... When I first noticed that it was happening way back when, I thought it might actually be a clue, but book after book passed, and... Nope.
WE get it already. The man loved his wife... Clearly everyone else there at the time was merely a case of false assumptions on Ishamael's part and mistaken identity. -_-
... Seriously. If you just skipped ever reading the prologue of EotW, you might very well come to believe the idea that anyone else was even there was just an embellishment of the legend.
IIRC they were married for something like 90 years, so their kids(and maybe even grandkids, and great grandkids at that) might of very well of been adults... But that only makes the fact that we know none of their names all the worse!
... And yet somehow, I feel worse for the poor "friends"... Yeah. They totally ranked being there... Close as brothers and sisters they were...
As strained as they might of gotten at points. I'm pretty sure that if Rand had killed Mat and Perrin... It would of come up at SOME point.
Compare some of the LTT fulled conversations with the freaking Forsaken...
I part of me rightly or wrongly wants to blame it on RJ himself not having kids... But honestly, even that REALLY doesn't excuse the fact that LTT was so laser guided in his ranting. Hell, while it was BS by that point, the books went so far as for Rand to have all of LTT's memories, and... Still. Nothing.
I thought about this too ... always seemed strange to me that LTT ranted and raved about Ilyena but never once named another of his victims. I guess in my head I started to translate that into just another piece of his insanity. Essentially I just started thinking of it as LTT was semi-trapped in the moment he was first brought out of his insanity by Ishamael and laid eyes on Ilyena's dead body. His insane mind kept skipping back to that moment rather than allowing him to even consider the other victims as something of a protection mechanism ... sort of like a person with a dual personality would surface a different personality when faced with certain stimuli. It's clearly an imperfect explanation, but it's how I wrapped my brain around it