I got that impression as well, though I couldn't tell if it was gov. propaganda or the truth. There was definitely truth in the true royals having descended from a returned, but I thought that may have had something to do with the earliest returned being a little... special.
I just finished Twilight. Just barely. It was simultaneously as awful as everyone said and not really that bad. For an author who seems determined to write romance, her romantic scenes were horrible. That section in the meadow was the worst. What's with Bella referring to Edward's skin as marble whenever she touches him? It's a creepy description, saying that your lover is cold and stony (but if it works for Nynaeve...). She even said something like, "his cold, unyielding lips" when describing a smooch. Yuck.
The prose was always iffy and the action scenes disorienting. Characters were cardboard, plot was nearly nonexistent. When she dropped the stupid obsessing about how physically perfect Edward was, I found myself enjoying the book, sometimes for paragraphs at a time. With a good editor, I imagine the book would have made a very nice 200-page story. There was a scene that was approximately three pages long somewhere between page 350 and page 400 that was excellent. I really enjoyed that part.