But Nynaeve is way more awesome. Nynaeve don't give a crap, and thus is able to cut right through the bull when she needs to. When Elayne would have talked all hesitantly and politely to Tylin, Nynaeve unwittingly crashes right through protocol like a Mac truck with a painted-over windshield, and makes a genuine connection with the Queen, which facilitates so much stuff that goes on later. If they hadn't befriended Tylin, just about every important storyline, character arc or major event originating in Ebou Dar would not have taken place. Of course the cool thing about the Nynaeve/Elayne complementary partnership is that once Nynaeve has made the breech, Elayne is perceptive and well-informed enough to follow up and exploit it.

Because you combine your evil fetish with your innate elitism and extrapolate a non-indicated background for your favorite characters, the way I am morally certain Egwene is a Cowboys/Yankees/Rangers fan. :p

The latter trait is not necessarily indicative of being born into an inbred social caste. As for the education, they lived in a technologically advanced Utopia, where presumbaly everyone was well-educated, aside from maybe the Aiel, who seem to be the Amish of the AoL. A blue-collar person such as myself might pass for a highly educated upper class fellow in an appropriately pre-industrial or at-least-one-generation-post-apocalyptic setting

Yes, but I think it is more than that. Don't forget, his job is not Forsaken-slayer, it is Leader of Mankind Against the Dark One. He only kills the Forsaken when they get in his way. Like them, he would probably be perfectly happy to let them go their way as long as they don't interfere with his mission to get rid of the Dark One, so they can be mopped up at leisure afterwards.

One idea I have explored in several theories is that a much more serious adversary for Rand than any Forsaken has been the status quo and the established socio-political order, which is a flawed, slapdash system grown up around the protection and maintenance of certain power blocs. Thus "Order burns to clear his path." A nobleman would be plugged into that system. As it is, Rand comes to everything as an outsider, who can shake apart the structure without his own authority or influence being compromised. If Tigraine survived his birth, and said "Hey! I've fulfilled Gitara's prophecy. The Maidens have come to Tar Valon, which is when she said I can go home. I'm taking my baby and going back to the land of food that was not cooked over dried shit, liquid baths and no games of slavery-tag!" Rand might have been able to grow up a bastard noble in Andor. He would almost certainly still be a good archer (Tigraine was), and have access to martial arts and a sword-tutor from day one. He would have been much better educated, and taken in Daes Daemar as a young man, out of strict necessity, what with all the hostility and suspicion from House Trakand and all the other people who came to power because Tigraine was gone. After all, Rand's daughters would represent a threat to Elayne and her line's claim. But he would be plugged into the game in Andor and have a place. Everyone would know where he stood and he would be famous as the Aiel in the Mantear woodpile. That would reduce the fear of him. Rather than a came-from-nowhere man of mystery suddenly stepping over the artistocracy to dominate them, he would be "that Andoran bastard who is placing himself above decent people." In the current reality, even if they know the fact of Rand's humble birth, they don't KNOW it, per se. He just popped into existance as the Dragon Reborn. He was the Dragon Reborn who in the irrelevant past was a farmboy, rather than the farmboy who has become the Dragon Reborn that his friends and the readers know him as. If he were a noble, he would be that misbegotten son of an almost-Queen of Andor. His place would be the first thing EVERYONE knew about him, and he would be identified with a certain country. For Cairhienin or Murandians his Andoran background would be a mark against him (as it is, aside from Elayne, he seems to have more and better allies among the Cairhienin), while the Two Rivers means nothing to them, and is not important enough to resent. If they have any preconceived feelings about the Two Rivers, they would be associated with high-quality tabac, and the pleasures of a good smoke. In Shienar he was associated more with legendary Manetheren than a backwater district of Andor. If he had gone to Fal Dara as the Lady Tigraine's bastard souvenier of her Aiel vacation, the reception would have been considerably cooler and less awe-inspired. His Aiel appearance and unconfirmed ancestry made him mysterious or exotic to the Fal Darans. Knowing his sordid true origins before they got to know him would have the opposite affect.

Rand's birth, rather than the throne he steps down from in Moiraine's public relations advice, if generally known, would more likely be the pig sty he can't shake.

Depends on the job. Even Elayne is captured by the system, and needs people like Rand or Nynaeve to create her opportunities for her. If Rahvin had never come to Andor, and Morgase had died and passed her throne to Elayne naturally (Morgase being Morgase, I am thinking of trying to touch the pretty lighting better with a steel poking tool from the top of Caemlyn's highest tower, or VD), Elayne would be hemmed in by a slew of dynastic and political obligations and traditional ties. By winning her throne, deep down inside everyone knows she beat them, and has to take her even slightly more seriously, and she can get away with stuff that the normal system would not permit. This is how Rand would have had to operate where he born into the aristocracy or with any inherited power.