Ygritte
A free folk spearwife, red-haired and sharp-tongued (kissed by fire, and lucky for it), quick to tell any crow how little he knows.
A soul born at Beyond the Wall, sworn to The Free Folk.
The fuller tale
Season Two
Beyond the Wall, Jon is ordered to execute a wildling woman named Ygritte ÔÇö and can't. In A Man Without Honor ÔÇö "You know nothing, Jon Snow." Ygritte talks circles around her captor until the ambush is hers, not his.
Season Three
Jon and Ygritte find a cave; his vows lose a clause. In The Climb ÔÇö Knows his cloak is still black ÔÇö and climbs with him anyway.
Where they stand. Queenscrown.
Season Four
Mole's Town falls to the wildlings; Ygritte spares Gilly and the babe. In The Watchers on the Wall ÔÇö Dies kissed by fire, in the wrong castle, in the right arms. Ygritte dies in Jon's arms with the only true thing either ever said: you know nothing.
Where they stand. Castle Black.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Fell in the battle for the Wall (S4┬ÀE9)
The girl kissed by fire drew her bow on Jon Snow in the burning yard of Castle Black and hesitated ÔÇö and a boy from a village she'd raided didn't. She died in Jon's arms: 'We should have stayed in that cave.'
On the page. An arrow beneath the Wall (ASOS, ch. 56)
The girl kissed by fire fell in the battle beneath the Wall, an arrow through her chest that Jon prayed wasn't his. She died in his arms in the ashes of the fight, still telling him he knew nothing.
She dies in Jon SnowÔÇÖs arms in the wreck of the battle for Castle Black. On screen she has him at bowshot in the burning yard ÔÇö and hesitates, the bow trembling between love and war, until OllyÔÇÖs arrow takes her through the back. In the books Jon finds her among the wounded when the fighting ebbs, an arrow in her chest that no one will ever claim, her hair the last warm color in a yard full of ash. Both tellings give her the same dying words ÔÇö that they should have stayed in that cave ÔÇö and Jon the same answer, that heÔÇÖll take her back there. He keeps the promise the only way left: her body is burned north of the Wall, in the free air, as the free folk do, and the fire her hair was kissed by takes the rest of her home.
Their chapters, book by book
A Clash of Kings 1 chapter that name them
A Storm of Swords 4 chapters that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The show hands her death an author: Olly, the boy whose village her band destroyed, puts the arrow in her back in the burning yard of Castle Black ÔÇö grief answering grief, and Jon holds her as she goes. The books are crueler by being vaguer: Jon finds her dying after the battle with a shaft through her chest, and the tale never says whose it was; he prays it wasnÔÇÖt his, and gets no answer. Book-Ygritte is also a fraction more feral and more mythic ÔÇö it is she who tells the tale of Bael the Bard and insists the Starks have wildling blood, and her jealous streak (the showÔÇÖs cave idyll notwithstanding) runs hotter on the page. Both tellings agree on the essentials: the red hair, the creed, and the last line about the cave.
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.