I also despise Elayne. I cannot understand how Cannoli and his gang can think Egwene annoying and Elayne okay. I can understand her from a literary point of view, if she was used as pure comic relief as the spoiled noblegirl brat who despite her distaste for it had to mingle among the trash for a while, and unexpectedly found some of them to be rather nice, if unpolished. Hello! Carried on her four-poster bed to a inspection atop a tall tower! Thinking of Mat as a unruly subject and "training" him to be a more loyal and "good" subject while her mind should have been on much more important things and she definitely should have stepped out of her noblewoman role (I usually have little or no sympathy for him, but compared to Elayne he is a dream come true). Her claim for the Cairhienin throne, without even considering that Galad at least as her older brother Damodred in a nation that is after all not biased against male monarchs, or at least a handful of cairhienin nobility would be better suited for it (her ascent to the Andoran throne was at least lawfully natural in a feudal society, even if she was one of the least qualified for the job; Dyelin seems like she would be a better queen even than Morgase, who seem like a rather good queen from the tidbits we have gotten of her reign). And countless other occations! I remember reading (I think it was Cannoli) a comparison between the girlfriends of Rand, where Min came out short and Elayne was supposedly on top. Min is studying intensely, gathering knowledge that the world needs and competance in general scholarly activity. She is well on her way to becoming important in her own volition, not as something she inherited. Elayne is a spoiled brat that has just risen to her current position because she is selfish, power-hungry and inherited a title. She has gotten everything on a silver platter, and barely became queen despite this because she failed to convince anyone older than 16, excepting Dyelin (the reasoning behind which seems to be her desire to avoid civil war), that she was competent to take the throne.

Among the men I like, and have always liked, Perrin the most, and Mat the least.

Otherwise he's just -- like Rand -- hopelessly misogynistic and demeaning to women in a world where women is supposed to have a higher status than men in many ways.

but I find it silly with him having three girlfriends and it being portrayed as such a natural and good thing. People, including the women he chose, would definitely think this a trait of self-aggrandizement and arrogance, and demeaning, spoiled and power-hungry to boot.

Otherwise I find that Jordan seems to understand women better than men, in the sense that there are lots of different women, but men are mostly a parody of The Man.