As fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones will obviously remember, our beloved Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley) was killed off in season three’s bloody Red Wedding. And when we say killed off, we mean it in the definitive sense: we saw her throat slashed, and we saw her breathe her last.

However, as those who have read George R R Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series (upon which the TV show is based) will know, the story of Catelyn Stark’s character does not end there.

So, what happens to Catelyn Stark in the Game of Thrones books?

In the books, Catelyn’s naked body is thrown into the river after her throat is slit at the Red Wedding.

It is later found by the Brotherhood Without Banners and resurrected by Beric Dondarrion, who gives his life for hers through the last kiss of R’hllor.

However, she has been dead too long for the magic to work properly: mutilated and unable to speak, Catelyn is utterly consumed by vengeance and intent on killing each and every single person she believes to have betrayed her family.

“Her cloak and collar hid the gash his brother’s blade had made, but her face was even worse than he remembered,” reads the book’s description of her. “The flesh had gone pudding soft in the water and turned the color of curdled milk. Half her hair was gone and the rest had turned as white and brittle as a crone’s. Beneath her ravaged scalp, her face was shredded skin and black blood where she had raked herself with her nails. But her eyes were the most terrible thing. Her eyes saw him, and they hated.”

Shunning her past, Catelyn becomes known as Lady Stoneheart, mercilessly hunting down and hanging anyone associated with the Freys, Boltons, or Lannisters, even if they had nothing to do with the Red Wedding or if they are young boys, including Podrick Payne.

And, in the most recent book, Stoneheart and the Brotherhood named Brienne a traitor because they found her carrying Oathkeeper, Jaime Lannister’s sword which was forged from Ned Stark’s Valyrian steel blade, Ice.

Brienne swore that she was still faithful to her former mistress, but Stoneheart insisted she must prove it by killing Jaime. Brienne refused, even when threatened with a hanging. However, just before the noose was tightened, the knight shouted out a word of concession. The last we saw, she was leading Jaime alone right into the hands of Stoneheart…

Is Catelyn Stark still alive in Game of Thrones?