Battle of the Red Fork

In the year 130, with the war for the throne already under way, Prince Aemond Targaryen, ruling the realm for his convalescent brother Aegon II, plotted a two-pronged move to take Harrenhal back from Prince Daemon: strike the castle from east and west at once. Lord Jason Lannister drew the western half of the plan, and to reach the castle he first had to cross the riverlands, ground hostile to his cause.

The first obstacle was the ford at the Red Fork, where river lords loyal to Rhaenyra had no choice but to stand and fight. Outnumbered, Lord Petyr Piper and Lord Tristan Vance turned back three assaults in a row; on the third, a squire named Pate of Longleaf struck Lord Jason a mortal wound, a feat that later earned him the name Pate the Butcher.

With the western army suddenly without its commander, Ser Adrian Tarbeck swam upriver with a hundred of his best riders and fell on Lord Vance's men from behind, killing him in the melee. The river line broke, and the westermen poured across the Trident by the thousand.

Tarbeck, and afterward Lord Humfrey Lefford, took command of the western host and kept pushing east through the riverlands, only to be crushed soon after at the Battle at the Lake.

With the Lannister army bogged down on the Trident, Lord Dalton Greyjoy, the Red Kraken, saw his chance and struck at the westerlands. Lady Johanna, Jason's widow, ordered the gates of Casterly Rock barred, but she could not stop the ironborn sacking Lannisport and harrying the rest of the coast.