All world mythology has astronomy at it's heart, and Geroge has emulated this in ASOIAF. The entire series has a skeleton of astronomy underpinning all of its world building, symbolism, and forces of magic. Magic and astronomy are interconnected, and celestial events are mirrored by the events involving the characters on the ground. There once really was a second moon, and its destruction by comet was the cause of the Long Night... Except that the moon was a magical fire moon, while the one we have left is the ice moon, and together these magical moons governed the seasons and the magical forces on Planetos. Destroy the fire moon, and suddenly ice magic is unchecked... presto, the Long Night. The myth of Azor Ahai, Nissa Nissa, and Lightbringer is the story of a sun striking the fire moon with a comet. Azor Ahai is the sun, the red comet his sword, and Nissa Nissa the moon. Nissa actually means "grandmother moon," while Azor Ahai roughly translates to "fire dragon." Azor Ahai was a bad guy who caused the Long Night, not the hero who ended it, just as the sun was seen to have struck the moon, his wide, with a red sword (comet), which caused the Long Night. The story of the Blood Betrayal from the far east, where the Bloodstone Emperor usurped the throne of the Great Empiure of the Dawn from his sister, the rightful ruler the Amethyst Empress, is actually another version of the Azor Ahai myth, with Azor Ahai as the Bloodstone Emperor. Oh and I think I proved all of this quite convincingly, as odd as it may sound to those who haven't looked for the astronomy underlying the mythology. The proof is all throughout the series, in every book. And nobody else has proposed this theory, anywhere, for better or worse. ;) Astonomy of Planetos: Behind the Legends - lays out the initial astronomy of the Azor Ahai legend The Bloodstone Compendium - Azor Ahai as the bad guy, the legend of Lucifer, Morningstar deities Fingerprints of the Dawn - everything we can infer about the proto-Valyrian dragon riding people of the Dawn Age from Asshai, who is responsible for all the dragon stories before Valyria and the Long Night, fused stone structures I have more coming in this series, several more.
