And the girl to whom I was extolling Lanfear's skill and knowledge just laughed. She rightly pointed out that once she stopped playing at "Selene," Mierin handled Rand very badly - calling him by someone else's name, making little effort to gain his confidence. Heck, she didn't even do much to "win him over," save for one naughty TaR session that was unfortunately dream-blocked by Asmo.

Then the girl went on to make more points that I hadn't really thought out - that Lanfear's present-day LTT obsession took away from her time to make other things happen, that there was little evidence of any efforts to establish a purely-Lanfear power base of any sort...

By the end of the conversation, it was clear that Lanfear was more of a bungler than anything else - at least in her post-Scientist period. Of course, even before then, Lanfear managed to completely lose the affection of the man she obsessed over. Then made an idiot of herself at his wedding.

I always hoped for more from the character, but Lanfear scariness is purely rooted in her AoL War of Shadow actions. And when she made that guy's skin into a balloon, as has been rightly pointed out above...