In a new interview, Game of Thrones‘ Michelle Fairley talks about what Catelyn Stark is facing at the start of season 2 and discusses her character in the novels. Beware of spoilers about future events in the saga.

Speaking to SFX, Michelle Fairley teases Catelyn’s season 2 journey:

Catelyn set off on a journey to warn her husband, Ned, who had gone to King’s Landing, and the tragedy is she never reaches her home again. She never actually reaches Winterfell again. She stays on the road doing envoy duties for her son. Her whole motivation to do this is to get her family back together again after the tragic death of her husband. It’s a woman searching and trying. She changes quite dramatically in the second season, because ultimately her goal is being a mother. It’s her core thing. She’s struggling to keep her honour, which she knows is the way she’s always lived her life, but now she’s desperate to get her family back together again.

She also talks about how the second season will be different from A Clash of Kings, promising “twists and turns” for book fans. She says:

Some things have changed; some things have been padded out. There’s a lot, from my character’s point of view, my son Rob is talked about a lot but he’s actually not in the book that much, but in the second season the guys have taken him and put him in there a lot more than he would be in the book, where he’s gone off to fight a war. In this they’ve taken license and they’ve showed his story as well.

Michelle Fairley has a lot more to say about Catelyn Stark; read it all at SFX!