These mountainous tribes from the North Caucasus continued to pose a challenge to Levan, but more immediate threat to his hold of power came from his overlords, the kings of Imereti, one of the three breakaway kingdoms of medieval Georgia.

By the time of Levan's accession to power, the Dadiani had achieved significant autonomy and his contemporary king of Imereti, Bagrat III, was determined to bring the crown's recalcitrant subjects under control.

[1][2][3] Bagrat, defeated by the Ottomans at Sokhoista, avenged Dadiani a year later: he invited Levan to a summit at Khoni, incarcerated him in Gelati's bell-tower, and offered his vassal, Rostom Gurieli of Guria to divide up Mingrelia.

Around 1550, Bagrat's yet another foe, Kaikhosro II Jaqeli, Prince of Samtskhe, bribed the Imeretian nobleman Khopilandre Chkheidze to help Dadiani escape and then persuaded Gurieli to give him a free passage to Mingrelia, where Levan was quickly reinstated.

[1][2][3] Subsequently, Levan rewarded Rostom Gurieli's good services by mobilizing the Mingrelian army in his support against the Ottoman threat, but intrigues of Bagrat of Imereti's brother Vakhtang disrupted the Dadiani-Gurieli accord.

Around the same time, the Habsburg ambassador to Constantinople, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, communicated to his superiors an information about Dadian, king of the Mingrelians, who came to the Ottoman capital to ask for some war vessels against his neighbors, "the Iberians" (that is, Imeretians), and was willing to pay tribute to the sultan in exchange of this assistance.

[6][5] The Croato-Hungarian diplomat Antun Vrančić reported that the prince, referring to himself as King of All Mingrelia, visited Constantinople, in February 1557, to obtain the Ottoman naval assistance against the Circassians, who had killed his father.