Azor Ahai candidate... Jaime Lannister?

[Greggles]

So, this is all assuming that GRRM isn't just playing with reader expectations and the AA prophecy isn't just some horrendous red herring meant to demonstrate the power of myth in society. That being said, let's review the prophecy and I'll go into my reasons why Jaime makes a good candidate.

"Darkness lay over the world and a hero, Azor Ahai, was chosen to fight against it. To fight the darkness, Azor Ahai needed to forge a hero's sword.^[4] He laboured for thirty days and thirty nights until it was done. However, when he went to temper it in water, the sword broke. He was not one to give up easily, so he started over.

The second time he took fifty days and fifty nights to make the sword, even better than the first. To temper it this time, he captured a lion and drove the sword into its heart, but once more the steel shattered.^[5]

The third time, with a heavy heart, for he knew beforehand what he must do to finish the blade, he worked for a hundred days and nights until it was finished. This time, he called for his wife, Nissa Nissa, and asked her to bare her breast. He drove his sword into her living heart, her soul combining with the steel of the sword, creating Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes"

What got me thinking about Jaime as a candidate for AA was when the thought occurred to me that a shattered sword could connote failure, when applied to a warrior conversely the forging of a sword can connote the making of a warrior, in this case the forging of the Red Sword of Heroes. In this case, Lightbringer and AA are synonymous. So why Jaime?

Well first, his failures. Jaime begins the journey to become a great general, forming a Lannister army and smashing the Tully's at the Golden Tooth, to find himself laying siege to Riverrun, only through his impatience to be captured by the Starks in the Whispering Wood. Failure 1.

Failure 2 Jaime's arc throughout ASoS left me agog. Humanizing and redeeming a child killer? Seriously? And yet, after being thoroughly humbled after being captured by mercenaries Jaime begins to aspire justice and honour, for his own sake, knowing full well that his public image is permanently tarnished for the killing of Aerys. So, seeing the grave injustice done to Tyrion (the captured lion) Jaime seeks to free him and... drives a sword through Tyrion's heart when he is too just, too honest and tells Tyrion the truth about Tyrion's first wife.

So now he's on the third step. More on that after timing.

Timing! 30 days, 50 days and 100 days as measures of relative effort and personal change. Leading up to his first failure, Jaime had command of an army for the first time in his life. No small feat, even considering his advantages. And he proved successful until his flaws caught up to him and he got pwned in the Whispering Woods.

50 days, learning humility and a desire for justice and honour were two huge changes in Jaime's character caused by the loss of his hand and the humiliating capture by a slobbering Qohorik mercenary in addition to the exposure to possibly the only true knight in Westeros. By AFfC he's hardly recognizable as the brash, headstrong and arrogant prick he was in the first book. Then fail two.

100 days. The largest single negative influence in Jaime's life is his relationship with Cersei, and him ridding himself of and understanding his feelings for her. While it looks that he may have completed the journey when he ignored her pleas I'm sure we're going to see more evidence of her influence on him in the next books.
His third task as a warrior? Making peace, and he's on a pretty good start.

Any how, that's kind of the bare bones of my theory, when it comes to writing expository essays, I'm an excellent engineer. Count on refinements in the future and thanks for reading.

[sj4iy]

That's just the story of AA forging Lightbringer, though...it's not about who makes the best AAR. In order to be AAR, Jaime must fill the following criteria of the prophecy about AAR. He hasn't.

[Greggles]

That's just the story of AA forging Lightbringer, though...it's not about who makes the best AAR. In order to be AAR, Jaime must fill the following criteria of the prophecy about AAR. He hasn't.

Fair enough, but the speculation about bleeding stars, smoke and salt &tc has shown how flexible interpretations can be.

My focus was on the forging of the sword - the making of a warrior - and how there are some congruency's between Jaime's story and the forging of the sword.