I play coldhands in play and choose the necessary characters to remove from play. Then before he dies or is removed from play, I am able to blank his text (say meera or nightmares), will the removed from play characters still return to play?

Similar situation with Ygritte. If I steal a character using her then manage to blank her text before dying, will the character go back to the owner?

Thanks

You cannot avoid the "return" on either character by blanking them.

The condition to return the characters (to play for Coldhands, to the control of the person you took it from for Ygritte) is part of the lasting effect created when you trigger the response. Once the response resolves, the text doesn't matter. The effect lasts for its duration no matter what.

Look at it this way: if you have a character that says "Response: after the challenge phase begins, choose a character to get +1 STR until the end of the phase.", does the chosen character lose its +1 if the character with the response is blanked before the end of the phase? No, right? Because the duration was set when the response was triggered, no longer needing the original response to maintain itself. Same for Coldhands and Ygtitte.

Thanks ktom. Very clear and helpful.