Even if she would just have been burned out there was no reason to think it permanent. - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 14/01/2013 06:49:41 PM
It was like, "Might as well do something useful while I still have loads of saidar gushing through me; I am already dead regardless."
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.
The quote only says she knew after forming the weave that she had drawn too much; it does NOT say that moment (i.e. not an earlier one) was when she FIRST knew. Either way, she knows severing can be Healed, and that those of the opposite sex can FULLY Heal others. There is little reason to think being burned out cannot be similarly Healed (none, if Egwene is ignorant of Setalle Anans experiment with an adam) and much reason to believe it can. Seems kind of stupid to throw away ones life based on an ASSUMPTION that flies in the face of a lot of factual data.
In the end, for all her many longstanding flaws, Egwene DID back down and admit Rand was right and she wrong about the Seals, and I think it only fair to acknowledge that. No one can walk so long in the bitch that she cannot return to the reasonable; Lanfear and Elaida demonstrated the hardest part is often WANTING to, after which doing it is a simply a matter of asserting that strong will in the right direction. Joining the rest of the world, even refugees, as it spent its last strength, and knowing even a pyhrric victory would be fruitless unless Rand did what only HE (not Egwene) could do, might finally have taught her something.
Think of it this way: Were we still dealing with "I can do anything, the rules do not apply to me because I am more important than the Dragon" Egwene, would she have accepted death without a fight to avoid burnout? Knowing that Severing had been fully Healed, would she not expect to find a way to weasel out of the same laws of man and nature that bound everyone else, just as she always had? Would she not have at least TRIED with every stubborn cell in her body rather than shrugging her shoulders and saying, "Fine; I will just die and take Taim with me so Rand can save the world?" Again I note, her penultimate living act was to send Egeanin to tell Logain to do EXACTLY what RAND had said and she (until then) so steadfastly opposed.
I said Egwene would either give into Rand or die; turns out she did BOTH.
She may have been ego tripping hard, but in the grand scheme, while taking out a Forsaken strength sa'angreal wielding channeler played a pivotal role in the Last Battle (especially since he was throwing column thick balefire at Lightside channelers,) it was fairly trivial.
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.
The biggest thing there was probably not neutralizing a Forsaken, but that sa'angreal. I only finished the thing a few hours ago, but IIRC the White Tower recovered theirs, and a circle of 72 of them wielding that would probably be more than a match for Demandred or any other Forsaken, at least in raw strength. Unless all the surviving Forsaken (and I believe there were only four at that point, not counting Moridin, who was busy at SG) arrived and linked that would be hard to offset.
Otherwise, well, even Gawyn and Galad managed to take the strongest Forsaken around out of the battle for a while, and when they failed to more than nick him Lan was still there to kill him. The only reason Gawyn did not do it was that Demandred was a better swordsman than even Lan; against Mazrim "all tools save the Power are beneath me" Taim Gawyn or anyone else could have done it wearing the foxhead copy. Though, now I think of it, that does not work against the TP any more than adam do (but perhaps one might argue Demandred had no way to know that.)
The White Tower may want Thom to write a few sagas about it in High Chant, but everyone else will remember Rand re-sealing the Bore, Lan beheading Demandred with a sword in his gut and Mat winning the Last Battle itself. The Amyrlin Seat just died in one of many battles with the Power, albeit one of the largest. Best of all, she admitted Rand was RIGHT about breaking the Seals, practically with her last breath.
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.
Safety play; that was her last chance to tell anyone anything, and no time to leave anything to chance or guesses about what (other) strong willed people would do in her absence. With Rands insistence he had to break the Seals, then Moiraine saying the Amyrlin should do it as Watcher of the Seals, htf is Logain supposed to know "wow, a really big 'splosion on a day of big 'splosions; guess I should break the Seals that hold the DO now." For that matter, htf did Egwene know that there would even BE a huge flash of light as Rand channeled both halves of the OP and the TP at the DO? Best bet is probably Dreaming, but Dreaming that showed her, not how she should direct the world despite the Dragon, but the Pattern and her large but limited place in it.