Lemongate: It was Dragonstone, not Braavos?

[Mourning Star]

33 minutes ago, Egged said:

We have the wood pillars with carved animal faces in Dragonstone, and a garden, and the only red doors ever mentioned in all the books.

Cutting off the lemon tree due to it having been there for Elia would make sense.

There is a reference to a single wooden carved animal like face, the Stranger, on Dragonstone.

And a pair of red doors, but it doesn't seem honest to say the only ones, when we've been discussing red doors this whole time... that said, it's not nothing. Rather, I think the prologue chapter is filled with hints that Dany wasn't born on Dragonstone, in particular this:

She had been born on Dragonstone nine moons after their flight, while a raging summer storm threatened to rip the island fastness apart. They said that storm was terrible. The Targaryen fleet was smashed while it lay at anchor, and huge stone blocks were ripped from the parapets and sent hurtling into the wild waters of the narrow sea. 

Does not fit at all with what we see from Cressen, where the parapets aren't stone blocks, they are gargoyles (Dragonstone isn't even made of blocks, it is fused stone) and the gargoyles are undamaged by any storm.

The maester did not believe in omens. And yet . . . old as he was, Cressen had never seen a comet half so bright, nor yet that color, that terrible color, the color of blood and flame and sunsets. He wondered if his gargoyles had ever seen its like. They had been here so much longer than he had, and would still be here long after he was gone. If stone tongues could speak . . .

I do like some of the alternatives to literal red doors. The whorehouse red light is a good one, as is the house being on fire, which I would argue is almost certainly what she is seeing when "all the doors are red".

But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King's Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind's eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind's eye, all the doors were red.

[Mister Smikes]

58 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

(It would help to know exactly how the oils were scented.)

Rose oil.  

"In Highgarden there are fields of golden roses that stretch away as far as the eye can see." 

"Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses."

"A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death."

 

[Daenerysthegreat]

8 hours ago, Mister Smikes said:

FAN:  Dany remembers a lemon tree outside the house with the red door in Braavos, but citrus trees shouldn't really grow in Braavos's cold, foggy climate.  Is this discrepancy significant?  Does it point to future revelations about Dany's past?  Thank you so much.

GRRM:  Very perceptive of you.  Yes, it does point to ... well, that would be telling.

Which does not necessarily prove that the House with the Red Door is not in Braavos.  But there is some mystery here and it does point to something, according to GRRM.  If anyone has a plausible alternate theory, I am all ears.

Note that since these are Dany's memories, the only person who is required to be elsewhere is Dany herself.  Viserys can still be in Braavos at this time.  Viserys does not feature explicitly in any of Dany's memories.  She believes he is there, because she conflates her memories with Viserys' stories.    In short, she believes Viserys must have been present for the same reason that she believes the house must have been in Braavos -- it simply matches what she was taught.  We are warned of this phenomenon, when we are warned that she does seem to remember the flight from Dragonstone, even though she knows (and we know) that this cannot have been a real memory.

 

Highly unlikely, viserys would remember his sister being with him, anyone would. There is zero chance that viserys was not with dany else he would know it

Dany doesn't remember dragonstone and has only faint memories of braavos because of her age. You can't expect her to have a clear memory

[Mister Smikes]

1 hour ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

Highly unlikely, viserys would remember his sister being with him, anyone would. There is zero chance that viserys was not with dany else he would know it

He knows she was not with him.  But that's not what he wants her to think.  She's been trained to believe she was with him.

This is like arguing that Ramsay's wife must be the real Arya Stark, because otherwise Littlefinger would know.  Yes, of course he would know.  He trained her himself.

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Dany doesn't remember dragonstone and has only faint memories of braavos because of her age. You can't expect her to have a clear memory

I don't expect her to have a clear memory.  That's why she thinks Viserys was at the House with the Red Door with the man she recalls as Willem.  But he wasn't.  He was halfway across the world.  In Braavos.  With another Willem.

[Egged]

Bran:

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Bran did not oft range with them in those days, but some nights he watched them from above.

Flying was even better than climbing.

Slipping into Summer's skin had become as easy for him as slipping on a pair of breeches once had been, before his back was broken. Changing his own skin for a raven's night-black feathers had been harder, but not as hard as he had feared, not with these ravens. "A wild stallion will buck and kick when a man tries to mount him, and try to bite the hand that slips the bit between his teeth," Lord Brynden said, "but a horse that has known one rider will accept another. Young or old, these birds have all been ridden. Choose one now, and fly."

Varamyr:

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"They say you forget," Haggon had told him, a few weeks before his own death. "When the man's flesh dies, his spirit lives on inside the beast, but every day his memory fades, and the beast becomes a little less a warg, a little more a wolf, until nothing of the man is left and only the beast remains."

[...]

He summoned all the strength still in him, leapt out of his own skin, and forced himself inside her.

Thistle arched her back and screamed.

Jenny of Oldstones' song:

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High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts . . .

Daenerys' dream:

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Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade. "Faster," they cried, "faster, faster." She raced, her feet melting the stone wherever they touched. "Faster!" the ghosts cried as one, and she screamed and threw herself forward. A great knife of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew.

"… the dragon …"

And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. "The last dragon," Ser Jorah's voice whispered faintly. "The last, the last." Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.

[...]

He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany's, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door. "There must be one more," he said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in the bed she could not say. "The dragon has three heads."

Bran, when he was falling from the tower:

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"Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?" he heard his own voice saying, small and far away.

And his father's voice replied to him. "That is the only time a man can be brave."

Now, Bran, the crow urged. Choose. Fly or die.

Death reached for him, screaming.

Euron, on flying:

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"When I was a boy, I dreamt that I could fly," he announced. "When I woke, I couldn't . . . or so the maester said. But what if he lied?"

Victarion could smell the sea through the open window, though the room stank of wine and blood and sex. The cold salt air helped to clear his head. "What do you mean?"

Euron turned to face him, his bruised blue lips curled in a half smile. "Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower?" The wind came gusting through the window and stirred his sable cloak. There was something obscene and disturbing about his nakedness. "No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap."

Ashara's end

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"She killed herself, though," said Arya uncertainly. "Ned says she jumped from a tower into the sea."

"So she did," Harwin admitted, as he led her back, "but that was for grief, I'd wager. She'd lost a brother, the Sword of the Morning." He shook his head. "Let it lie, my lady. They're dead, all of them. Let it lie . . . "

Barristan's memories:

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Even after all these years, Ser Barristan could still recall Ashara's smile, the sound of her laughter. He had only to close his eyes to see her, with her long dark hair tumbling about her shoulders and those haunting purple eyes. Daenerys has the same eyes. Sometimes when the queen looked at him, he felt as if he were looking at Ashara's daughter …

And Daenerys Targaryen flew.

[Jaenara Belarys]

So this is.......Dragongate? 

[Lord Lannister]

16 hours ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

So this is.......Dragongate? 

The vibrations of Stannis grinding his teeth once he realizes he had everything he needed to conquer Westeros hidden in Dragonstone will be what brings down the wall.

[Jaenara Belarys]

8 hours ago, Lord Lannister said:

The vibrations of Stannis grinding his teeth once he realizes he had everything he needed to conquer Westeros hidden in Dragonstone will be what brings down the wall.

It would still be better way to do so than the Abominable Seasons.