Re: I don't think that's likely - Edit 2
Before modification by DomA at 07/11/2012 09:10:14 PM
Demandred isn't the pinnacle of what an Aes Sedai could be in the AOL, and that doesn't even stem from his treachery. It starts because we now know conclusively that Lews Therin himself was no angel, and probably not at all as grand as we were led to believe. He was a lesser accomplished form of a flawed individual, despite all his strengths. There are third age characters with ten times the strength of character as Lews Therin or Demandred.
I fully agree.
Bel Medar and LTT appear not all that removed from this Age's Aes Sedai.
Both are gifted in the OP, but not in the Nynaeve/Semirhage ways, with one outstanding Talent that defined their career path.
Both appear to be scholars, or at least intellectuals, and both were power-obsessed politicians, who made a career rising through the hierarchy of the Aes Sedai Guild, as close to the top as they managed to. LTT was an artist. Both of them were writers, and for all we know they were novelists, not big time OP (they'd have been at the Collam Daan if they were) or political essayists! The whole society was deeply aesthetic, centered on its pleasures, and obsessed with gaining status.. you get the feeling that for many AS the primary motivation to serve was to shine enough to gained the status a third name gave an individual. There were AS like Moghedien and Balthamel not that interested in their ability, nor service. It's what Graendal denounced by making herself an abstemious ascete them turning into a caricature of the wost of AOL society.
Looking at Nynaeve's discoveries, you even get the feeling perhaps the AOL era before the Collapse had long been nearly stagnating, the greatest discoveries far in the past and the OP scholars more interested in competition between them then anything. Cliques everywhere.
The pre-WOS relations and situations of LTT/Bel Medar might not have been all that different, on a different scale of OP knowledge and sophistication of politics, than those of Elaida. Status, power, political bickering, lavish palaces, trophy wives.
The WOS woke them up. They accomplished great things, but LTT became more and more tyranical and stubborn, and Bel Medat ended up switching side.
No doubt Bel Medar is a genius of strategy and this will play out a lot, but indeed we have all signs he's not that great or brave physically and he hates getting his hands dirty. He's no daring soldier who will duel Rand, he's one of those backroom generals. A genius one. Demandred sounds much closer to a more competent Rhavin or Be'lal than a Sammael. As far as we can tell, Sammael is more comparable to LTT in personality.
RJ seems to have made Demandred into a kind of exagerated dark mirror of himself: RJ had a scholarly (scientific) background, got conscripted as a soldier, is a military-history buff and weapon collector, and after Vietnam he became a popular writer. And in his AOL, writers and artists could become politicians (well, there's Reagan...).
Demandred was an intellectual, writer and military-history buff who was forced to become a general.