Style of the Georgian sovereign

The style of the Georgian sovereign (ქართველი მეფის წოდება) refers to the formal mode of address to a Georgian monarch (mepe) that evolved and changed many times since the establishment of the ancient Kingdom of Iberia, its transformation to the unified Kingdom of Georgia and its successive monarchies after the disintegration of the realm.

Pre-Christian Georgian monarchs of the Pharnavazid dynasty were divinely assigned pharnah and its loss usually led to the monarch's imminent death or overthrow in Georgian kingship. Introductory part of the style for the monarchs from the Bagrationi dynasty always started with "By the Grace of God, We, of Jesse, David, Solomon, Bagrationi, Supreme by God, anointed and crowned by God", underlining their divine right and claim for biblical descent. The consolidation of the deified Bagrationi dynasty and its unprecedented political unification of lands, would inaugurate the Georgian Golden Age and creation of the only medieval pan-Caucasian empire that would rule for a thousand years. Georgian monarchs would have intense religious and political competition with the Byzantine emperors, saw themselves as the successors of the emperor Constantine the Great and even as rulers of a new Byzantium based in the Caucasus, whence the clergy would view the Georgian Orthodoxy as an "imperial church" that would fight the heretics. Even though unprecedentedly "Byzantinized Georgia" entertained its powerful neighbor's concepts and models of Constantinopolitan bureaucracy and aristocracy, it was never slavishly adopted or mimicked; rather, it was creatively and deliberately adapted to the local culture and environment. At the same time, the rulers of Christian Georgia would still be embracing the traditional influences of the Persian Shahnameh and Arabic legends that would remain strong and intact; some of their styles would even become Islamic in type. As the Crown would be gathering additional lands the style would continue to expand, but remain distinctly enumerated and include all the subjects of the Georgian monarch. Even after the collapse of the unified kingdom, Georgian kings would continue to emblazon themselves with the former imperial style and they would stake the claim to be the absolute rulers of all-Georgia. This imperial legacy of the Bagrations continues to bear fruit even today, with its self-image as the unrivalled pinnacle of the Georgian politics, culture and society.

According to the chronicler of Queen Tamar, verbally insulting a monarch was punishable with tongue mutilation and decapitation, always carried out by non-Georgian executioners. Even though the capital punishment was extremely rare in high medieval Georgia, the royal court would never pardon the insult towards a monarch. King Vakhtang VI, however, maintained that there was no official punishment for lèse-majesté.