I agree that Mat is a 'Hero Reborn', but not one who was great enough to be ta'veren or sooo renowned to be Bound to the Horn...until now... It was time for the Pattern to use him for a greater purpose to "balance his Karma" to use everything he ever learned in his other lives to make a difference not in the senseless barbarism of battle, but to make a difference in The Ever Shifting Balance Between Good And Evil...a little too melodramatic I think,... but yo!...it'll do. I do believe he was Aemon and I also think that there is the slight possibility that he is not. The thing is that in his memories he wasn't seen to be anything higher than the Manetheren King's advisor. (King's Advisor is a higher post than Captain Commander or General or etc. And the King didn't even listen to him. That's where he remembers having arrows in him (it doesn't say whether he died). He then recalls that the opposing King had a grey beard and was killed by a beardless boy with a spear years later. The 6th Book has him as a "middling lord" when he's dancing with the Sea Folk Wavemistress "at the court of Shaemal, when all the world envied Coremanda's splendor and might." The thing is that the Manetheren Memories were not the end all and be all of his memories. He has memories of Barashtra and Eharon, etc. As his lives progressed, he could have been "promoted" to become King (and Warder, which is why I suspect that the Daughter of the Nine Moons might be a channeler... just a thought). Anyway I'd like him to be the Great King Aemon, who, among his enemies, it was said as the ultimate compliment to a brave warrior that he had Aemon's Heart...