The failed Lannister expedition to Fair Isle

The failed Lannister expedition to Fair Isle was Lady Johanna Lannister’s attempt to wrest the island back from the Ironborn after her victory at Kayce. Its defeat showed how a carefully timed landing could be undone before the troops even reached shore.

Plan and Intended Landing

Lady Johanna assembled a makeshift fleet of fishing boats and cogs beneath the walls of Feastfires. She put a hundred knights and three thousand men-at-arms aboard, then sent them to sea under cover of darkness. The plan was to land on Fair Isle’s southern shore without being detected, turning the fleet’s unassuming vessels and night departure into means of concealment. Lord Prester, Lord Tarbeck, and Ser Erwin Lannister commanded the crossing.

Betrayal and Failure

The intended landing on Fair Isle’s southern shore never came: someone had betrayed the plan, and Ironborn longships were already waiting for the crossing. Lord Prester, Lord Tarbeck, and Ser Erwin Lannister commanded the ill-fated expedition, whose defeat left its force at the mercy of the defenders before it could retake the island. Dalton Greyjoy sent the commanders’ heads to Casterly Rock afterward, presenting the killings as payment for his uncle while dismissing the dead man as a glutton and drunkard whom the islands were better without.

Account and Limits

The account ends with the expedition’s commanders killed and its intended landing thwarted; it does not describe a battle at sea, give a casualty total, or say what became of the troops. Its emphasis therefore rests not on a narrated clash but on the betrayal that exposed the plan and the message Dalton Greyjoy sent afterward to Casterly Rock.

Chronicle Placement

The chronicle places the Fair Isle expedition among the calamities of the latter half of the year, alongside famine, the Winter Fever’s arrival in Barrowton, and a wildling raid across the Wall. These crises are presented as concurrent pressures, not as causes of the naval defeat. The expedition’s brief account—an intended landing compromised by betrayal, followed by Dalton Greyjoy’s message to Casterly Rock—then gives way to the death of Queen Jaehaera, shifting the record from a failed campaign in the west to tragedy at court.