A pathetic attempt at analysis/reinterpretation of legend.
"In the beginning, the priestly scribes of Yin declare, all the land between the Bones and the freezing desert called the Grey Waste, from the Shivering Sea to the Jade Sea (including even the great and holy isle of Leng), formed a single realm ruled by the God-on-Earth, the only begotten son of the Lion of Night and Maiden-Made of Light, who traveled about his domains in a palanquin carved from a single pearl and carried by a hundred queens, his wives. For ten thousand years the Great Empire of the Dawn flourished in peace and plenty under the God-on-Earth, until at last he ascended to the stars to join his forebearers."
Traveling in a pearl palanquin carried by a hundred queens sounds like a celestial body to me, not a real person. A sun? A moon? Basically this entire legend is a variation on ancient Egypt and the theology surrounding Ra the Sun-God. (Ra was thought to travel through the sky by 'sun boat' - a pearl palanquin sounds to me like the moon and surrounding stars.) Anyway, if this indeed a real person and not actually a deity, I would that this "God on Earth" might then be the equivalent of a Pharaoh - a king of all men who is thought to have divine power granted to him by the deities, or even descended from the deities themselves. Horus - both a deity and a Pharaoh - is probably a close approximation to this."Dominion over mankind then passed to his eldest son, who was known as the pearl Emperor and ruled for 1000 years. The Jade Emperor, the Tourmaline Emperor, the Onyx Emperor, the Topaz Emperor, and the Opal Emperor followed in turn, each reigning for centuries… Yet every reign was shorter and more troubled than the one preceding it, for wild men and baleful beasts pressed at the borders of the Great Empire, lesser kings grew prideful and rebellious, and the common people gave themselves over to avarice, envy, lust, murder, incest, gluttony, and sloth."
Again, this to me is a continuation of the Pharaohs concept. In ancient Egypt, the significance of the Pharaoh and his religious importance waned over the centuries, and pharaohs were demoted in status from deities/near deities to mere rulers. And, of course, as ancient Egyptian practices and beliefs were encroached upon by the rise of adjoining empires and particularly of Christianity, and the wealth of the temples increased, the more corrupt its people became.
"When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true Gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky. (Many scholars count the Bloodstone Emperor as the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom, which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world)."
The foundation of the Blood betrayal is most likely the story of Set and Osiris. Set is a malevolent god of the desert, storms, disorder, violence and chaos; he is said to have traitorously murdered his brother Osiris out of jealously of his status amongst the people as chief god and the rule over his lands. So, we have a Set-like character worshipping a meteorite - I'm going to take a stab in the dark here and say that this meteorite is actually a castoff from a COMET that passed overhead. The impact of the meteorite must not have been all that destructive to the planet if the Bloodstone Emperor and his followers were still around to worship it, so I'm going with the idea that the comet from which it came actually preceded something else....a major cataclysm or climatic event.
"In the annals of the further east, it was the Blood Betrayal, as his usurpation is named, that ushered in the age of darkness called the Long Night. Despairing of the evil that had been unleashed on earth, the Maiden-Made-of-Light turned her back upon the world, and the Lion of Night came forth in all his wroth to punish the wickedness of men."
So the darkness follows the appearance of the meteorite, and the Lion of Night (who I assume is said to "roar"? hence the Lion part?) unloads night upon the world. This sounds to me like a 'winter' of some kind. "How long the darkness endured no man can say, but all agree it was only when a great warrior – known variously as Hyrkoon the Hero, Azor Ahai, Yin Tar, Neferion, and Eldric Shadowchaser – arose to give courage to the race of men and lead the virtuous into battle with his blazing sword Lightbringer that the darkness was put to rout, and light and love returned once more to the world."
The virtuous or the surviving? If the Long Night was indeed the result of some global-impact cataclysmic event (like the eruption of a supervolcano) during which not only the GEotD was eradicated but a majority of mankind, this figure - who is probably multiple people rolled into one - who ventured forth to rebuild and repopulate the world would indeed be a hero of the human race. I'm going to come back to this in a sec. "Yet the Great Empire of the Dawn was not reborn, for the restored world was a broken place where every tribe of men went its own way, fearful of all the others, and war and lust and murder endured, even to our present day. Or so of the men and women of the further east believe."
The GEotD was not reborn because it had gone kerplooey. All of these "last heroes" are descendants of survivors from different areas who began to reestablish the new colonies after the effects of the great cataclysm finally dissipated and the planet returned to normal - sortof like the races of early Homo that made it through the last ice age.
Now, back to this Lightbringer/Azor Ahai thing. In short, this myth is weird and doesn't make sense. In one sense the imagery makes it sound as though AA's actions caused something cataclysmic in itself.
And then:
And finally:
So the bleeding star = comet, heralding the coming disaster of the Long Night (probably a cataclysmic event like a cyclical eruption - even better if the comet has a hella long elliptical orbit that just happens to be timed with a particular eruptive cycle). The cold and darkness descends, and the hero appears with a 'burning sword' to bring light and love to the world again.
So, this makes me wonder if perhaps "Nissa Nissa", AA's wife, was actually a dragon. Or maybe, as I mentioned above, the WIFE of the vulcan/dragon god or even the god herself. She sacrifices herself to the fire, gives her blood, so she can become the mother of dragons: "death and destruction, a flaming sword above the world"....
to be used by man to rise to power. If this tale is metaphorical, then possibly the Lightbringer myth is
really about the rise of the first dragonlords who learned to control the children "birthed" by the "mother", the volcano that brought the Long Night AND the first dragons.
Nissa Nissa, a name repeated, makes me think of two...twins...
...which goes back to the two moons of Qartheen legend, one that got too close to the sun...
...like mountains that get so large and high they look like they are kissing the sun...
...and two moons, round and pale and white, like a pair of breasts...
...or Missy's Teats, hills that resemble the buxom chest of Aegon IV's lover..
...which makes me think of the Mother of Mountains, but mothers having TWO breasts...
...and then Nissa Nissa baring ONE breast to the sword that Azor Ahai is trying to "temper"...
...and AA thrusting his sword into her living HEART...
...like the HEART of an active volcano...
...and there being only ONE Mother of Mountains, that sits above the Womb of the World...
...a womb being what grows and develops children...
...children that are birthed from their mother...
...like a very large volcano that cracks open and releases dragons into the world...
...dragons that need their mother...
...who sacrificed herself so her children could be born.
It's a cyclical myth of birth, sacrifice, and rebirth. Destruction and renewal. Daughter of death, bride of fire, mother of dragons.
So, Azor Ahai needs to be the guy (or ritual) that initiates or completes the cycle. Given that this is via the religion of R'hllorism, a fire (and perhaps vulcan) cult, how much sense does it make for the fire lovers to think that their ultimate fire creation, a dragon that is 'fire made flesh', will be the salvation of the world? (Not that it
is, just to be clear...but the red lot might think so.) Dragonflame, I'm sure, is probably the best source around if you're looking for "darkness to flee before you" - darkness, and COLD.
Too meta?