Vameq III Dadiani

Vameq III Dadiani (; died 1661) was Prince of Mingrelia, of the House of Dadiani, from 1658 until being deposed in 1661. He was also briefly King of Imereti in 1661. He assumed both Mingrelian and Imeretian thrones and lost them during a messy civil war in western Georgian polities and was killed by assassins while hiding in a refuge of the mountains of Svaneti. Prince of Mingrelia Vameq was born into the Lipartiani family, a younger line of the Dadiani dynasty of Mingrelia, which held the fief of Salipartiano in hereditary possession. Vameq was a son of George Lipartiani by his first wife Ana, probably his cousin and a daughter of George III Dadiani. Vameq succeeded to lordship of Salipartiano in 1618. In 1657, after the death of his relative, Levan II Dadiani, Vameq prevented his rival Liparit III Dadiani from becoming Mingrelia's next ruler. To his cause, Vameq was able to enlist support of King Alexander III of Imereti, but had to concede the border territory Levan II Dadiani had seized from Imereti as well as much of Levan's treasury. At the decisive battle of Bandza in June 1658, Vameq defeated his rival and secured the throne of Mingrelia.

King of Imereti In 1660, Alexander III's death occasioned a multifaceted civil war in Imereti, in which the dowager queen Darejan seized power and made her new husband, an insignificant nobleman, Vakhtang, king. The Imeretians revolted: the nobles of Lower Imereti invited Vamiq, while those of Upper Imereti appealed to King Vakhtang V, King of Kartli. Vamiq took Darejan and his husband prisoner, blinding the latter, and then declared himself king of Imereti in 1661. Darejan begged Vakhtang V for help, offering the Imeretian throne to him. The king of Kartli invaded, but stuck a deal with Vameq, dividing Imereti. The agreement was to be cemented by a marriage of Vamiq's daughter to Vakhtang's son, Archil. However, Vameq—anxious that the marriage could eventually be used by Archil as a pretext to lay claim to Imereti—disrupted the agreement and opted for a local son-in-law, Prince Bezhan Gogoberidze. He, further, carried all of Imereti's royal treasury, twelve wagonloads, with him to Mingrelia, together with the captive queen Darejan. Bagrat (died 1661); George, who emigrated to Russia; Darejan, who was betrothed to Archil II but later married Prince Bezhan Gogoberidze.