Red door

The red door is a term used in Daenerys Targaryen's private thoughts. The red door represents safety, security, happiness and most importantly the closest thing to home to the exiled Daenerys Targaryen.

Origins

The red door symbolism originates from Dany’s early childhood. As a young child Daenerys Targaryen and her brother lived in Braavos, under the care of Ser Willem Darry in the big house with the red door. Dany had her own room there and a lemon tree outside her window.

After Ser Willem’s death, the servants drove the last Targaryens from the house, Dany cried as the door was closed to them forever. She and her brother were forced to move from place to place, city to city, never settling down. Daenerys has been wandering ever since that time.

Throughout the novels Daenerys always reminisces about the house with the red door. Even as Queen of Meereen she is still longing wistfully for the house with a red door.

Recent Events

A Game of Thrones

In Maegister Illyrio's manse Daenerys’s brother talks with her just prior to her preparations for her introduction to her prospective husband Khal Drogo. As Viserys is talking she thinks longingly of the house with the red door.

Much later, during her long recovery after giving birth to her stillborn son Dany repeatedly sees the house with the red door in her fever dreams.

A Dance with Dragons

Dany is dreaming of a house with a red door when Missandei wakes her to tell her of the murder of Stalwart Shield.

When Irri wakes her in the black of night Dany is dreaming that she and Daario are man and wife, simple folk who lived a simple life in a tall stone house with a red door.

While talking to Ser Barristan Dany thinks to herself that she had never known a home, in Braavos there had been a house with a red door, but that was all.

As she is examining the parchment marriage pact that Prince Quentyn Martell had brought to her she realizes that it had been executed in Braavos, while they were living in the house with the red door. She wonders why it makes her feel strange.

As she is readying herself to attend the opening of Daznak's Pit Daenerys thinks to herself that she would rather have drifted in her fragrant bathing pool all day, eating iced fruit off silver trays and dreaming of a house with a red door.

Wandering alone through the Dothraki Sea Dany reflects on the life she had had with Khal Drogo, thinking that not since those half-remembered days in Braavos when she lived in the house with the red door had she been as happy. But in the Red Waste, all her joy had turned to ashes.

Quotes

All Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known.