The collapse wasn't peaceful and I imagine he had some pre-Bore experience to draw on, being a fully matured adult with a lot of self-control all channelers have to have and not having worry about aging much gives him a bit of an accelerated learning curve too. I admit there's a smell of retcon about a lot of the timeline for the Bore-to-Breaking era though, I suspect RJ flushed out and improved the AoL stuff between tDR and tSR so I don't think Belal's remarks and what they tend to imply should be taken to seriously and we should just assume fencing as a form of exercise/meditation/sport may have existed pre-Bore.

Other than that, I was very happy with Demandred, the duels Gawyn to Galad to Logain to finally Lan, all while fighting Mat - while a bit repetitive, were kinda necessary I think to help really give Demandred the 'massive badass' flavor he'd been getting described as throughout the series, especially after some of the lackluster Forsaken performances. Also a bit of misdirection because Gawyn then Galad, the latter using a copy of Mat's medallion, combined with Mat being Demandred's real main enemy at the battle, had me expecting Mat would be the one who offed Demandred. Especially with his 'lifetimes of experience' and his also having beaten both of them at Tar Valon simultaneously while weak from healing, Lan surprised me totally.