The Red Door. The Red Comet.

[Son of Man]

I have been reading these books for a long time now.  I have seen my share of theories on youtube.  The number of channels shot up when the show started and it got to where most of them were talking about the show.  I liked Preston Jacobs and some others who stayed with the books.  To me that is the true story.  I remember one channel talking about the red comet and associating that with the red door and further to the red waste.

The Red Door is a transition point like a fork in the road.  Dany sees the red door and has to make a decision.  It's a doorway.  She was suffering from despair over the loss of her family.  Most would succumb and waste away.  This is the darkness she feared.  She chose the door which stood for life.  She entered the door like she chose a branch on the fork in the road.  She chose to live.  

The Red Comet is another fork in the path of her life.  It appears once and only briefly like many choices in life that carry permanent consequences.  She could choose to join the Dosh Khaleen.  Instead she chose to become Azor Ahai and all the consequences with it.  

Her choices brought her to the Red Waste.  Getting through brought her to safety to Vaes Tolorro.  

The Red Door, Red Comet, and Red Waste are decision points for Daenerys.  

The red eyes of the Weirwoods and the red eyes of one direwolf are important to the Starks but in a different way.  The red eyes of the wolves and the trees are openings into hell or wherever the dead end up.  They are openings through which the living may touch the dead.  Bran listened to the memories of the dead stored in the trees.

[Club-foot cleft-lips]

She also got her unsullied in the red city of Astapor. 

[Skahaz mo Kandaq]

The Order of the Greenhand.  I think it was they who first discussed the significance of the red door.  They said it was a place of safety for Daenerys. 

The comet, door, desert, Astapor are turning points for Dany.  The red comet is the sword that slays the seasons and it signals the change of seasons.  It is significant because Dany changed from Khaleesi to Azor Ahai.  The walk through the Red Waste turned her from little girl to capable leader.  The door changed her plans from Crone of the Dothraki to Daenerys of House Targaryen, rightful owner of Westeros.  The red bricks of Astapor took her from ambitious princess to fierce conqueror. 

The Weirwoods are people.  The weirwoods are people!  Carving the faces gives them sight.  Arya removes the faces of the dead.  The First Men puts faces on the dead. 

 

[chrisdaw]

The red door is simply symbolic of home to Dany, where she will feel safe and a sense of belonging, which she believes is Westeros. Just do a search of red door, the text is very clear about it, GRRM wants you to know it plain and simple.

Dany believes it's Westeros, when she gets there and the realm resists her she'll come to feel she was wrong.

She will find the red door, it is the passage of her soul in death into a second life as a dragon. She went 99% of the way in her near death experience during her wake the dragon dream, but her human body survived and her soul snapped back from the dragon egg to her human body. When she really does die, and she will, her soul will enter the dragon. She was never supposed to be a human, she doesn't feel the way she feels because she's in the wrong geographical place, she feels how she feels because she's in the wrong body, she was always supposed to be a dragon, and as a dragon she will find safety, belonging and happiness, her home.

Here is the literal only red door in the series that isn't a part of Dany's flashbacks or visions.

Quote

The doors to the Great Hall were set in the mouth of a stone dragon. He told the servants to leave him outside. It would be better to enter alone; he must not appear feeble. Leaning heavily on his cane, Cressen climbed the last few steps and hobbled beneath the gateway teeth. A pair of guardsmen opened the heavy red doors before him, unleashing a sudden blast of noise and light. Cressen stepped down into the dragon's maw.

It is not by accident that there's been no other red doors. There is an instance of doors glowing red hot, as in temporary red doors, fake red doors, and they relate to Euron as the language about them includes references to torture, iron, rusted hinges and the heart of darkness, as is his goal Euron too is going to second life a dragon - that is pass through the red door, and the dragon will be his new home. The doors are those which keep Dany's dragons captive.

Quote

 

They passed beneath three massive arches, down a torchlit ramp into the vaults beneath the pyramid, past cisterns, dungeons, and torture chambers where slaves had been scourged and skinned and burned with red-hot irons. Finally they came to a pair of huge iron doors with rusted hinges, guarded by Unsullied.

At her command, one produced an iron key. The door opened, hinges shrieking. Daenerys Targaryen stepped into the hot heart of darkness and stopped at the lip of a deep pit. Forty feet below, her dragons raised their heads. Four eyes burned through the shadows—two of molten gold and two of bronze.

 

. . .

Quote

Down in the pit, Viserion had snapped one of his chains; he and Rhaegal grew more savage every day. Once the iron doors had glowed red-hot, her Unsullied told her, and no one dared to touch them for a day.

The soul swapping of humans into eggs and dragons probably can only occur (or thought to only be able to occur) when the comet is visible.

[The Lord of the Crossing]

On 5/12/2024 at 7:36 PM, Son of Man said:

I have been reading these books for a long time now.  I have seen my share of theories on youtube.  The number of channels shot up when the show started and it got to where most of them were talking about the show.  I liked Preston Jacobs and some others who stayed with the books.  To me that is the true story.  I remember one channel talking about the red comet and associating that with the red door and further to the red waste.

The Red Door is a transition point like a fork in the road.  Dany sees the red door and has to make a decision.  It's a doorway.  She was suffering from despair over the loss of her family.  Most would succumb and waste away.  This is the darkness she feared.  She chose the door which stood for life.  She entered the door like she chose a branch on the fork in the road.  She chose to live.  

The Red Comet is another fork in the path of her life.  It appears once and only briefly like many choices in life that carry permanent consequences.  She could choose to join the Dosh Khaleen.  Instead she chose to become Azor Ahai and all the consequences with it.  

Her choices brought her to the Red Waste.  Getting through brought her to safety to Vaes Tolorro.  

The Red Door, Red Comet, and Red Waste are decision points for Daenerys.  

The red eyes of the Weirwoods and the red eyes of one direwolf are important to the Starks but in a different way.  The red eyes of the wolves and the trees are openings into hell or wherever the dead end up.  They are openings through which the living may touch the dead.  Bran listened to the memories of the dead stored in the trees.

The Red Comet is the sign of her rebirth.  No doubt inspired by the bible and the birth of the savior.  As Dany is the savior and the star is her sign.  Many instances in her story have their inspirations from the bible.  Instead of a Jesus she is Azor Ahai.  She is Mhysa instead of Moses.

[H Wadsworth Longfellow]

Red eyes are windows to the soul.  Drogo's soul resides in Drogon.  Jon's will reside in his Direwolf.  Who or what soul is in Mellisandre? 

We know the greenseers are stored inside the trees.  The tree's red eyes are carved by man though. 

[Son of Man]

One more.  Rhaegar's red rubys.  He lost his rubies and the door to the throne closed for him but opened for Dany. 

[Darth Sidious]

Mel has a red stone. Could be something so old that it belonged to the Bloodstone emperor. 

[Ring3r]

On 5/22/2024 at 5:45 AM, Darth Sidious said:

Mel has a red stone. Could be something so old that it belonged to the Bloodstone emperor. 

Could be - particularly if Stygai was his royal city with Asshai serving as the port town. 

It's not a bloodstone though - that's a real thing, green with blotches of red.

[Moiraine Sedai]

Off the subject but Stygai and Mantarys are wicked sounding places. George did say we should be careful before trusting what the maesters wrote.

[Aline de Gavrillac]

On 5/24/2024 at 1:43 PM, Ring3r said:

t's not a bloodstone though

Yes

It's rubies which are red..  

On 5/22/2024 at 10:05 AM, Son of Man said:

One more.  Rhaegar's red rubys.  He lost his rubies and the door to the throne closed for him but opened for Dany. 

Those are literally blood stones.  It doesn't present a pretty picture of the prince.  Adorning his armor with rubies when there are people in need.  It's useless extravagance.  

On 5/24/2024 at 1:43 PM, Ring3r said:

particularly if Stygai was his royal city with Asshai serving as the port town

The Bloodstone Emperor and the Amethyst Empress are people in stories.  Dany doesn't see them in her visions.  The story is a moral play to enforce respect for hierarchy and control jealousy.  People know their place and should remain content.  Bad things happen when people bypass the hierarchy to force their way to a higher station.  Like the story of Cain and Abel

[Ring3r]

25 minutes ago, Aline de Gavrillac said:

Yes

It's rubies which are red..  

Those are literally blood stones.  It doesn't present a pretty picture of the prince.  Adorning his armor with rubies when there are people in need.  It's useless extravagance.  

The Bloodstone Emperor and the Amethyst Empress are people in stories.  Dany doesn't see them in her visions.  The story is a moral play to enforce respect for hierarchy and control jealousy.  People know their place and should remain content.  Bad things happen when people bypass the hierarchy to force their way to a higher station.  Like the story of Cain and Abel

No, a Bloodstone is a real stone.  All of the other emperors/empresses are named after other real stones.  Jade, Amethyst, etc.  Bloodstone follows the same pattern, and a bloodstone is green with blotches of red mixed in.  If GRRM meant rubies when he named the Bloodstone Emperor, he'd have followed the pattern named him the Ruby Emperor.

I'm pretty sure Dany DOES see some of them in her visions, actually.  While in the House of the Undying, she has this vision: "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."

[Moiraine Sedai]

Blood on green. The First Men making human sacrifices to the Weirwoods. Maybe the Weirwoods were green at first. All the blood they got turned their sap red.  The Amethyst empress will get her revenge and burn the cursed trees to ashes. 

[Son of Man]

Whoever said he was soft for the peasant class? He loved music and he was a reluctant jouster. He was devoted to wife and daughter. No more do we know of Rhaegar. Dany saw him dying and mouthed a woman's name. I'm doing a who's who of the cast of characters and I don't have enough for Rhaegar.

[The Gizzard of Oz]

Sure the red on green is the First Men feeding human blood to the Greenseers.  Bran will gorge on blood. 

[Sandy Clegg]

On 5/19/2024 at 1:35 PM, chrisdaw said:

It is not by accident that there's been no other red doors. There is an instance of doors glowing red hot, as in temporary red doors, fake red doors, and they relate to Euron as the language about them includes references to torture, iron, rusted hinges and the heart of darkness, as is his goal Euron too is going to second life a dragon - that is pass through the red door, and the dragon will be his new home. The doors are those which keep Dany's dragons captive.

There's definitely a correlation between red, or rusted doors and the metaphor of beginning a second life into a dragon, and I think GRRM wants to paint this in contrast to the similar process of warging (or skin changing). The dragon bond ritual, or second life if we want to call it, seems to be tied more to the heart than the mind. See what happens to the Ironborn's chest after he blows the Dragonbinder horn.

Bran's story seems to take a different path - but we can often find passages where GRRM seemingly compares the two processes, metaphorically. This scene in ASOS contrasts Hodor's efforts to break into a rusted iron gate with Bran's more successfully attempt at entering via the overheard 'murder hole' (via the head/mouth?).

Bran looked up and saw another grate just above his head. A murder hole. He was glad there was no one up there now to pour boiling oil down on them.

The grates were locked, but the iron bars were red with rust. Hodor grabbed hold of the lefthand door and gave it a pull, grunting with effort. Nothing happened. He tried pushing with no more success. He shook the bars, kicked, shoved against them and rattled them and punched the hinges with a huge hand until the air was filled with flakes of rust, but the iron door would not budge. The one down to the undervault was no more accommodating. "No way in," said Meera, shrugging.

The murder hole was just above Bran's head, as he sat in his basket on Hodor's back. He reached up and grabbed the bars to give them a try. When he pulled down the grating came out of the ceiling in a cascade of rust and crumbling stone.  - Bran III

If we see this interior location as a metaphorical dragon, then you can apply the same metaphor to the furniture. The murder hole above, which Bran imagines having 'boiling oil' pouring out of it, is analogous to a dragon's mouth pouring out hot flames ... ("Death comes out of a dragon's mouth, but it does not go in that way."). The door that Hodor unsuccessfully tries to force open is noticeably the LEFT door - where the heart is located. This reinforces that metaphor of 'heart versus head' being a useful distinction in the two second life concepts.

Bran gains access via the murder hole - the mouth, part of the head. Hodor with all his strength cannot enter the other way - the dragon bonding path - because Bran's story is not following the dragon path. His way is that of the greenseer, of the skinchanger. This not only highlights the contrast between the two magical second life methods, but might even be foreshadowing of how Bran might gain control of a dragon in future. He goes in 'where death comes out'.

 

[chrisdaw]

8 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

There's definitely a correlation between red, or rusted doors and the metaphor of beginning a second life into a dragon, and I think GRRM wants to paint this in contrast to the similar process of warging (or skin changing). The dragon bond ritual, or second life if we want to call it, seems to be tied more to the heart than the mind. See what happens to the Ironborn's chest after he blows the Dragonbinder horn.

Bran's story seems to take a different path - but we can often find passages where GRRM seemingly compares the two processes, metaphorically. This scene in ASOS contrasts Hodor's efforts to break into a rusted iron gate with Bran's more successfully attempt at entering via the overheard 'murder hole' (via the head/mouth?).

Bran looked up and saw another grate just above his head. A murder hole. He was glad there was no one up there now to pour boiling oil down on them.

The grates were locked, but the iron bars were red with rust. Hodor grabbed hold of the lefthand door and gave it a pull, grunting with effort. Nothing happened. He tried pushing with no more success. He shook the bars, kicked, shoved against them and rattled them and punched the hinges with a huge hand until the air was filled with flakes of rust, but the iron door would not budge. The one down to the undervault was no more accommodating. "No way in," said Meera, shrugging.

The murder hole was just above Bran's head, as he sat in his basket on Hodor's back. He reached up and grabbed the bars to give them a try. When he pulled down the grating came out of the ceiling in a cascade of rust and crumbling stone.  - Bran III

If we see this interior location as a metaphorical dragon, then you can apply the same metaphor to the furniture. The murder hole above, which Bran imagines having 'boiling oil' pouring out of it, is analogous to a dragon's mouth pouring out hot flames ... ("Death comes out of a dragon's mouth, but it does not go in that way."). The door that Hodor unsuccessfully tries to force open is noticeably the LEFT door - where the heart is located. This reinforces that metaphor of 'heart versus head' being a useful distinction in the two second life concepts.

Bran gains access via the murder hole - the mouth, part of the head. Hodor with all his strength cannot enter the other way - the dragon bonding path - because Bran's story is not following the dragon path. His way is that of the greenseer, of the skinchanger. This not only highlights the contrast between the two magical second life methods, but might even be foreshadowing of how Bran might gain control of a dragon in future. He goes in 'where death comes out'.

 

You're generally right here and I've thought through this passage before, but I believe the passage is specifically foreshadowing Bran trying to skinchange Euron's second life which will be the Stone Beast. Using rusted hinges as a metaphor for skinchanging something Bran couldn't get into might have been an idea of GRRM's at an earlier point in the books, but by ADWD it's very Euron, remember -

Quote

That man is dead. Aeron had drowned and been reborn from the sea, the god's own prophet. No mortal man could frighten him, no more than the darkness could . . . nor memories, the bones of the soul. The sound of a door opening, the scream of a rusted iron hinge. Euron has come again. It did not matter. He was the Damphair priest, beloved of the god.

Iron grates, gates, hinges and rust, often combined with torture, disease, death and general grossness = Euron and his second life. Here's a passage about it suggesting a way through the 'rusted grate',

Quote

"And closed with iron grates," Brown Ben admitted, "though some have rusted through, else I would have drowned in shit. Once inside, it is a long foul climb in pitch-dark through a maze of brick where a man could lose himself forever. The filth is never lower than waist high, and can rise over your head from the stains I saw on the walls. There's things down there too. Biggest rats you ever saw, and worse things. Nasty."

Inside the red door within the dragon that is a second life is fire, warmth, light and flight. Within the iron doors with the screaming hinges that is Euron's stone beast is a maze of darkness, drowning filth and monsters hunting.

I don't think the overhead murder hole Bran finds and uses to pass through foreshadows a way of Bran succeeding in skinchanging a dragon (or the Stone Beast that Euron will become that won't really be a normal dragon), it may instead be a reference to Bran 'flying' in the 3EC sense, and that's how he achieves his objective (defeating the Stone Beast, saving the world, etc).

[Bowen 747]

On 5/24/2024 at 1:43 PM, Ring3r said:

that's a real thing, green with blotches of red

Greenseers and their blood meal.  It could point to Bran being the reborn Bloodstone emperor.  Justice is needed and calls for his death to set the climate right.  

[Bowen 747]

The Red Door is just an object in the dreamscape.  She made her choice between Dosh Khaleen and Queen of Westeros.  The door stood between the choices so they are mutually exclusive.  Forever in the darkness meant living beneath the Mother of Mountains with the Dosh Khaleen.  The other side of the door is Westeros and onto the Iron Throne.  The red door is the way to Westeros.  Her childhood memory is the red door because this is where she grew up with Ser Willem Darry who was a knight of Westeros.  It is her link to her family's kingdom.  Entering the red door means going to Westeros.