First of all, Egwene has no first-hand knowledge of any of this. Secondly, Aes Sedai are in no way reasonable sources on the topic of a man who can channel. Even Egwene, when she accompanied him, looked at every little thing she did not like or sign of change as a harbinger of incipient madness. For Aes Sedai who fixate on this sort of thing professionally, it's going to be even worse. As for Nynaeve's reports, there is no way she's going to report his instability to Egwene without making it abundantly clear that he's all better now. Egwene has absolutely nothing to go on regarding his dark period, and her own misinterpretations and worst-case perceptions of him back when he was a lot more mellow give the lie to any notion that she is viewing him fairly as Amyrlin. She is already seeing him as her major rival for worldly power, and is already determined to defy anything he suggests short of kneeling to her or placing himself in White Tower custody. And then there is the fact that just about every Aes Sedai whose judgment is worth a clipped Altaran copper and who spends time in his company comes away with a better impression of him than Egwene conjures out of infrequent observations.

And as for the eyes-and-ears stuff, second and third hand reports are going to be a shaky enough source even setting aside that most of them are going to be tiny, economically-written, pigeon-carried letters in code. How accurate a picture are they going to be painting? We see through distant sources all sorts of wrong impressions of events that we know to have been different than what the stories tell, so Egwene has no excuse for diving right in and believing the worst of everything. Anyway, that notion of eyes-and-ears reports being character references is a very new thing. In Jordan's books, where people had functioning brains, people offered opinions of others based on what they saw or knew, whereas eyes-and-ears were simply a means to learn facts of events, as the spy saw them. Subjective judgments about the sanity of a person the spy was unlikely to have even met never appeared in any sort of reports, which is why guys like Padan Fain who could accurately claim first-hand knowledge of a guy like Rand could plausibly gain access to the Amyrlin Seat and Lord Captain Commander of the Children of the Light.

More Sanderson fucktardery. Rand didn't commit any crimes. He's just backlashed into whiny brooding mode. Why don't you name some of those crimes? He's speaking rhetorically, and possibly suggesting what his rule would have been like had the Aes Sedai been in charge of him. In other words, it's better to be able to blame someone else for all sorts of major crimes, than to suffer the guilt of a few venial transgressions.

And where does she get off doing that? Her entire training to this point has been about esoteric skills and political tactics and strategy. She has absolutely no grounding for claiming any knowledge or insight that would justify her gainsaying a man absolutely known to be the reborn incarnation of maker of those Seals. She has no grounds at all, aside from her typical rebellion against anyone telling her what to do or daring to place themselves above her or act like they know more than she. Egwene spends the entire series second-guessing other characters, and BEING WRONG. This is just the latest in her string.

But she does, which once again makes her WRONG. As always. And yet, she continues to not only second-guess and interfere, but thanks to her, Caemlyn is going to burn.

Well that's pretty fucking stupid, when you consider he's the equivalent of a plague vector with a suitcase-nuke on an erratic time chained to his wrist. Don't forget, to us, Rand is the Hero, so of course he's not going to meet the fate of all those other poor wretches. To someone IN the books, instead of reading them, he has just become the most dangerous threat to everyone she knows outside the Two Rivers, and that's even taking into consideration that they are in the middle of the Blight. Her hiding him in Fal Dara is the equivalent of hiding an ebola-germ-coughing Osama bin Laden from the FBI & the CDC. The only thing that justifies her actions is knowledge that she has no way of possessing (which Moiraine & later Siuan & Verin do, but still not Egwene).

Which was criminally insane. Lucky for her, he turned out to NOT be one of the ones who went mad and started blasting them to smithereens, and her being right has nothing to do with any warm fuzzy crap like "believing in his goodness." No one has any control over when the taint gets them and it WILL get any and all, until Rand fixes that with Nynaeve's help for which Egwene planned to punish her. All Egwene did was expose every friend she had outside the Two Rivers to the fate of Ilyena Sunhair and her kids.

You mean she covers up her being an accessory when talking to the taint-police who might have the ability to put her out of the Tower?
And numerous is a rather pretentious way of saying "twice, over the course of a year."

WHEN? This never happened! Actually, Moiraine stuck up for Rand when Egwene wondered why Moiraine wasn't spilling his secrets to the Wise Ones.

Elayne and Rand, as in the vast majority of the books, never encountered one another in tGH. Secondly, when they actually did do that, two whole books later, they were not being sincere. It was a ruse to hang out with him so they could manipulate his emotions. As in her efforts to help him in Fal Dara, this was inspired as much by Egwene wrongly thinking she knows better than the experts. Once again, Egwene chortles to herself that she will succeed where the Tower has failed for three thousand years, and she is strong enough to handle this lump-brained fool man, and once again, all she turns up is an epic fail. But as of their very latest encounter, she still has not learned that she NEVER knows better than the experts.


And when she learns the whole truth, she's ready to punish him for something for which she knows he was not responsible!

Hey, you know what ELSE she did not believe? That Elaida and the Reds set up false dragons! When she heard those stories, she stomped away in a fury. I guess that makes her Elaida's best friend, by your logic?

Um, yeah. That is just about the one issue they have NOT butted heads over, because he all but unilaterally surrendered before the fight could start. Meanwhile they have butted heads on just about EVERY policy issue where Egwene presumed to inject herself. They have disagreed about channeling to save Cairhien, whether or not he was entitled to a modicum of privacy, whether or not he should obey Moiraine or Moiraine should obey him, whether or not he had the basic right to refuse medical care, whether or not he should command the Aiel to refrain from stealing food, burning noncombatant houses or committing genocide, whether or not he had the military capacity to fight Rahvin, whether or not he needed an untrained Accepted with absolutely no serious combat experience dogging his heels when he went to face Rahvin, whether or not he should have sex with Aviendha, whether or not he & Elayne should actually consummate the relationship you claim she tried so hard to set up, whether or not Berelain was a good person and worthy of respect, whether or not Galina was a member of Alviarin's faction, whether or not he could work with the Red Ajah...and that's just off the top of MY head.

Should have. But obviously did not. Also, Siuan's full of shit. Given his newfound insights, his merely humoring her makes the most sense.

Hey, you know who DOESN'T? Anyone who read tSR! In that book it is shown that a guy who had decided to get married on the day the Bore was made and the Dark One was FIRST freed from his prison, lives long enough for his grandson to reach adulthood, and be lynched on the day the Bore is Sealed! TWO GENERATIONS PASSED and humanity turned around and did worse to the world than the Dark One managed, and that mostly through proxies like Forsaken and Shadowspawn. On the other hand, the world is slowly getting torn to pieces by all the straining on reality caused by the Dark One. How do you stop a prisoner locked in a cell from doing something? You go into the cell and stop him, which means unlocking the door first! This whole issue has long been debated and discussed in this community since the idea of breaking the Seals first occurred to Rand via LTT back in LoC, which was published in 1994. There are people operating motor vehicles today who were not born when we first started to wonder if breaking the Seals might be good idea. But all of a sudden, after the general consensus settles on "yes" because that's more or less what the books have been screaming at us ever since, Egwene comes up with baseless and groundless opposition and suddenly people are rushing off to condemn Rand's reckless behavior.

Yeah, which was my point in the original post. When he asks for Egwene's help, she sulks in a tent and drags her feet for three days. When he REALLY needs her to carry out her part in his plan for Tarmon Gaidon, when it is REALLY important that she do what he needs her to do, because that's not the kind of thing where you get second chances, then he uses reverse psychology, counting on both her reflexive opposition to anything he suggests, and her grotesquely swollen ego to think up such a self-aggrandizing way of opposing him. At his wisest and most insightful, Rand knows the best way to enlist Egwene's help is to conceal his true plan so she will enable it by trying to stop him.