And his whole point in writing the series was to suggest origins for mythological figures and archetypes, of which Mat's hanging is probably the most noteworthy in the series, after Rand drawing Callandor. To suggest that Mat's hanging was something cool he decided upon when planning out how the Rhuidean scenes would go is rather absurd.



I would not be surprised if you were right, as it seems a little on the nose. On the other hand, it might have been RJ's subconscious doing that with Mat, because he knows what's in store for him, or because he associates Mat with neck-stuff. Maybe in his mind, the "finished" versions of the characters are lurking and influences how he portrays them on the way to revealing that finished version. Mat's fully-realized character wears both a concealing cloth around his neck, and a medallion hanging around it, both of which are important to him, and RJ probably knew this about him, or had some idea of it and when he thought of Mat, perhaps having him be the one to get lassoed just seemed right or natural. Or maybe it was simply that he was the only one without a hand-to-hand weapon, and thus a natural choice to be almost captured.