka. The 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia forced the family to leave Georgia. Educated in Germany, Prince Irakli then settled in Italy in the 1930s.

Personal life

He married and divorced Maria Belaiev. Married Maria Antonietta née Pasquini dei Conti di Costafiorita in 1940. Following her death in 1944, Irakli, with his infant son Giorgi, moved to Spain, where he naturalized and married Infanta Doña María de las Mercedes Raimunda de Baviera y Borbón, a niece of Alfonso XIII of Spain, in 1946 at the Castle of San Sebastian, Spain. She died in 1953, leaving the daughter Mariam and son Bagrat behind, and Prince Irakli married María del Pilar Pascual y Roig, Marquesa de Carsani, in 1961.

Career

Irakli Bagration-Mukhraneli played a prominent role in Georgian political emigration and, as an active royalist, remained in opposition to the Soviet rule in Georgia. He restored the Order of the Eagle of Georgia and the Seamless Tunic of Our Lord Jesus Christ in 1939 and sponsored the establishment of the Germany-based Union of Georgian Traditionalists, which fought to restore Georgia’s sovereignty from the USSR and advocated a constitutional monarchy as a form of the government for independent Georgia. Following his father’s death in 1957, Prince Irakli succeeded as Head of the Princely House of Mukhrani and declared himself Head of the Royal House of Georgia, assuming the style of His Royal Highness. He died in Madrid in 1977. His remains were in the British Cemetery of Madrid until 1995.

Patronages