... her whole character arc is a lot more tolerable when you know where it's headed. I was just reading "The Everlasting Man" today, and I was struck by one portions, and I can't believe I'm going here even obliquely, but Chesterton, is describing the narrative arc of Jesus. He compares Christ to "other" philosophers, whose lives he portrays as a kind of on-going lecture with death as the unexpected bell to end the class, but Jesus, on the other hand, is on a death ride from the beginning of His career. Death is not the end, it is the point and the aim. When you read the story as a piece, and as a narrative, rather than in episodic fashion, it alters the perspective. And in that way, if no other, Egwene's story is similar. We are not reading of a tyrant aborning, but the shaping of a weapon the Pattern will use on a few occasions to push things into place. This in no way redounds to her credit, BTW. The Pattern has Rand and Mat and Perrin as its real tools and weapons. It arranges for them to get what they need, it puts them in position, and lets their choices and free will do the rest, merely designating them as ta'veren in order to maximize the effect of their choices and actions. They would attract awesome supporting characters like Nynaeve, Lan and Thom who would step up and be there for them at important junctures, by virtue of their awesome natures or skill sets. And then there is Egwene. It's like the Pattern, in surveying the pieces set in motion in the Two Rivers, took a look at this appalling, horrid individual who popped up, and said "Hey, wait. I can use this." A being with a massive appetite for status, power and glory, and no opportunity for obtaining them, much less commensurate ability. But what if her thread is allowed to be tied to the movers and shakers and badasses, who can carry her through the sort of rough patches that would have seen her dead as soon as she stepped out of her adapted environment, who can indirectly shield her from consequences, and create more opportunities for her through their effects on other people. Given circumstances like that, she could develop her negative traits to a degree unseen, which will come in handy in a few places.
- her ineptitude got her snared by Liandrin and the Seanchan, putting her in a perfect place to present Rand with an excuse to give voice to the Pattern's urgings to return to Falme, so that the Dragon can be revealed and the Horn will be needed. Regular people, or people who are more genre-savy would not have gone along with Liandrin, or still be all "Oh, are all these Seanchan here to help Rand, too" by the end of their trip. As far as genre saviness goes, though, remember that Egwene does like adventure stories, she prefers ones where women make everyone look stupid. In Egwene's ideal narrative, she's going to win every argument and dominate every situation through PoV Armor. So she never expects capture or betrayal. While Nynaeve or Elayne in aMoL would have been way more useful hostages against Rand, they were too smart to get snared by second-rate villains like Liandrin and Suroth. An Egwene was necessary, and there one was.

• When the Pattern needed the Tower situation to get more fucked up than Aes Sedai who are generally sane and too attached to their moribund little club and too accustomed to uniting in the face of outsiders, to really let Rand get away with as much as he did, Egwene, through no effort of her own, wins the heart of a total moron, who jumps into the fight and exacerbates it. Then when they are regretting open rebellion and driving away the rebels, Egwene is placed in the fake Amyrlin Seat, where her solipsism will not allow her to believe she is not the Amyrlin and deserving of the rightful authority her office traditionally holds, so she must scheme for more. She might be inept, but Nynaeve has won the upper hand on Siuan, by both seeing through her schemes and placing Siuan in infinite debt to her, so Egwene has a mentor all prepped, who will not dare taking power herself, because Nynaeve won't let her. So she has the one mentor skilled enough to know HOW to fight a political battle, but nowhere near wise enough to know IF it should be fought, as well as another inexplicable love-at-first-sight affliction that ties a capable military brain to Egwene's cause, and a blind lust for vengeance that precludes any reconsideration of this whole rebellion in favor of the good of the Tower. No other woman would have advised Egwene on her course or assented to it as Siuan does, nor have the ability to aid her as she did. No other Amyrlin would have indulged Siuan as Egwene does or listened to her belligerence and divisive maneuvers, but those are right up Egwene's alley, and as a result, the Tower stays divided until Rand needs it not to be, when cooler heads prevail, and put her in charge, because that's the way things are going.

• When they need someone to rally the nations for Rand, Egwene is in the perfect spot, for Rand and the Pattern to take advantage of her contrarian nature. No one can work as hard to help someone as Egwene can in opposition to anyone who overshadows her, or holds a higher position.

• And when you need a fix for the balefire problem, no one is sufficiently in love with power to overdraw enough to patch the holes.

• No one else Rand knows is so greedy for status and acclaim that he would actually realize he has to let go, because that person would resent him hogging all the glory. No one else was such a blight on his life in the guise of friend and ally that would make him accept that losing people is not so bad.

If Rand & co are the Pattern's weapons, Rand is the sword, Perrin the hammer, Mat the commander's baton, Nynaeve the wisdom's cudgel and so on. Egwene is the arrow, that you shot, and are done with. Making a sword as flimsy as an arrow would be counter-productive, but an arrow as tough and solid as a sword would not fly as it is needed to. Egwene was allowed to run rampant, because no one else would do that crap, and she died as her reward, because absent the extraordinary circumstances of an imminent apocalypse, and the Age Lace propping her up, no one would long have tolerated her. Had she lived, her chickens would have come home to roost, and she'd have spent her last six hundred years of life scrubbing pots under Laras' string of successors. She DID try to help fight the Shadow (Egwene could never be a Darkfriend or Forsaken, because they serve sincerely; she was as dedicated as any to ensuring the Dark One never triumphed, because then he'd outrank her), and was instrumental in getting somethings done, so she was allowed to die at her peak, rather than endure the inevitable "equal and opposite reaction" that would be so much more intolerable for her than anyone else.