The conflict began when King James I imprisoned Alexander of Islay, Lord of the Isles and Earl of Ross, in an attempt to assert royal authority over the Highlands. Alexander's cousin, Donald Balloch, assembled a force of Highlanders and marched on Inverlochy, where a royalist army under the Earls of Mar and Caithness was encamped. The ensuing battle was devastating. Caithness was killed, and the royalist forces were shattered. Balloch then turned his rage on clans he considered disloyal to Alexander, ravaging the lands of Clan Cameron and Clan Chattan for their failure to support the Lord of the Isles. King James himself led an army into the Highlands in response, but by then the damage was done and Highland forces melted away. The battle demonstrated what the crown already feared: that the Lords of the Isles could project military power deep into the mainland whenever they chose.

Alexander was liberated in October 1431, ostensibly as part of a royal amnesty. The reality was more pragmatic: he was the only magnate capable of maintaining order in the Highlands, and imprisoning him had only made things worse. Upon the murder of James I in 1437, Alexander was again recognized as Earl of Ross, gaining control of both Dingwall and Inverness. By 1439, he had been appointed Justiciar of Scotia -- the chief legal official in the Kingdom of Scotland. The man whom the king had tried to neutralize became the crown's indispensable instrument in the very territory where his cousin had humiliated royal forces. The pibroch 'Piobaireachd Domhnull Dubh,' named for the clan chief Donald Dubh Cameron, also commemorates the battle. At Inverlochy, both the music and the ruins remember what the crown spent decades trying to forget.