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Notes -
I think the natural ending is "Winter comes, the civilisational cycle for the humans on Westeros goes into decline and the non-humans take over and expand into that niche, and for however long it lasts this is how it goes".
How the warmer lands fare in that, I don't know (because I haven't worked out the geography, geology, and the entire rest of the worldbuilding). Probably something like a massive, centuries-long Ice Age that means humans can only live in a small band of what is now temperate climate territory, until the stellar orbit swings round again to gradual thawing and civilisation advancing again.
Of course, that's the SF-style explanation à la Brian Aldiss, and Tolkien managed to work out what a year in Middle-earth would be (can't remember where I read it, but he mentioned somewhere, or maybe Christopher Tolkien put it into History of Middle-earth, how he worked out the Middle-earth year/Númenorean year to be just slightly better than our Gregorian measure) , but Martin apparently says it's all to do with magic? Which makes it an even shittier explanation in the light of him going off (admittedly a jokey line) about tax policies. So he's writing grimdark Low Fantasy ripped off from his notion of the Wars of the Roses, but it's also post-apocalyptic in some fashion since there's references to lost higher tech with survivals from the past, which puts it in science fantasy territory, but he doesn't bother explaining anything (unless this is all tucked away in notes from decades past) so it's all put down to magic which doesn't seem to have any particular basis in his worldbuilding (is it the gods? natural force similar to non-magical energies like electricity? spirits? deals with the Devil?) and seems to come down to "whatever Martin wants it to mean, so it lets him have dragons but religion is just priestcraft").
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