Quetzalcoatl's Brief Rule

The Second Sun is markedly shorter in the Legend of the Suns' telling than the accounts given for the ages around it, a brevity Leon-Portilla connects to Quetzalcoatl's wider mythological role across Aztec and earlier Mesoamerican tradition as a god of transition and departure rather than settled rule, a figure more often associated with journeys, self-sacrifice and eventual exile than with the kind of extended reign Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue are given in the two ages that follow.

Wind itself carried strong religious associations across Mesoamerica independent of the Five Suns narrative specifically, tied to breath, life force and the god Ehecatl, a wind aspect of Quetzalcoatl worshipped with his own circular temples designed to let wind pass unobstructed; the Second Sun's ending by hurricane draws on this wider association rather than inventing a new connection between Quetzalcoatl and wind solely for the purposes of the age myth. Ehecatl's temples were built with a distinctive rounded, cylindrical shape, unlike the rectangular platform temples typical of most Aztec state cults, specifically so that wind could flow around the structure without the turbulence a square building's corners would create, a piece of religious architecture that survives at several Mesoamerican sites and stands as physical evidence for how seriously this wind aspect of Quetzalcoatl was taken outside the Five Suns narrative alone.