I'd like to get something off my mind in regards to the theories of Rand and the Last Battle. It's not a theory of my own, it's just an uneasiness I wish to share. Everybody seems to agree, including yourself I believe, that Rand will die at the Last Battle. I've tried to counter this argument in hope that there might be some evidence that he will live, but the results have proven otherwise. I would accept Rands death if in some way it would not not be in vain, which it won't because he'll die defeating the Dark One. But for me that doesn't seem enough. I've grown on Rand like I have many of the other characters, and we as readers have shared his adventures, his hardships and his slow and inevitable journey into madness. Even if after the Dark One is defeated and the prosperity and technology of the Age of Legends return, how will Robet Jordan leave the World of Time to it's inhabitants and the to the readers?

What I'd like to see? Min had a viewing in A Crown of Swords where she saw Rand touch another man and the two merged. One dies, the other doesn't. You have many theories and I might have missed the possibilities for this one, but I'm hoping, not theorizing, that that other man Rand merges with is Lews Therin Telamon. Together they duke it out with the Dark One, Lews dies but has his revenge for the death of his beloved Ilyenna and finds peace at long last. Rand survives, marrys Elayne (or all three of his lovers), rules a in a new Hall of Servants which houses both female and male Aes Sedai, grows old and dies after a hundred of so years. I can dream, can't I? Tell me what you think, please respond soon.