Black Walder Rivers
A grim, dangerous Frey grandson, baseborn and ambitious, feared even among his own enormous, quarrelsome family.
A soul of House Frey, born at The Twins.
The fuller tale
Season One
At Castle Black, Jon learns the Watch is thieves and poachers ÔÇö and starts teaching instead of beating them. A dead ranger rises in Castle Black; Jon's torch saves the Lord Commander.
Season Five
Stannis marches from Castle Black for Winterfell, family and red woman in train. Arya passes her first test in the House of Black and White and is given a face-lined cellar instead of answers.
Season Six
The wildlings take Castle Black without a fight; the mutineers go to the cells. Sansa reaches Castle Black: the first Stark reunion since Winterfell burned.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Killed at the Twins (S7┬ÀE1)
The hardest of Walder's brood, who cut Catelyn Stark's throat, raised his cup with the rest when 'Lord Walder' called the toast. Arya's poison left the women standing and House Frey's swords on the floor.
The show settles his account alongside his brotherÔÇÖs: gathered to the Twins for the great toast, he drinks with the rest of the male line and dies choking in the hall where Catelyn Stark bled ÔÇö poisoned by the girl whose motherÔÇÖs throat he cut, wearing his own lordÔÇÖs face. In the published books he is alive, and if anything more prominent than ever; whatever the novels intend for Black Walder, the rope-and-wine accounting of the screen has not yet reached him.
Their chapters, book by book
A Game of Thrones 1 chapter that name them
A Clash of Kings 1 chapter that name them
A Storm of Swords 3 chapters that name them
A Feast for Crows 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The two tellings disagree about his very birth: the showÔÇÖs baseborn ÔÇ£RiversÔÇØ is, on the page, trueborn Black Walder Frey, son of Ser Ryman and great-grandson of the old lord. They disagree about the famous killing too ÔÇö in the books it is Raymund Frey, a different kinsman entirely, who cuts CatelynÔÇÖs throat, a deed the show moved to Black Walder to concentrate the audienceÔÇÖs hatred. And they disagree about his ending: the books leave him alive, dangerous, and rising through a thinning succession as the Brotherhood hangs his relatives one by one ÔÇö including his own father.
Their journey
Where the two tellings send them to the same place the road runs whole; where they part, the screen keeps the left and the books the right.