Melisandre
A red priestess of R'hllor from far-off Asshai, beautiful and unsettling, who reads the future in her fires and has attached her prophecies to Stannis Baratheon.
A soul born at Asshai.
The fuller tale
Season Two
Renly and Stannis parley and part as enemies; Davos rows Melisandre into a cave beneath Storm's End.
Where they stand. Dragonstone.
Season Three
In The Bear and the Maiden Fair ÔÇö Sails a king's blood up the coast: a bastard named Gendry. Melisandre leeches king's blood from Gendry over three names: Robb Stark. Balon Greyjoy. Joffrey Baratheon.
Where they stand. Dragonstone.
Season Five
Melisandre tempts Jon; Stannis explains greyscale to Shireen the only way he can: I fought for you.
Where they stand. Castle Black.
Season Six
Melisandre, alone, unclasps her necklace ÔÇö and centuries look back from the mirror. In Home ÔÇö Washed a corpse and whispered a prayer she no longer believed. Melisandre, faithless, tries one old spell. Ghost stirs. Jon Snow breathes.
Where they stand. Winterfell.
Season Eight
In The Long Night ÔÇö Lit the trenches, fulfilled her purpose, walked into the dawn and dust. The dead crest the walls like a tide; Melisandre lights the trench with her last great work.
Where they stand. Winterfell.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Ended after the Long Night (S8┬ÀE3)
The red priestess lit the Dothraki blades, fired the trench, and gave Arya the words that ended the Long Night: what do we say to the god of death? At dawn she walked out the gate, took off the choker, and let her centuries catch her in the snow.
Her death is show-only, and she chooses every part of it. Having done the last things her long life was apparently for ÔÇö the flaming arakhs, the lit trench, and the quiet word that sends Arya Stark toward the Night King ÔÇö Melisandre walks out of Winterfell's gate at dawn with the battle won. She takes off the ruby choker, and the centuries she has carried arrive all at once: the red woman ages to a crone and then to nothing in the space of a hundred yards, folding into the snow with Davos watching ÔÇö the man who swore to execute her, witnessing instead the sentence she passed on herself. In the published books Melisandre is alive at Castle Black, her greatest workings, for good or ill, still ahead of her.
Their chapters, book by book
A Clash of Kings 2 chapters that name them
A Storm of Swords 3 chapters that name them
A Dance with Dragons 1 chapter of their own, and 1 more that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The books withhold the show's redemption arc ÔÇö as of the published pages Melisandre has never left the Wall, never faced the reckoning for a burned princess (who is alive in the books), and never resurrected anyone, though the fifth book leaves her standing next to a body with every rifle loaded. Her book characterization runs interior where the show runs iconic: a point-of-view chapter opens her doubts, her mnemonic tricks, her honest misreadings ÔÇö powders and glamours candidly inventoried alongside true power. The show also invents her ending's great image, the choker that holds back centuries; the books' ruby glows and glamours but has made no such promise. Book readers know a colder question is still open: what the woman who burns people for a living will decide Jon Snow's body is for.
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.