We study structural conditions in dense graphs that guarantee the existence
of vertex-spanning substructures such as Hamilton cycles. It is easy to see
that every Hamiltonian graph is connected, has a perfect fractional matching
and, excluding the bipartite case, contains an odd cycle. Our main result in
turn states that any large enough graph that robustly satisfies these
properties must already be Hamiltonian. Moreover, the same holds for embedding
powers of cycles and graphs of sublinear bandwidth subject to natural
generalisations of connectivity, matchings and odd cycles.
This solves the embedding problem that underlies multiple lines of research
on sufficient conditions for Hamiltonicity in dense graphs. As applications, we
recover and establish Bandwidth Theorems in a variety of settings including
Ore-type degree conditions, P\'osa-type degree conditions, deficiency-type
conditions, locally dense and inseparable graphs, multipartite graphs as well
as robust expanders