But it's only suicidal in hindsight. Most of these instances of so-called suicidal behavior or gross incompetence only became so after the good guys pulled a rabbit out of their hats. Who goes out prepared for every little possible eventuality? Do you carry an umbrella everywhere on the off-chance it might rain, or a weapon just in case you get mugged in the suburbs? Do you except a piece of glorified farming equipment to be a lethal threat, or a person who has never consciously done an action that is your specialty to better you at it?

Well, all the Forsaken for one, and in human nature generally, such things have a high success rate. Most people fall for that sort of thing very easily.

He might have known. He came back from what Rand thought were two fatal wounds in a row.

He didn't know that. He thought it was Rand, or at least his dialogue implied that. Rand thought so, too.
Hammar Gaidin didn't seem to think so, and Galad and Gawyn learned really quick that it is not a foolish choice. And who won? The fight was a draw, Ba'alzamon lived to fight another day and Rand still suffers. Not only that, there is a good chance it might be responsible for his channeling sickness.


Not so much with the incompetant, then.

But it is a very PERSONAL issue, and not always as obvious to the one acting under it. Rand's has a glaringly obvious drawback for combat, and he tries to avoid situations where it might seriously curtail him. Rahvin probably tries to limit his self-indulgence to not hurt him either, but he doesn't realize how it will hurt him, and what seems in retrospect like a blunder on his part is something that at the time could not have really been forseen. When you have turned a woman into your Compulsion sex-toy, you probably don't think about her rampant ego and immaturity that might cause her to run to her old nurse when she's upset or that her affront at being cheated on will be sufficient to overthrow your control. It wasn't like he kept her around to get public blow-jobs or passed her around to his buddies, or rubbed his number of other partners in her face. He was reasonable discreet and seems to have been taking precautions against her own ego slipping his Compulsion. He just had no way of forseeing how his self-indulgence was going to come back to bite him. As you point out, people can and do work around their character flaws, but they ARE character flaws and they are going to stick with the character.

Except up until his lightning hit, Rand was NOT capable of Travel. Rahvin was right, and Rand's sudden ability to Travel came out of nowhere. He also was probably not socializing if he was meeting the nobles while sitting on his throne. Rather he was giving orders or holding court in some way, and the series should have made clear to all readers by now that rulers do that for serious reasons. He might have been giving them orders germane to defending Caemlyn from the "savages" for all we knew, or telling them his version of events to explain the presence of Shadowspawn in the Palace. There is no reason to assume he was up to anything frivolous at that moment.

As I said, over and above everything, Rahvin's survival is his primary priority, and later events reveal that: no, he DIDN'T kill the whole, or ANY of the leadership of Andor! All the High Seats of the major houses were still alive and fighting against Elayne long after Rahvin was dead. If anyone died, it would have been the leadership of one of the Houses that supported Elayne, since they were all noobs. But the six each behind Arymilla and Dyelin were long-timers, and most, if not all were named as supporters of Morgase during her Succession. Rahvin did not whack anyone important, not that it would have mattered if he had. Survive first, damage control later.


But he doesn't know that. It was hardly a genius plan on her part, either, just reverting to her default status. Osan'gar on the other hand, is still the same guy who believes he met LTT stroke for stroke in a battle, and doesn't really believe he needs to hide from contemporary primitives.

True.

And she did not want to be bound because she did not want to give up her pleasures. So I skipped a step for brevity's sake.
Occam backs it up.

I think the surviving Forsaken are too arrogant to be bothered learning anyone else's flaws, aside from another Forsaken's, because those are the only ones they can really conceive of being a threat.