You have spent over a decade railing at length against all things Aes Sedai yet that is TRULY the best explanation you can find...?

He was eager to canoodle with Egwene; he just did not want to accept the concomitant duties. Because he was what, 16, 17?

Standing behind the Aiel and in front of the Dragonsworn, I guess.

Well, first off, the comparison is with Leto II, not Paul, but:

She is standing next to the Wise One from the Aiel Waste—y'know, the people who have actually BEEN compared to the Fremen?

She is on top of the Aes Sedai Queen of Andor.

Elayne has the twins; Aviendhas are quadruplets. And, come to think of it, their ability to channel from the womb is similar to Leto II, his aunt and his twin being "pre-born" with Other Memory from the moment of conception.

Uh... huh....

Yeah, Mats assertion he always did his chores back home is less "proud" than "defensive." He is a born carouser and gambler, but his deep bonds of duty to friends, family and home ensure he meets his responsibilities to them—GRUDINGLY. "The extremes to which he is dragged on his quest in TDR" are the beginning of what changes him into more than the shifty and shiftless prevaricator so easily seduced by a gem encrusted blade despite KNOWING it was dripping with diabolic malice. "He always took care of his men and retainers" after galloping away from them before they even BECAME "his," only to be drawn back by the knowledge that meant abandoning them to certain excruciating death: Another GROWTH moment. Until then, and even some while after, Mat could not care less about the sterotypical nobles "failures at the obligations of their positions;" if anything, he was on the side of those resenting those duties. The difference is that he had enough "character" not to ignore duties simply because he resented them, which gradually transforms him from a carousing gambler and horse trader (the medieval equivalent of a used car salesman) to an honorable martial and civil leader of men.

Perrin never articulates much of anything, all the more comical since he is the clearest analogue of the AUTHOR: His sense of honor and duty is so much a given it is tacit, so needs no more "articulation" in his mind than the number of fingers on his hand. And yes, his fixation on Faile to the exclusion of literally all else does warp that honor into a caricature of itself; as I said, just because characters or real people "change" does not necessarily mean that they GROW rather than SHRINK.

The finished product was a "product" of Jordans own obsession with writing "Epic" Fantasy in the literally largest sense. Halfway through the series my only question was whether he had predetermined its length "must" be a "symbolic" dozen books or as many as there were Forsaken, but the series cosmology always argued strongly for the latter. Hence Jordans deathbed vow that AMoL would be the thirteenth and final book "even if it needs its own baggage cart" or whatever his phrase was. That is NOT an author milking a series for greed, "only" milking one for ego.

As for Sanderson, he is not perfect, but had to satisfy not only himself but three other people, one them DEAD, another the dead authors editor-wife, and the last his own PUBLISHER. That practically ensured the final "product" would be FAR less than perfect, but the actual factual details he missed were few. The problem was that his style and treatment of several key characters just felt off, because it was: He was not Jordan, and could not possibly share the same intuitive understanding of the characters as their creator had.