The Forsaken who have played the "power-base" game have all fared as badly as Lanfear with Rand. More so, in some cases.

Rahvin sought a powerful nation that he worked to strengthen, then planned a campaign of conquest (first with Cairhien and then?). Rahvin wanted to have a massive force, the biggest in the land, to unknowingly play the Shadow's game, not realizing its King and his main lieutenants served the Shadow...

He made a complete mess of it, totally ignored the political realities of that land. He made enemies of all the most powerful Houses of Andor. Instead of conquering nations and and increasing his share of the Light's forces, Rahvin would have gotten caught not only n a massive civil war the minute he tried to usurp the throne, but Caemlyn and the regions would have rebelled... A complete fiasco.

Of course, Rahvin accidentally left Andor in an unplanned power vacuum.. but it's truly Rand's mistep of talking of Elayne as if she were to be his puppet Queen of Andor and Cairhien that really opened the door to the Succession.

Sammael fared no better. He was careless and got identified as a Forsaken. From that moment, his plan to use Illian as a puppet nation that would serve the Shadow's goals without knowing were doomed in the long term. It was a matter of time before Rand exposed him publicly and waged war on him.... Sammael's pawns all switched back their allegiance without blinking...

A variation on the same happened to Be'lal.

Aran'gar planned to eventually use the White Tower as her power base that she would rule post TG under Shai'tan because she was the only one among the Forsaken who understood primitive cultures (riiiiight!) and was fit to lead them.. She "grasped" primitive channellers so well ("grasped" being weirdly synonymous to "underestimated' with Aran'gar) she got caught again and again being a few steps behind thisd or that stupid primitives, and got nearly captured by people whose cumulated OP knowledge probably didn't even match her... She concurrently planned to seize control of Graendal's networks, and to kill Rand. She indolently ended up caught in Graendal's nets and put herself right in Rand's path. In Shai'tan's place, I'd count the loss of Aran'gar to save Graendal for TG, a Graendal who expects to be blamed for everyhting and will be very very obedient not only a fair deal, but a very cheap bargain. If Graendal only knew who gave Rand the notion to balefire the remaining Chosen in the first place!


Semirhage made the laudable effort to infiltrate the most difficult culture around, then with amazing lack of brillance she got distracted by her pet sadistic obsessions and let them control her course of action. Of course it's no fun at all for a sadist to compel (with pain, or with plain Compulsion) Tuon to obey her and then use her as a puppet. That's like taking care of Cabriana in a blink. Boorrring.

It's much, much more interesting to incrementally, with painful slowness, to increase her fear of you... and the fact this serves Semirhage's pleasures but isn't where the Shadow's best interests lay be damned. When you realize Semirhage must have been aware all this time the sul'dam could learn to channel and it was a child's game for her, who discovered the very thing, to play it safe and have Tuon secretely turned to the Shadow by 13 BA and 13 Myrddraal. But ah... after that simply ordering Tuon the DF around would have been so tedious.... yet after that, no matter what happened, to the end the Seanchan would have been lead by a DF...

After Semirhage bungled, the Shadow would not have lost the Seanchan - any Forsaken could the next day have redirected Tuon in the way the DO needed and be answered "of course Great Master it shall be done"... and let the Light lose their time and efforts trying to reason with them... Of course, Semirhage threw in chaos a whole Empire by chopping the head... sparking a war that might last many, many years if not decades... Too bad it's the wrong continent and the wrong war to be of much use to the Shadow and its war between the Seanchan and Rand and the WT she should have put her efforts into. Technically, with the theft of Travelling Tuon could have brought a much larger force to her side in TG if not for the civil war (though those who say "the full strength of the Empire" are exagerrating massively... it would take forever to have mobilized anywhere close to "the full strength of the Empire".

Mesaana had considerable success at first, and if not for Siuan's obsession with Elaida, and Egwene... But Mesaana's game wasn't really a power-base sort of plan. She had infiltrated the Tower, played on its weaknesses and divisions, and organized its systematic undermining and eventual destruction. yet in the end, what she's achieved is to make the divisions and weaknesses so obvious to the sisters that that most ultra conservative organization now in decline after centuries of stagnation was so shaken to the core in its convictions and values that an Amyrlin like Egwene with her weird notions and radical changes was even conceivable or accepted! Now thanks to a series of good and bad ideas, sheer luck and unexpected last minute help (like Verin.. or the very timely Seanchan attack that demonstrated to the WT its real strength... that is weakness), Mesaana leaves the Tower theorically stronger than it has been in centuries, cleansed of all the Shadow but her own presence... and this on the very eve of TG. That's what you get for playing cat and mouse too long and enjoying this like a big game of solitaire, instead of planning for ways to end it faster, or seize real control when opportunities arose for that. The best is that Egwene has so shaken the Hall that if Mesaana managed to kill her, they'd simply elect the most suitable Green to replace her, and keep doing pretty much what Egwene thought was the new priority post reunification: Rand and winning the LB.

Graendal's wasn't a traditional power-base either. Where Sammael, Rahvin and Be'lal planned to conquer and play misleading war games with ever growing armies... Graendal set herself to throw in chaos everything around her, not to build anything but to turn it to dust. She sure left Arad Doman in shambles... until right before the penultimate self-destruction she had planned (by having Ituralde provoke the Seanchan and bring the whole country to die "in glory" facing this impossible foe, Rand managed to redirect these forces to fighting the Shadow. Graendal is another who enjoyed herself too much. Her methods are probably the most efficient any of the Forsaken has used, but she took it all much, much too slowly and leisurely. Had Graendal not been so indolent and lazy and put her great skills to heavy work, the whole continent would have been in the state of Arad Doman by now.

Moghedien? Well... we don't quite know if Moghedien achieved much of anything. Tarabon was already on the brink of civil war, if not already in it, when she arrived. There's no sign she was involved with any of the political players. Mostly, Moghedien let herself get distracted, developed a grudge against a mere girl, showed herself not very good at handling even a small bunch of BA (making one wonder how she managed to handle the lower Forsaken in the AOL...), got captured and now run errands for the Chosen who, if nothing else, has managed to create and keep for the most part hidden until it will be really useful a gigantic network of pawns over 3000 years, keeping Shai'tan's cult alive.

There remains Demandred, but we don't know what he's really planned. The way he spoke of Sammael and Be'lal and Rahvin and their methods and ways so scornfully, it sounds unlikely he mounted anything like their power bases. If he built any, IMO, we'll find out he has one he's kept hidden and can come to lead openly as a Forsaken at TG. The sort of power base that would laugh evilly in Rand's face if he came and told them their leader is Demandred, not the sort that would run the other way or fall on their knees begging for pardon and mercy like the Tairens, Illianers or return to their legitimate leader, like the Andorans. Bur has Demandred been brilliant and mounted an army of dreadlords? We'll see.

So Lanfear in all of this? Her goal to bring Rand to serve the Shadow was far from laughable, in fact it's like also Shai'tan's primary goal, one Moridin has long tried to accomplish and was working at even in TGS... Heck... Semirhage was even betrayed by Shai'tan when she tried to harm Rand.... Lanfear can't be blamed for her scheme to prevent Graendal, Rahvin and Sammael from going against Rand too early, and by this alliance of four make Semirhage-Demandred-Mesaanatoo too wary to hatch plans against Rand. While the other Forsaken were losing time building power bases that they could not lead openly for the Shadow, ever, or aiming at secondary targets like the WT, the Seanchan or Arad Doman, Lanfear cut to the chase and went straight for the key player. Shai'tan wouldn't fault her top priority to gain control of Rand early. Her methods were all very questionnable - especially how much they caused collateral damages among the more valuable assets of the Shadow (she indirectly caused the deaths of Be'lal, Ishamael, Rahvin, Asmodean, Sammael (whom she had built up to Rand as his archenemy and primary target... and her carelessness with leaving Rand the CK AK lead to the Cleansing, the death of Osan'gar and finally the CK and her ill-advised notion to let Asmodean spill OP and Shadow secrets to Rand played a part in the death of Aran'gar as well... Only Moghedien, Demandred, Semirhage and Mesaans have escaped the curse Lanfear seems to put on anything she gets involved with....). Lanfear wasn't "too obsessed" to actually do something valuable for the Shadow, she was rather pursuing one of the Shadow's main goa with her obession, the same gaol as Ishamael and now Moridin, as it happens. She was just too emotionally involved, too obsessed with LTT, too delusional and too narcissistic to get anywhere close to success with that reasonable plan. I'd be very worried about their shared hatred for Rand now if I were Demandred. The odds aren't favourable for Forsaken sharing too much with Lanfear!