Why? As soon as she got Rand in the cabin for their talks and he thought the threats he should be wary of were the damane outside and not the non-channelling and unarmed Tuon inside, she stood fair chances of managing to surprise him. She didn't have to attack him frontally, Semirhage must know weaves to paralyze him or cause enough pain he wouldn't be able to channel for the few seconds she needed to collar him. She had to get away from both their escorts first. We never saw that part, because her MoM was destroyed from the start.

It was a gamble and it was risky (but again, when the DO via the Nae'blis orders you to attempt something, no isn't an excuse. I hardly think Semirhage was enthusiastic about these orders, unless she was blinded by the promises of rewards), but it wasn't "insane".



Semirhage didn't know. She learned about Cadsuane's arsenal in KOD/TGS.

Maybe she ought to have been more on her guard and have noticed at the Cleansing, but obviously she didn't puzzle it out, and Cyndane and Demandred obviously didn't share their own deductions.

We know Semirhage was at the Cleansing, but we have no idea what she did, who she fought and to which extent she was involved. Moghedien didn't see much of anything, for instance.



Obviously she has not and no one shared their conclusions with her, otherwise she would never have approached Rand's capture the way she did.



I think Shai'tan seized the opportunity to let access to the TP to Rand because he put himself in the state where it's possible to embrace it. The far more likely scenarios were that Semirhage would be too frightened of the DO to lose control and SH just had not to let Rand to her too long after his capture, or that Shaidar Haran would have to get involved to kill or stop her before she killed Rand. I think the possibility her efforts would bring Rand to the sort of "void" he needed to be to reach the TP was a far too remote possibility for SH to have planned this.... unless Semirhage was precisely ordered behind the scenes to force Rand to torture Min and when she obeyed these orders she put Rand in the right state of mind to touch the TP and she was indeed betrayed and sacrificed. Even then, the odds were not that good that it would work as planned. That it could work would have been one possibilities of outcome among a few others SH had planned for.

In the end she was sacrificed. It's more a matter of deciding if she was following orders when she was, or if she was disobeying orders by torturing Rand. Her own surprised reaction suggests making Rand kill Min was part of her orders but she had no idea why Shai'tan/SH ordered that. When Rand channelled the TP she didn't react like someone who was caught red-handed and guilty of disobedience - she reacted like someone who was doing as she was asked and was betrayed by her boss.

The irony is that Semirhage was aware Shai'tan tended to sacrifice even his more precious pieces when the end justified it and had promised herself it would not happen to her. She still didn't see it coming.