I agree. IMO, the major problem with the scene is just Graendal's motivation for using Delana, that shouldn't have been there and so explicitely "babbling" at all.

Instead of leaving the reason she chose Delana/Aran'gar mysterious, only giving us as her motive that she meant to delay Rand by compelling the man (as I feel RJ would have done) - hiding from us until the aftermath that Graendal's real motive for using these two what that she intended to betray them and anticipated the possible use of balefire, Brandon made it all too complex for nothing. Brandon's Graendal is not fully herself, she's less intelligent and he's not kept the false image she presents the world and her real self as sharply separate as Jordan did previously.

I have this big hunch that the whole notion that compulsion weaves can be read by someone else to discover the orders is Brandon's invention. That really, really makes very little sense. We never had the full working of compulsion weaves, but we've got really big clues. The compulsion weaves puts the mind in a state where the person is extremely receptive to influence and to the person who made the weave. A kind of hyper hypnosis. In all previous scenes, we saw the channeller produce the weaves, the subject put in the state of reception, then the channeler gave the orders/suggestions verbally (in a single case in TAR, audio-visual stimulation was used instead) ending with the command to forget, then tied the weaves, ending the state of receptivity.


Graendal's weaves are probably better because she has knowledge of the brain's anatomy and how it relates to various mental processes. She can probably pick when she wishes to specific parts of the brain, not touching some areas she doesn't need to touch. Then, it's her knowledge of psychology that makes her the best at mind games. She knows how to best craft her suggestions, from which angle she should be work, or to best tailor them for each person, and that's nothing to do with the OP, that's strictly because she's the best psychiatrist of her generation, her understanding of human psychology unsurpassed. Graendal can use massive compulsion and turn someone into a brainless automaton, but she can also be terribly light touched and subtle, possibly in some cases when she simply plays or experiments, she even uses multiple sessions, proceeding by stages, having her fun, as if she was slowly sculpting someone into exactly what she wanted them to be. Her palace seemed full of that sort of experiements, actually.

In TOM Sanderson for that scene changed how Compulsion has always been presented so far. The orders are now part of the weaves themselves. The justification for Graendal being so good are lost, because they rest on the notion Brandon seems to hold that she's terribly good at using the OP for psychiatry, which the OP actually can't help with (correcting the physical factors like chemical imbalances etc. very probably, but helping in any way with mental processes, traumatic memories that triggered stuff etc. no). And that's the fatal flaw Brandon introduced there: if the orders are part of the weave for Compulsion, then it means it's a OP skill and it means the OP can be used to treat mental disases. You just have to use compulsion to block traumatic memories, correct faulty mental processes, inhibate defense mechanisms - all with the OP. That flatly contradicts what Jordan said.

The backstory is very clear: Graendal was so highly respected because what she could do to help patients with mental problems that were some of the very rare afflictions known in the AOL the OP could do nothing for. Brandon rather turned Graendal into some "OP psychiatrist".

The reason why "insanity" can be healed with the True Power is that Shai'tan gets directy involved (Ishamael said he wasn't skilled in Healing, what he gave LTT was Shai'tan's Healing - he was merely the vessel for Shai'tan to act)- his mind extends in the True Power. Shai'tan is a "god", it's perfectly conceivable if you spread his energy through a brain, he has the superior mental capacity to fix something so complex. The Creator obviously would be able to heal insanity, but his will is not directly involved, and merely using his energy that's beyond the skills of a mere human. They just don't have the mental capacity to look at someone else's brain globally and in all the details, take it all in, and conceive the "most complex weave imaginable" to fix it up.

So it makes no sense at all Compulsion weaves can be "read". That the net can be sensed on the brain yes, that someone like Nynaeve might try to unravel it yes, but that there's a way to read the content of the compulsion in the weaves themselves makes no sense. The compulsion net seems to provide alternative paths for information exchanges (my knowledge of brain functions is minimal, so I'll grossly generalize), and to block some of the normal paths. The normal paths that would be used to trigger defense mechanisms are blocked, the person will break the compulsion only if the information manages to find alternative paths, by passing those the compulsion blocks. That's what happened to Morgase. Rahvin had blocked many of her defense mechanisms, redirect some of her mental processes about her emotions etc., numbed several of her defenses, but Lini knew her much better, and provoked Morgase about something Rhavin had not touched, triggering mental defenses that started a chain reactions that eventually managed to undermine then overcome most of the compulsion (Morgase still has anti WT feelings, or odd feelings for Gaebril). Morgase was able to "isolate" the part of her brain that was compelled, as if her brain put the pathways touched by compulsion in quarantine, and now uses other. With time, her brain is essentially back to normal. That's possible because so much of the human brain is "unused", I guess. When the weave is too strong, it blocks nearly everything and there's barely any more brain activity at the conscious level.

Basically, for anyone to "read" compulsion, they would need to be able to read thoughts. Not only that, but the Compulsion weave would have to be able to encode the channeler's own thoughts into something that someone else's brain can decode. But such a "code" is so intimately ingrained in each person, so unique, that it's all fairly far fetched, I think. So far in the series, compulsion has always been done with verbal suggestions (except for a fairly ambiguous episode in TAR where Moridin, probably because he was in TAR and could do this, seems to have created audiovisual information - but the prior state of receptivity was the same as usual) -and it's always been presented as one of the downsides because there's no precise control over how the victim's brain will interpret the orders, what "baggage" his brain has, how he reasons and why. Which is why the best compulsion is achieved by psychiatrists, not merely by manipulators à la Rahvin/Moghedien, who have instincts and practical experience for manipulation/deception, but nowhere near the knowledge of Graendal.

I have no idea why Brandon felt he needed to give Graendal other motivations than suspicions of what Rand might do. He's been terribly good as "sizing" some of the characters, but in TGS/TOM Graendal was rather on the short list of characters Brandon really doesn't get, and struggled to get right.