By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 4 March 2026

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 March 2026

Gavriil Korganov, whose name is sometimes Anglicised as Gabriel Korganov, was born on 3 May 1880 in Tiflis in the Russian Empire, what is now Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia. Korganov was from a military family and joined the Tiflis Cadet Corps in 1897. Two years later, Korganov enrolled in the Mikhailovskaya Military Artillery Academy in Saint Petersburg and went on to the General Staff Academy. Korganov would become a General in the Imperial Russian Army, and at some point joined the Freemasons. Korganov was to be a significant player in the First World War.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 25 January 2026

The idea of sacral Monarchy stretches back to the foundations of the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great, over 2,500 years ago, who ruled as Shahanshah (King of Kings), an office originating with the Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda, and all Kingly successes were attributed to this god. It is this sense of Persian Kings as vessels for divine will that explains why they are so anonymous when compared to, say, the Roman Caesars: what mattered was the role, not the idiosyncrasies of the individual playing it.