User blog comment:NaiflidG/Relating to Alastair in "On the Head of a Pin" and "Caged Heat"/@comment-79.115.72.243-20141112144300/@comment-11331875-20141112220148

"That whole story, and that's your takeaway?" Well, I knew this was coming. Have a round on me, guys.

Yeah, dude, Lilith is stronger than Azazel, that's canon; it's been confirmed by Kripke. He's quoted in the official third season companion guide as saying that Lilith is not just higher-ranking and older than Azazel -- she's more powerful, too. I already posted this on the Talk:Demons page, in my last entry for The Season 4 Companion Guide section. Kripke mentioned that they chose white eyes for Lilith to signify that she was on a totally different power level than any demon seen before (which, again, includes Azazel). Since demons of the same eye color are generally on the same level, Alastair having white eyes (and holding higher rank than Azazel) is probably an indicator that he, too, is stronger than Azazel.

Eh, Cain and Abaddon are Carver Era stuff. I don't like to think about that crap, since he's the same dude who makes a serious continuity error at least once per season (reapers are angels, anyone?), recycles plots in a very clumsy, inferior way, and has basically run my favorite show into the ground. I do like the Knight of Hell concept and the early portrayal of Abaddon, but he messed that up, too. Cain is almost certainly stronger than all other demons in Carverland because of his having been made with the Mark, but I doubt any official show people remember any demons who predate his taking over the show (e.g. Alastair, Azazel, Lilith) enough to make a definitive statement on it.

On your argument about the Knights' eye colors -- before Season 8 (literally, in the last official book before Season 8), it was strongly implied that the very first, very oldest demons all have white eyes. If Carver wanted Abaddon to be one of the first demons while adhering to canon, he'd have made her white-eyed, too, but for some reason, he chose the most basic eye color possible for a demon (in the past, all the super-important, the super-strong, super-speshul demons had, at the very least, non-black eyes, as Sera Gamble noted). My theory is that the Men of Letters were wrong (again) and that the Knights weren't handpicked by Lucifer -- Cain (who I still have to think is white-eyed, like the first demons were meant to be, or I'll just have to throw my hands up at the mess Carver is making again) worked on making new Knights over the millenia instead of turning them all at once, following Lucifer's orders to make more while Lucifer was locked away and thus unable to "pick" anyone. Abaddon could've been one of the youngest Knights (maybe the last Knight turned, in keeping with her as "The Last Knight" thing), so she had the black eyes of a newer demon. Same goes for Dean as a "newborn" Knight.