She did the reverse balefire thing before she realized the truth of things. To me, it seemed that doing that weave had given her a god complex worse than any we've seen from her thus far, and I think the Pattern had to burn her out or kill her at that point (there were too many comments/examples throughout the series of how wielding too much power can drive people insane and, ultimately, harm the world because of their attitudes, and there were several mentions/examples of that in this book). On page 795:

She clung to the Power she'd held. She had pulled in too muich. She knew that if she released her grip, she would leave herself burned out, unable to channel another drop.

That's when she made the ultimate decision to die, once she realized she was never going to channel again. I don't think she could deal with it, personally. Without channeling - without being able to be the Amyrlin, the "highest authority" (to quote her), and without being able to boss everyone around (and, instead, being a position where she once again might have had to take orders from someone else) - she had no desire to live anymore.



Agreed. Any other channeler would have been able to take out Taim, possibly quicker than she did. And the patch she put on the damage caused by the balefire would've been taken care of when Rand won. What she did was not meaningless, but it was nowhere near as important as Lan's role (he kicked ASS!!), Mat's role, and Rand's role.



I thought the whole "look for the light" thing was cheesy and stupid, personally. She was dying, and her input was no longer needed (I think Logain could've figured out when to break the seals on his own), but it was typical of Egwene to bark orders at people even with her dying breath.