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Assuming the Lightbringer is a dragon ...


Mithras

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... which is a very good bet that I agree, then I am curious to hear metaphoric interpretations of the forging of the Lightbringer tale. Below is the forging of Lightbringer, which is a sword forged by a smith:




"Do you know the tale of the forging of Lightbringer? I shall tell it to you. It was a time when darkness lay heavy on the world. To oppose it, the hero must have a hero’s blade, oh, like none that had ever been. And so for thirty days and thirty nights Azor Ahai labored sleepless in the temple, forging a blade in the sacred fires. Heat and hammer and fold, heat and hammer and fold, oh, yes, until the sword was done. Yet when he plunged it into water to temper the steel it burst asunder.

“Being a hero, it was not for him to shrug and go in search of excellent grapes such as these, so again he began. The second time it took him fifty days and fifty nights, and this sword seemed even finer than the first. Azor Ahai captured a lion, to temper the blade by plunging it through the beast’s red heart, but once more the steel shattered and split. Great was his woe and great was his sorrow then, for he knew what he must do.

“A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. ‘Nissa Nissa,’ he said to her, for that was her name, ‘bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.’ She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.



But this tale should have such an interpretation that the Lightbringer being a dragon would not turn it into nonsense.


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Why do people think it's a dragon?



The only theory I've heard that fits the forging story (kind of) is that Lightbringer is Ice/Oathkeeper.



It was forged in water first (as Ned's Ice)



It was forged again by a Lion (Tywin)



And it will be forged finally in Lady Stoneheart (Ned's Nissa Nissa)


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Well Dany burned her "sun and stars" after killing him on the funeral pyre, I always assumed that Dany basically sacrificed everything to get the dragons just like AA did. Dany sacrificed Viserys to get Rhaego and Drago, then sacrified Rhaego to keep Drago, then sacrificed Drago for the Dragons.



It is possible that AA had stone dragon eggs as well, and his first attempt at hatching 1 was to heat it as hot as possible and then douse it in water, which would crack a normal stone.



Then perhaps on his second attempt her knew/thought he needed a sacrifice so he used a lion.



Realizing the lion did not work he knew he had to sacrifice something that he actually valued, so he sacrificed his wife.


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Why do people think it's a dragon?

The only theory I've heard that fits the forging story (kind of) is that Lightbringer is Ice/Oathkeeper.

It was forged in water first (as Ned's Ice)

It was forged again by a Lion (Tywin)

And it will be forged finally in Lady Stoneheart (Ned's Nissa Nissa)

I agree.

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Why do people think it's a dragon?

“I looked at that book Maester Aemon left me. The Jade Compendium. The pages that told of Azor Ahai. Lightbringer was his sword. Tempered with his wife’s blood if Votar can be believed. Thereafter Lightbringer was never cold to the touch, but warm as Nissa Nissa had been warm. In battle the blade burned fiery hot. Once Azor Ahai fought a monster. When he thrust the sword through the belly of the beast, its blood began to boil. Smoke and steam poured from its mouth, its eyes melted and dribbled down its cheeks, and its body burst into flame.”

A lance of swirling dark flame took Kraznys full in the face. His eyes melted and ran down his cheeks, and the oil in his hair and beard burst so fiercely into fire that for an instant the slaver wore a burning crown twice as tall as his head.

The man wore the mask of a Brazen Beast, the fearsome likeness of a tiger. As he dropped his weapon to try and pry apart Viserion’s jaws, flame gouted from the tiger’s mouth. The man’s eyes burst with soft popping sounds, and the brass around them began to run.

“When the dragons come,” he shrieked, “your flesh will burn and blister and turn to ash. Your wives will dance in gowns of fire, shrieking as they burn, lewd and naked underneath the flames. And you shall see your little children weeping, weeping till their eyes do melt and slide like jelly down their faces, till their pink flesh falls black and crackling from their bones.

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Well Dany burned her "sun and stars" after killing him on the funeral pyre, I always assumed that Dany basically sacrificed everything to get the dragons just like AA did. Dany sacrificed Viserys to get Rhaego and Drago, then sacrified Rhaego to keep Drago, then sacrificed Drago for the Dragons.

It is possible that AA had stone dragon eggs as well, and his first attempt at hatching 1 was to heat it as hot as possible and then douse it in water, which would crack a normal stone.

Then perhaps on his second attempt her knew/thought he needed a sacrifice so he used a lion.

Realizing the lion did not work he knew he had to sacrifice something that he actually valued, so he sacrificed his wife.

1. Putting the dragon eggs in water to hatch them does not make sense.

2. If AA was a skinchanger and that lion was his soulmate, then it would make sense to sacrifice him.

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“I looked at that book Maester Aemon left me. The Jade Compendium. The pages that told of Azor Ahai. Lightbringer was his sword. Tempered with his wife’s blood if Votar can be believed. Thereafter Lightbringer was never cold to the touch, but warm as Nissa Nissa had been warm. In battle the blade burned fiery hot. Once Azor Ahai fought a monster. When he thrust the sword through the belly of the beast, its blood began to boil. Smoke and steam poured from its mouth, its eyes melted and dribbled down its cheeks, and its body burst into flame.”

A lance of swirling dark flame took Kraznys full in the face. His eyes melted and ran down his cheeks, and the oil in his hair and beard burst so fiercely into fire that for an instant the slaver wore a burning crown twice as tall as his head.

The man wore the mask of a Brazen Beast, the fearsome likeness of a tiger. As he dropped his weapon to try and pry apart Viserion’s jaws, flame gouted from the tiger’s mouth. The man’s eyes burst with soft popping sounds, and the brass around them began to run.

“When the dragons come,” he shrieked, “your flesh will burn and blister and turn to ash. Your wives will dance in gowns of fire, shrieking as they burn, lewd and naked underneath the flames. And you shall see your little children weeping, weeping till their eyes do melt and slide like jelly down their faces, till their pink flesh falls black and crackling from their bones.

Some good points but I think GRRM is just using eyes melting as a symptom of things that are unnaturally hot (or magically hot). It's like saying that lightbringer is a sword as hot as dragonfire.

As you said originally, if lightbringer is a metaphor for a dragon then the story of it's creation makes absolutely no sense.

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Some good points but I think GRRM is just using eyes melting as a symptom of things that are unnaturally hot (or magically hot). It's like saying that lightbringer is a sword as hot as dragonfire.

As you said originally, if lightbringer is a metaphor for a dragon then the story of it's creation makes absolutely no sense.

The subtle clues about Nissa Nissa make perfect sense if we take the third attempt as childbirth and take this baby dragon metaphorically as a person.

The Maiden lay athwart the Warrior, her arms widespread as if to embrace him.

This sounds like The Maiden (Lyanna) and the Warrior (Rhaegar) have sex. Soon after that, we have this:

The Mother seemed almost to shudder as the flames came licking up her face. A longsword had been thrust through her heart, and its leather grip was alive with flame. The Father was on the bottom, the first to fall.

So, the Father (Rhaegar) dies (first to fall) and the Maiden (Lyanna) becomes the Mother with a longsword thrust through her heart, just like Nissa Nissa in the tale. The shuddering of the Mother and the cry of ecstasy and anguish of Nissa Nissa in the tale bring us to this:

Panting, she squatted and spread her legs. Blood ran down her thighs, black as ink. Her cry might have been agony or ecstasy or both. And Davos saw the crown of the child’s head push its way out of her.

The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover’s hand.

About the cracking of the moon because of the cry of Nissa Nissa, we have this:

“He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi,” the Lysene girl said. “Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return.”

The two Dothraki girls giggled and laughed. “You are foolish strawhead slave,” Irri said. “Moon is no egg. Moon is god, woman wife of sun. It is known.”

The moon coupled with the sun and died in birthing the dragons. Hence, the moon is the mother of dragons.

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  • 1 month later...

I think the Last Hero was Brandon the Builder who married a female CotF. There, he was given the gift of greensight and his son by the female CotF became the first dragonrider. Later he and his dragon were burried under the crpyts as all the Starks and their pets. That is how the smallfolk of Winterfell came to believe that the hot springs in Winterfell are heated by the breath of a dragon that sleeps beneath the castle.


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