Bagrationi-Mukhraneli, of the genealogically senior branch of the dynasty, proclaimed himself head of the Royal House of Georgia. He founded the Union of Georgian Traditionalists in exile. His second wife, Maria Antonietta Pasquini, daughter of Ugo, Count di Costafiorita, bore him a son and heir, but died in childbirth in February 1944. In August 1946 the widower married Princess María Mercedes de Baviera y Borbón, a granddaughter of King Alfonso XII, and daughter of Don Fernando de Baviera y Borbón, who had renounced his royal rights in Bavaria to become a naturalised infante in Spain. Beginning in the 1990s, senior members of the Bagrationi-Mukhraneli descendants began re-patriating to Georgia from Spain, ending generations of exile. Irakli's elder son, Prince Georgi Bagrationi-Mukhraneli, was officially recognized by government and church leaders when he brought his father's remains from Spain to rest with those of his ancestors in Svetitskhoveli Cathedral at Mtskheta in 1995, and moved to Tbilisi in 2005, where he died. His eldest son, Prince Irakli (Erekle), born in 1972, deferred his dynastic claim to his younger brother, Prince Davit (born 1976). Thus, Prince Davit — who moved to Tbilisi and reclaimed his Georgian citizenship — became Head of the Family Council and the Mukhraneli dynastic titles. Gruzinsky branch The Bagration-Gruzinsky line, although junior to the Princes of Mukhrani genealogically, reigned over the kingdom of Kakheti, re-united the two realms in the kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti in 1762, and did not lose sovereignty until Russian annexation in 1800. Prince Nugzar Petrovich Bagration-Gruzinski (born 1950) is the most senior known patrilineal descendant of Kartli-Kakheti's last king, George XII, and is, as such, head of the Kakhetian branch of the dynasty which, although genealogically junior to the Mukhranelis, has reigned more recently, not having lost the throne of a Georgian kingdom until 1800. Nugzar is well known in Georgia because he has lived his entire life in Tbilisi, and experienced with other Georgians both the country's subordination to the Soviet regime and its liberation since 1991. A theatrical and cinema director, his father, Prince Petre Bagration-Gruzinski (1920–1984), was a poet, and authored lyrics to the anthem, "Song of Tiflis". As Nugzar has no male issue, Prince Evgeny Petrovich Gruzinsky (born 1947), the great-great grandson of Bagrat's younger brother Ilia (1791–1854), who lives in the Russian Federation, is considered to be an heir presumptive within the same primogeniture principle. Despite basing his claim on male