Levan, son of Heraclius II of Georgia

Levan or Leon (Georgian: ლევანი, ლეონი) (2 February 1756 – 5 February 1781) was a Georgian royal prince (batonishvili) of the Bagrationi dynasty, born to King Heraclius II and Queen Darejan Dadiani. His career flourished in the 1770s, when he was an ambassador to the Russian Empire and then an army commander. Levan was a talented general and a major supporter of his father's military reforms which eroded irreversibly after Levan's mysterious death in 1781.

Levan was the eldest son of Heraclius II, then-king of Kakheti, by his third marriage to Darejan née Princess Dadiani, born in Tbilisi in 1756. Levan's paternal grandfather, Teimuraz II, was King of Kartli, and left his kingdom, on his death in 1762, to Heraclius II. In 1766, Levan was enfeoffed with the princely appanage in the Aragvi valley, earlier held in possession of his late half-brother Vakhtang, who died in 1756.

Levan became involved in war and politics at a very young age. At 14, he already accompanied his father in military campaigns. In December 1771, during the Russian-Ottoman war of 1768–1774, in which the Georgians fought on the Russian side, Heraclius sent Levan and his cousin, the Catholicos-Patriarch of Georgia, Anton I, to negotiate a Russian protectorate over the Kingdom of Kartli and Kakheti. The Georgian embassy arrived in Astrakhan on 6 March 1772, but they were refused permission to continue to St. Petersburg. After a series of delays they reached the Russian capital almost a year later and presented on 27 April 1773 to the minister Nikita Panin Heraclius's proposal: the Kingdom of Kartli and Kakheti would remain an hereditary monarchy ruled by Heraclius's offspring under Russian protectorate; the Russian troops would be permanently stationed in Georgia to protect the country from external threats; a percentage of Georgia's tax revenues would be paid to the Imperial government, and the Georgians would join any campaign in which Russia was involved. The embassy ended in failure and the Georgian question was largely omitted in the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca concluded between the Russian and Ottoman empires on 10 July 1774. Levan returned to Georgia in August 1774 with nothing but the Order of St. Anna awarded to him by the Russian government.

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