Umm, what? What exactly are you talking about with Lanfear? If you are referring to to confrontation with Rand where Moiraine saves him, then Lanfear did very little. She was already IN the encampment, interrogating one of the darkfriends. When she learned that Rand had slept with Aviendha, she went berserk and blew up the wagon. When the Aiel rushed her, she simply created a ring of fire that burned maybe a couple hundred Aiel or so, before Rand blocked her with a barrier. I think she might even have had her angreal already at that point, the one Moiraine now has which the finns claimed was so strong as to be nearly sa'angreal.

To compare that to Rand singlehandedly destroying an entire ARMY of 10K-100K trollocs is silly. Lanfear did not come CLOSE to anything Rand did.

As for Semirhage, I admit that killing the entire imperial family was a neat trick, but it would not have required any significant skill/strength on her part. She could simply have used traveling to reach the empress, reversing and inverting to hide the fact that she was a channeler and masks of mirror to look like someone else. Then she could have struck quickly to kill her fast, and fled via gateway while everyone was still in shock. Again nowhere close to what Rand did. Infact there are now modern Aes Sedai who might have been able to replicate what Semirhage did if they were not constrained by the oaths.



I don't deny that the AoL channelers were more skilled, but they could not come close to doing what Rand did unaided and alone. We actually saw this with LTT, when he took over during the trolloc attack at the mansion and required the assistance of a lot of other Aes Sedai and Asha'man to win. I think it was even said there that if Logain had not brought all the men with him, that attack could well have worked.

And then there is the fact that none of the forsaken have decided to go and blow up Rand's armies of Aiel and such. And the fact that what Rand did caused darkfriends to see a mysterious light and go mad as a result. I think that was an important clue that something more than ordinary average chnaneling was happening. AoLers are tough and skilled, but not THAT tough. Rand has grown to become something more now. That was hinted all throughout the book with all the strange things he can now do.