Absalom and Achitophel advice of the double agent Hushai over the good advice of Achitophel. Achitophel, realising that the rebellion is doomed to failure, goes home and hangs himself. Absalom is killed (against David's explicit commands) after getting caught by his hair in the thick branches of a great oak tree: "His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on" (NRSV 2 Sam. 18:9). The death of his son, Absalom, causes David enormous personal grief. A second allegory in the poem, beginning on line 425, is the
George, son of David VII of Georgia George, son of David VII of Georgia George, "Giorgi", () (1250–1268) was the eldest son of David VII Ulu, a Bagratid king of Georgia, by whom he was designated as heir-apparent to the throne. In the early 1260s, he was held as a hostage at the Mongol Ilkhan court of Hulagu Khan and later served with his father in the Mongol military ranks. He died at the age of 18 in 1268, preceding his father by two years. George was born in 1250 to King David VII and the Alan woman Altun, whom the king took as a temporary wife