I think that the Pattern tries to match up the Dragon with a suitable mate - someone who will satisfy him in every way. Considering he's the greatest man in the world, he needs a woman of equal prowess.

In the AOL, the Pattern might have tried Mierin initially. She seemed to have everything except that her personality was flawed, so that didn't work out.

Ilyena seemed to have been the next 'ultimate woman'. We don't know much about her, but she was in no way some cheap barmaid that LTT was attracted to. As Ilyena Sunhair, she seemed to have considerable prowess as an Aes Sedai.

I don't think that any women of equal stature occur in the 3rd Age, which is why the Pattern clumped him with three women. Even if he'd been paired with the best of what the Age had to offer (probably someone like Elayne), he would have felt unfulfilled. Women like Ilyena don't exist anymore. We've seen Egwene and Min feeling unsubstantial when Lanfear appears - and that's just from her appearance.

The three women equalling Ilyena is an old theory, but I do think collectively they are Ilyena's essence - but definitely not her soul or ancestry etc.

Yes, yes...all well-known, oft-cited characteristics of Ilyena. You DO realize that absolutely none of these characteristics denotes or connotes "good" in any way, right? Lanfear, Semirhage, Graendal, Rahvin, Moridin, Sevanna, Couladin, Hitler...the list of passionate and aggressive people who are evil goes on and on. Aviendha is not at all da'shain Aiel, since she is NOT dedicated to peace in any way shape or form. Her being descended from them is at such great remove (her ancestors probably quit being dai'shain before the White Tower was founded, let alone built) as to accuse me of guilt for the sack of Rome. My ancestors were contemporaneous with that event much more recently than Aviendha's were dai'shain.

Educated, again, is a nuetral trait, shared by characters such as Ishamael, Mesaana, Ba'althamel, Alviarin, Falion, Rianna, Marilin, Eldrith and every other Black sister in the Brown & White Ajahs. Noble birth is more of a hinderance than an asset to positive personality development or achievement. While a help in gaining worldly power and acclaim, genuine achievement requires fortitude and true depth of character which is best forged in adversity, something to which nobles tend to be exposed to less than others. Elayne's character was tempered in different kinds of adversity, but the trait of nobility alone is meaningless, even on an objective enumeration of material assets, as in the period described in WoT, it is on the verge of losing its meaning for political power and dwindling to a mere indicator of social status. Nobilty merely means access to a certain amount of power, not the possession of any real power itself. All the top villains are tenacious, which is why they are still around. And of course, the channeling thing is bunk, since channelers are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the problems facing the Dragon & humanity.

At least the traits you listed for the others, while not indicative of personal worth, were actually assets. This is practicall a Hallmark card.

Really? Because all we know about her is that an insane personality manifestation is obsessed with her, and that most of the few specific memories that arise have to do with her willingness to bitch at her husband.

If this in any way reflects your real life attitudes, you are a disgusting individual. I cannot believe you really accept that a list of skills and societal advantages makes someone "higher quality." The differences in "quality" of an AoLer and a 3rdAger are akin to those between a contemporary American, Western European or Pacific Rim native and someone from a third world country. Shallow and superficial and even the seemingly innate characteristics (physical prowess or channeling strength) can be attributed to environmental factors of the time or place into which someone was born.

Did you ever think that maybe they ARE the exemplars of their Age, and that was the PROBLEM with that Age? This WAS the Age that built the Sharom just because they could, and ignoring the inherent dangers in a floating building above a major city. Hubris and arrogance are more the hallmarks of the AoL than anything else. We have absolutely no indication of any tendency to genuine goodness or courage or cardinal virtues. Just a crapload of capital sins.

Physically strong, yet they tend to lose when the ThirdAgers get them down to a physical contest. Physical pain is usually a key factor in defeating them, while the primitives blunder on, accustomed to "the thousand natural shocks that the flesh is heir to..." Seriously, on WHAT evidence do you cite their superior physical strength? What feats of strength do ANY of them achieve? Bel'al's swordsmanship is hardly a thing of brute strength, as Rand notes that counts little in swordsmanship in LoC.

Being a channeler is a mere skill, like being a crack shot. A lot has to do with the system, too. In effect, you are comparing the marksmanship of people who must teach themselves to shoot with a flintlock musket to trained snipers in a professional military organization with modern weaponry. I'd bet that given the techniques and continuity the people at the end of the AoL had access to, the Third Agers would blow them out of the water. The AoLers lived in a time when their technology and facilitating infrastructure was built by people who stood on the shoulders of giants. There is not one indication that anyone from the AoL was actually one of the architects of that utopia. Rather they are the inheritors and (inadequate) caretakers of what their superior predecessors gave them. Sure the AoL people who lived a thousand years before the Breaking might have been a superior breed of human, or at least produced a small revolutionary clique who were able to create the system, but the AoL types were neither the designers nor the products of a superior system, they were the beneficiaries of it. As well to say that Stalin or Hitler exemplified the courage and ferocity and warcraft of the Red Army and Wehrmacht. The did not, they simply lived off the benefits of what better men wrought. Maybe they could have been as good or done as well in that other life, but in any case, they were still scumbags, whatever they achieved and however politically skilled and intelligent they might have been.

She is NOT all-round accomplished. She has some specialized channeling Talents and her overall levels of that ability are woefully deficient. She might be the absolute worst channeler currently wearing the shawl, and has the least education or sophistication of the three so-called Wondergirls. She is the most earthy, primitive, parochial, insular and limited and scope and prespective, and her very greatness and success (all of it hard-won; don't forget that every moment of Nynaeve supremacy comes after pages if not chapters of her being embarassed or foiled or tripped up) prove the irrelevance of all the criteria you cite as "quality." "Legendary" Lan is so because of a situation into which he was born. Of achievements, he has precious little beyond an apparentlty extraordinary survival record in a blindly futile endeavor. His self-destructive vocation was a means of trying to end his life which he saw as hopeless and pointless since he could never live up to the legend hung about his neck at birth. His extraordinary skills testify to his personal qualities by showing the extent to which he succeeded in trying to match the expectations set up for him, but a large part of his legend has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with a romantic backstory and the unwillingness of people to accept a loss and move on. Lan's a great guy who did his best to live up to a wildly unrealistic ideal others aspired for him to meet. Kind of like a Kennedy, only competent, not a degenerate ass. His appreciation of Nynaeve rests entirely in the assessment of her qualities his experience gives him, particularly his experience in just what crap a legendary reputation is worth. No doubt her own appreciation of him has to do with her recognizing the pressure he has had to live with and the fact that it still produced someone that good. Her line "I might have known you would be a king" has absolutely nothing to do with the reality of kings in WoT, and rather an acknowledgement that he lives up to the ideals people hold for a king.

Your complete misidenification of Nynaeve's & Lan's greatness and its relationship to their suitablity for each other is akin to your assumption that the Dragon needs a woman of equally artificial stature. As the indispensible man, he has no need of a partner, since any such would fall short of his level of indispensibility, and thus could never be his equal. At the same time, as a human being, what he needs in a mate, to complement him and to share his life has absolutely nothing to do with achievements or bullet points on a list of assets. Likewise, the woman(en) who would have a husband do what Rand must will need strength of character that, again, has nothing to do with things that inflate her resume.