I tend to agree, and completely with RJ intending to deprive Demandred of his face-off with Rand. The Forsaken never get what they most desire, and often fall attempting to get just that. It sounds really possible Demandred might die after Rand advises Mat to use Demandred's despair to face Rand to make him make a fatal mistake.

Demandred's real role is to provide a "evil genius" foe for Mat in the last battle, and to provide the Shadow with tangible victories until he falls.

It's clever if convenient how the pieces of the puzzle seem to fall into place. Demandred knows LTT to the toenails, and his only challenges were to study third Age warfare and figure out how LTT would make use of that and a limited number of not that well trained channelers.

Then, LTT also knows Demandred very well, and knows what to expect from him using massive Shadowspawn armies with a far more limited support of channellers.

We were heading straight for a whole "I know what LTT is up to" vs. "I know what Demandred is up to" story arc.

But instead RJ had in mind that Rand would have an epiphany that would lead him to focus his efforts on the Dark One as the Light's Champion, realized LTT had tried way too much to take everything on his shoulders, and thus focus on guiding/inspiring more than leading the world to face the rest, delegating his military leadership to Mat and his generals, and his political leadership to Egwene/Perrin, and his leadership of channellers to Egwene/Logain. Meanwhile he prepares for what no one but him can do: face the DO.

The clever move of RJ (I think, at least it appears to be what RJ has done) was to separate Mat and Rand for the first phase of TG, sending Rand north with his half of the light and Mat south with the other. Mat has a lot of assets to play with thanks to his memories, but RJ made sure to stop this at the TW, so he wouldn't have any knowledge of Demandred or WOS-style channeling, and Demandred is no doubt little better prepared to face something like Mat, hundreds of generals and soldiers merged in a single mind, and gifted with amazing, amazing luck.

To spice things up, RJ also split Mat from his Band, and the only army he can find himself for a while will be the Imperial Seanchan army, which has a whole set of traditions (a mix of pre-Hawking warfare unknown in the Westlands, with Hawkwing-era derived traditions and a whole new tradition that developped from this to incorporate the Seanchan beasts and the damane) that set it apart from his own memories. Not wholly new, he knows Hawkwing-era traditions, but still really quite foreign.

That's more interesting. Mat and the Seanchan will sweat, really sweat against Demandred, and at last he has a real military challenge. And Demandred is forced into a similar challenge because he's prepared to face foes (LTT he knows so well. the Sesanchan he could have studied well) but the Pattern throws at him another altogether, and a very unpredictable one.

Rand in chapter one has to be right: Demandred is prepared to strike in the South. He intends, or was ordered by the DO, to wipe out the Seanchan first and remove the last chance they'd ally with Rand, before moving on Rand. That's another thing Rand is right about: Demandred intends to divide the Light, not face it whole. He no doubts as many "distractions" and "traps" planned to frustrate Rand and forcing him to wait until he's ready for him - Rand stupidly gave Demandred a whole month to prepare for this - but it seems fairly obvious Demandred's plans are gonna be upset mostly by Mat. It's not quite the Seanchan generals he expected to face (and no doubt got Semirhage to provide him Seanchan history books about), that he's gonna have to deal with, and their getting Travelling might also come a as an unwished for complication, as Mat unlike the Seanchan has had some time now to develop ideas on how Travelling could be used...

I get the feeling Demandred has Shadow armies hidden all over the south (just like Rand in chapter one suspects) and intended to use Murandy to provoke a war in northern Altara, defeat the Seanchan armies there (currently deprived of most of their damane and raken/to'raken... if they haven't been redeployed after the raid on TV, and we can suspect they weren't indeed, Fortuona is planning a real campaign on TV, the armies near Murandy and the ones near Illian are there because since Rand's campaign in TPOD the Seanchan fear Andor/Murandy or Illian might strike at Altara), then draw more and more Seanchan armies out of Ebou Dar, having his Shadowspawn armies ambush each of them in turn, and strike at Ebou Dar too with Shadowspawn. To keep the Seanchan even more busy, he could also strike with Shadowspawn at all their other military posts... Almoth, Tanchico, Amadicia.... The Seanchan won't know what hit them.

This isn't gonna work exactly as planned if the Seanchan suddenly manage to get Travelling from Elaida. Demandred's campaign is going to turn sour, Mat will turn the tables and use Travelling to find Shadowspawn armies and move armies to ambush them, but with only damane and no "mass destruction weaves", Mat is still going to face a big challenge, and ultimately overwhelming numbers. My feeling is that Mat will come very near defeat, with all the armies he has left surrounded in Ebou Dar, and the Seanchan will be forced to move north to the other half of the Light.

Then he's gonna have his rematch, this time with Demandred having all or nearly all the Shadow's resources (my prediction: Demandred won't have any large resources of channelers until someone kills Taim and Demandred inherits all the Dreadlords), and Mat leading all the Light has left.

Basically we're gonna move through the book from something closer to the Trolloc Wars w/a genius general to something more reminescent of the last years of the WOS, after technology had failed, after a huge deal of AS and Forsaken had fallen, for the last part of the book.

My feeling is that the early book will have Rand face mostly the plans of Moridin/SH to prevent his early strike at SG (with Cyndane's interference with Slayer etc.) which will involve Moridin's resources like the BA, Taim, Cyndane and Graendal, not getting embroiled on the battlefield with Demandred. This phase could end with victory over the BT.

It would be clever: phase 1 of the book would have Demandred use decoys/proxy (the Murandians) to provoke a war against the Seanchan, and rely mostly on Shadowspawn, Trolloc Wars style. That would "train" the Seanchan in dealing with Shadowspawn, at their head someone who "fought" the Trolloc Wars (so to speak).

It would also have Rand with Perrin/Egwene/Logain involved with the Dreadlords, thus there to help train the badly outskilled but far more numerous WO/Windfinders/Aes Sedai/Asha'man, leaving them time to get better before the Shadow's channellers are lead by Demandred.

Then Taim is out of the picture and defeated, and Demandred gets all the Dreadlords and unimaginable numbers of Shadowspawn but Mat returns to inherit all the Light's combined forces. Big challenge again: Mat has tons of new and incredibly strong resources, but he no longer has memories to draw from in how to best use them and has to be creative and rely on his mental link to Rand - and new lieutenants in the likes of Logain, perhaps Cadsuane (after we've seen Adelorna perform...eek...it's about time the Green Ajah puts Cadsuane at its head...), while Demandred is fully in his comfort zone at last, with something closer to his WOS armies, but growing massively frustrated with Rand avoiding him.

Demandred's end could come at the very end. E.g.: Mat's trap for him might spring when Demandred predictably (for Rand) abandons his post when he realizes Rand has moved to the Pit of Doom and he realizes it's Moridin there who will get him, or failed. That would cover both for frustrating Demandred of his desire and for the fact Demandred is intrinsically loyal only to Demandred.

For Moridin it's more obvious: he has to die in such a way the DO can't or won't give him the "final death". That could involve, among a ton of options, preventing Moridin from dying until the Bore is no more... Nyaneve healing him so he can't follow Rand in Death would be priceless..