World War I. During the World War I years, Georgian émigrés, under the guidance of Prince Matchabelli established a National Committee in Berlin which considered a reinstatement of a monarchy in Georgia under the German protectorate. An influential lobby of the idea was Otto von Lossow, who suggested putting the German prince Joachim of Prussia on the Georgian throne. However, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgians restored their independent state in the form of a democratic republic (May 26, 1918), the result of a long-time domination of Georgian political scene by Social Democrats. Georgian nobility, including the scions of the former royal dynasty, lent their support to a new republic. As a contemporary Western observer noted: "Like that of France, the Georgian nobility has a social rather than a political significance. The people are democratic in spirit; there is not the least chance of a revival of monarchy in Georgia, and the nobles will hardly have more political weight than their individual merit entitles." Soviet era and post-Soviet independence The Democratic Republic of Georgia fell to Soviet Russia’s Red Army invasion in 1921. The subsequent political repressions, especially during the abortive August Uprising in 1924, forced many of the Bagrationi family members to flee the Soviet Union; some of them died in purges. One of the émigrés, Prince Irakli of the House of Mukhrani (a collateral branch of the Bagrationi dynasty) (1909–1977), tried to enlist the support of European powers for a Georgian monarchist cause. After settling in Spain before World War II, Prince Irakli founded what he called the Royal House of Georgia and sought support from European governments for a Georgian monarchy independent from Stalin's Soviet Union. When Prince Irakli died in Spain in 1977, his son George became first in line to the royal house of Georgia and was recognised as such, albeit as a formality, by the government and parliament of the new independent republic in 1991, despite rival claims from others. The legitimate rights of the Mukhrani branch, albeit senior genealogically, to the throne have been questioned, however, due to the fact that the patrilineal descendants of the last king of Kartli-Kakheti in eastern Georgia to reign – the Bagration-Gruzinsky – still survive in Georgia, although close to extinction. This line is represented by Prince Nugzar Bagration-Gruzinsky (born 1950), the heir male of Kartli-Kakheti's last reigning king, George XII. However, the two branches acted