View original postOf course it would have helped had Brandon been able to write Mat Cauthon at all. In the light of what RJ really planned (Mat, between his fears of Rand, his fears for Tuon and his traumatic rescue of Moiraine found it was all too much to handle and he broke (the Hand that falters) finally deciding to flee his duty and go hide in his wife's skirts in Ebou Dar). Brandon really totally ruined Mat. He didn't seem to have understood that RJ had darkened Mat more and more in COT/KOD and would have brought him to the edge, where he might lose the readers's sympathy (much like Egwene has done with a good part of the readership), before redeeming him. To be honest, I don't think anyone but RJ could have the fine balancing act this would have required to work, but Brandon was still a far cry from pulling this off decently, with his Mat the buffoon. He focused on the humor aspect of the trickster when RJ more and more focused Mat on deadpan humor and the darker kind of "practical jokes" (Mat's trickster tricks in KOD were killing Seanchan left and right, merely a prelude to the giant prank he would pull off at TG for Demandred, sacrificing "half the Light" to save the world, much as he had given an eye for Moiraine.