Sack of Highgarden

After Mace and Loras Tyrell, along with Queen Margaery herself, died in the fall of the Great Sept of Baelor, command of the house fell to Lady Olenna Tyrell. The old woman, who blamed Cersei Lannister — crowned in the wake of that disaster — for her family's ruin, sought support from Queen Daenerys Targaryen, then set on taking the throne from the Lannisters.

Cersei, her army thinned by years of war and burdened with a heavy debt to the Iron Bank of Braavos, worked out a different plan with her brother Jaime: seize Highgarden's wealth outright, its gold to settle accounts and its grain to feed the troops.

At the Red Keep, Jaime found the piece he needed in Randyll Tarly, one of the strongest lords who had served the Tyrells. He offered him the title of Warden of the South in exchange for turning on Olenna, and Tarly agreed.

The Lannister siblings also worked out that Tyrion, Daenerys's Hand, would likely move against Casterly Rock, which let them commit most of their troops to Highgarden instead of holding their own castle.

Jaime's troops, now that he served as Lord Commander of Cersei's Kingsguard, marched alongside Randyll Tarly and his son to the outskirts of Highgarden. From the castle, Lady Olenna watched them arrive and understood at once that the fight was already lost.

The Tyrell garrison barely held: the Lannister-Tarly forces broke through with ease and cut down most of the defenders. The looting began soon after — gold, grain, and everything else of value, all bound for King's Landing.

While the castle was being stripped, Jaime went up to speak with Olenna alone. He confirmed that Highgarden was his now, and she, calm as someone with nothing left to lose, asked about the attack on Casterly Rock that Tyrion had planned. Jaime told her the castle was worthless by then — its coffers empty, the Greyjoys holding it under siege — so letting it fall had cost them little.

Olenna warned him how dangerous Cersei was, and Jaime, without softening it, described the deaths his sister had imagined for her. He also told her he had talked Cersei into a painless poison instead, already dissolved in the cup of wine sitting in front of her.

She drank it. And before Jaime left, she wanted him to carry one last certainty away with him: it was she who had poisoned Joffrey I Baratheon at his own wedding. Jaime walked out without another word, leaving her to die alone.

With Olenna dead, House Tyrell was declared extinct. As Jaime had promised, its lands and titles passed to the Tarlys, with Randyll as the new Warden of the South, and Highgarden's gold let the Iron Throne settle much of its debt to the Iron Bank.

Daenerys, watching her allies fall one after another, refused to sit still: she struck the army Jaime and Randyll were marching back to the capital, in what would become the Battle of the Goldroad. She won, and executed Randyll and his son for betraying Olenna, leaving command of House Tarly to Talla.

Neither the Reach nor Highgarden had a clear ruler for the rest of the war. It was only settled once Brandon I was crowned and granted the lordship of Highgarden to Bronn, fulfilling what Tyrion and Jaime had promised him earlier.

Years later, writing about Jaime in the White Book, Brienne of Tarth would recall the sack of Highgarden among the pages devoted to his story.