What other king can claim the military conquests of Artur Paendrag Tanreal, or his legal achievements as a head of state? Not to mention, he's the greatest man in his age, when he is an ordinary mortal with no superpowers, in a world dominated by people with powers, where his gender's dominance is undone by that very same lack of powers. He would have stood out as a real world mundane ruler, but he also forestalled a massive crisis by confronting the arch-evil power of Darkness. The Trolloc invasion Hawkwing stopped WOULD have conquered the world if he had not beat them, as we see in the portal stone world. What took the Compact of the Ten Nations, with the White Tower at its peak of strength and power decades to do, and ruined themselves in the process, was prevented by Hawkwing by himself. Hawkwing not only kicked ass as an ordinary guy, he took on the super-powered folks and would have won, if not for the supertitious subjects who were cowed into helping them. 1,000 years after his death, one of the scariest things you can threaten the White Tower with is "another Hawkwing."