As always, the codes:


Arrogance or Pride

Selfish or Inconsiderate behavior

Tyranny / Abuse of power

Out of Touch mentality

Judgmental Attitude

Lust for Status / Envy

Lust for Power

Sycophantic behavior or cowardice

Betrayal of a personal nature

Dishonesty

Protagonist Syndrome {behavior that is absolutely contraindicated unless the character knows she is a main character in a fantasy novel and thus critical to the resolution of the crisis, or bound for greatness against all in-story expectations}

Hypocrisy

Foolhardiness / Reckless endangerment of herself or others

And some that are venial level sins, or not explicitly bad or evil:

Flat out incompetence or incorrect conclusions or assessments

Stupid or Clueless behavior

Sociopathic mentality or desire toward violence or to victimize others (as opposed to actual action)

Petty, nasty or spiteful words and attitude / General rudeness

Uncooperative, resisting doing her part.

Not a fault per se, but a noteworthy point of interest or milestone

Part 4The Shadow Rising
I consider this a sort of Phase 2 in Egwene’s characterization. In this next phase, instead of the petty & nasty personality flaws, we will be getting an odd phenomenon that is exclusive to Egwene, whereby even though she spends most of the next three books as a hanger-on in the entourage of Moiraine or Rand, who doesn’t actually doanything of note, she acts like she is a main character on a par with Rand or Mat or Nynaeve. Even the most charitable interpretation of the character will concede that where Mat or Perrin fulfilled the roles before being acknowledged as a lord or a general, Egwene was handed the Amyrlin Seat unearned, and then expanded her role to match the title or rank. Although when we get there, I’ll show how she didn't, really, but that’s another story.

For the next two and a half books, her sole point is to be an alternative PoV on Rand’s arc, and a plot device to remind readers that Rand’s & Nynaeve’s storylines are part of the same narrative. Supposedly she is learning to master Tel’Aran’Rhiod, but with Nynaeve concurrently scoring all the achievements in that very setting, the importance of Egwene’s studies are rather undercut. I’m probably going to be harping on that quite a bit, but let’s just establish that, as always, some perspective is needed to grasp the real fault in her words or actions. It’s one thing for a fellow commander or lord or an accomplished soldier to call a military campaign “madness”, but when it comes from some teenaged chippie with absolutely zero knowledge or experience or training in anything remotely useful or related to military issues, we don’t just have a disagreement among friends. We have an idiot butting into a discussion where she does not belong.

1: Setting aside other people’s mentions of her in their dialogue, or of their nightmares of her showing up during sexual encounters, Egwene’s arc opens with her dithering in the interrogation of the Black sisters taken captive in the Fall of the Stone. While the actions and arc of the Wondergirls is more or less discussed as a collective by the characters, and so dithering would seem a group failing, Nynaeve is actually insistent on going to Tanchico to look for what we know as the Domination Band. So why is the collective decision still not made? Unless there is an opposing voice within the group, someone who habitually & reflexively opposed Nynaeve on every little thing, even, or rather, especially, when Nynaeve is right?

Sure enough, Egwene has overcome her lapse into maturity in the dungeons when she accepted Nynaeve’s comfort and support, and is now determined to argue and oppose the older, stronger and more proven woman. Her reasons for not acceding to Nynaeve’s decisions or proposals is that once it occurs to her to do so “she had almost always dug in her heels and flared back.” By her own admission, she throws herself into an obstructive course of action before she even has a chance to consider the issue! And since Nynaeve has never backed down, Egwene herself refuses to. The issue of how often one or the other has been right does not, apparently come into it. Nynaeve can be right ten times when they argue, but Egwene won’t back down unless Nynaeve backtracks on five of them.

2: When Aviendha notices Amico’s facial changes resulting from her stilling, Egwene’s concern in discussing the issue with her is that she does not sound “properly portentous” and is “racking her brain” for ways to establish her superiority and create an illusion of omniscience in the woman with whom she claims to want to be friends, wishing she could get past Aviendha’s wariness of Aes Sedai. She wants all the good parts of friendship, but she can’t bear to have a friend think of her as an ordinary or normal woman. Even a friend must not forget that she is Aes Sedai (although she is not) or lose her awe of Egwene.

3: Egwene could not see the point of (having different terms for stilling & burning out), really; it was like having two words for falling down the stairs, depending on whether you tripped or were pushed. Or like having terms such as “dead” and “murdered” in the same language. It wasn’t Egwene’s idea, therefore it does not make sense.

4: Egwene’s character assessments of Berelain begin their tradition of being the opposite of spot-on. She asserts that Elayne has nothing to worry about, because the First is incapable of keeping her attention on one man for very long, or inducing a man to love her. Since Berelain manages to keep her attention on one man from this point to nearly the end of the series, AND gets someone to fall in love with her (and judging by their respective performances in the Last Battle, someone quantifiably superior to Egwene’s), that’s a slick oh-for-two in one line of dialogue.

5: Egwene also interrupts Nynaeve & Moiraine’s…discussion… about the disposition of their captives to pry into Elayne’s love life, about which the Daughter-Heir obviously does not want to talk. Later on, Elayne says she didn’t want to bring it up, because she thought her friends wouldn’t appreciate her priorities. Egwene’s facial expression confirms this…but who started that conversation? From “Let’s talk about men instead of the Black Ajah, Elayne” to ”You’re being foolish, ‘fretting’ about men ‘when we have the Black Ajah to worry about,’ Elayne!” in just a few minutes. Why on earth is Aviendha reluctant to make friends with her?

6: When they pay a visit on Rand to inform him that the deed to his genitals has changed hands, Elayne’s dress is “pulled low after some little discussion.” Now whose idea would that have been? Elayne’s, when her mind-reading Warder will later describe her as prim? Nynaeve, who at that point in the series is vehemently opposed to low-cut necklines? Or Egwene, who briefed Elayne for their talk with Mat in the prior book by telling her to flirt with him? Her go-to strategy for persuading a ta’veren seems to be “pimp out Elayne”. It’s a good thing she didn’t advise Elayne for the negotiations with Perrin in ToM, considering how Faile expresses jealousy.

7: Her encounter with Rand is also a bit exasperating, even setting aside how it is an attempt to manipulate his emotions to free Egwene from an unwanted relationship, regardless of what Rand thinks. For all her talk of helping him, that notion vanishes for the rest of the series, once he demonstrates how much more powerful he is than she. From here on out, it’s all about taking him down a peg - for his own good, of course.

The best and most civil approach she can think of is to belittle his meteoric rise, cite childhood embarrassments, and establish that his worldly authority and stature do not impress her. And then get annoyed when he is only amused by reminders of his mischief, while Egwene herself is lacking a similar comfortable perspective on her own similar episodes. You’d think if she was truly worried about his pride swelling out of control, she’d have been relieved at his ability to laugh at himself, and own his juvenile misdeeds. But she’d rather scoff at his mention that he rules Tear (asserted as he explains how his obligations keep him from socializing), comparing him to his past as a shepherd.

She finds the notion that he might have outgrown his Two Rivers role offensive, and his nature as a shepherd to be incompatible with being a ruler. She cannot possibly see any connection between a boy who protected lambs from wolves, and a man who wants to protect peasants from rapacious rulers. She is a breath from saying as much, alienating him further, and harming their friendship even more, before Elayne speaks up and gets him to listen, using an argument based on fair play and reciprocity and the novel idea that friends might actually want to help instead of insulting him, so maybe he should stick around and listen.

Egwene learns exactly nothing from this, of course.

8: She also has not learned many lessons about exceeding her grasp with the Power, as the attitudes she displays when measuring herself against Rand include the notion that she can go around poking at his wounds with the Power, because of course she should be able to, in her first feat of Healing ever (one book after her confession to Nynaeve that she does not even understand how it works), Heal a wound that stymies an Aes Sedai who’s been doing it longer than she’s been alive. She assumes Rand is only as strong as she, and that surely she can overmatch or better a man who has fought three Forsaken and killed two, and destroyed a Trolloc army.

9: Following her reality check with the Power, after which the idea of helping him channel is dropped altogether in favor of being horrified at even his benevolent feats with the Power, there is her incredibly amusing inability to believe that he could possibly have fallen out of love with her just as she has with him. The fact that her companion has him tongue-tied, staring and nervous and more responsive to her requests does not even register on Egwene.

For the record, I consider her advice to Mat on the doorway ter’angreal, in the spirit in which it is meant, to be sufficient to balance the scales between them for the rescue from the Stone. And apparently Mat does too, at least according to Birgitte, as she will wonder why he is annoyed with Nynaeve and Elayne, but not Egwene. The answer is suggested to be their ingratitude for his rescue (including holding him up with the Power, which just elicited a “how-dare-he” reaction from Egwene when he did the exact same thing to her in this book), but he also rescued Egwene, who has shown no more sign of apologizing than her companions of the moment. All I can conclude is that Mat has accepted their conversation in this book as making up for that, and so we must as well. It might not seem like much, but hey. He’s known her all her life. Maybe he’s learned to take this bit as the closest he could possibly hope to get from Egwene, and still has hopes for something akin to basic human decency from Nynaeve and Elayne.

10: But during that conversation she is still Egwene, and thus we see thoughts like:
- her assumption that Mat’s friendship with Rand does not protect him as much as being in her company does
- her disapproval of Mat looking at a woman 10 years older than Nynaeve, when she will later facilitate a relationship between Nynaeve and a man more than 20 years older than she.
- it could also just be disapproval of him enjoying himself, since she wants to slap him for checking out a woman “near his own age”
- For someone whose entire value to the story is based on her ability to deal with Aes Sedai, characterized by their deceptive speech, she completely misses the fact that Mat gives her a very different promise than the one she asks him for.

11: After Rand wipes out the Shadowspawn in the Stone, Egwene’s reaction is to be more afraid of him than the Myrdraal, because “it isn’t fair” that he has power Egwene does not. You know, comparable to the power she boasts of, threatens to use on, and actually does use against her non-channeling male friends from childhood?

12: She was also ineffectual with her Power. The sole instance cited of her fighting Shadowspawn before Tarmon Gaidon, and she mentions failing to stop a Trolloc from slitting a woman’s throat.

13: Continued from the last book, is mentioned her reluctance to let Nynaeve or Elayne use “her” ter’angreal or the recovered sleepweavers to visit Tel’Aran’Rhiod. Considering the accomplishments of her companions in that arena, especially after having to figure everything out on their own without the benefit of a natural Talent, one has to wonder what more they could have done with more and earlier opportunities to practice, if not for Egwene’s jealousy.

14: Of her rather futile adventure in Dream Tanchico, there is not much to say beyond what she herself admits in hindsight was an idiotic and obvious tactical blunder of flying around a location where she knows her enemies might have been waiting. Even more appalling is that was her professed motive for not wanting to let Elayne test the Sleepweavers: that she might walk into a Black Ajah ambush. And that was also the place where she lied to Amys about being an Aes Sedai.

15: In the discussion upon waking, Egwene actually acknowledges that Nynaeve has a point, to the astonishment of Egwene’s best friend. The point Nynaeve was making right before those words was “…we cannot risk letting you become lost.” Yes, don’t worry Nynaeve, Egwene knows how important and valuable she is.

When Nynaeve does not leap to affirm Egwene’s assumption that Amys’ reference to evil “worse than men could make” must mean the Black Ajah (instead of a leaky Seal, which is what it really is, making Nynaeve correct to doubt her, and never mind that evil humans like Liandrin, are, by definition, NOT worse evil than people can make), she lashes out with “Don’t argue with me Nynaeve, dreams have to be interpreted.” In the first place, that was not the kind of Dream she just woke from. In the second place, it was not a dream she was trying to interpret, it was a woman’s words. And in the third place, that interpretation is highly suspect, and the need to interpretation does not preclude disagreement with the dreamer, particularly one we shall see repeatedly over the course of the series write off entire categories of Dreams, because they are subjects she does not wish to think about, or whose implications she does not want to accept.

Just as a point of reference, in her dream encounter with Amys, Egwene is told that Amys will meet her after she is done with her business by Rhuidean, and heard Moiraine read the letter from Amys & her colleagues announcing their expectation of Aviendha’s arrival there. Later on, Moiraine will explicitly tell her that they referenced Moiraine’s own imminent arrival. She has also noted that the Aiel guard Rand’s door against anything and everything but Aes Sedai & horny women, and was present when Rhuarc revealed that he wears Rand’s sigil on his arm as a symbol of his authority among the Aiel, who call themselves People of the Dragon. Which is Rand, as she seems to not want to admit. And as every other person of their age was able to figure out from only the loosest mentions of Aiel prophecies, but Egwene needed explained to her. This will be important to recall in her reaction to actually meeting Amys in the flesh.

16: When Rand announces the Cairhien campaign, although Egwene is theoretically opposed to him starting a war, she is still standing in public with the person urging him on that course of action. And in a chapter that seems designed to show readers how out of touch Moiraine has become, she still manages to retain some façade of competence by comparison to Egwene, who sneers at Moiraine’s inability to identify people in love (which will make Aviendha & Rand falling in love and getting it on right under her nose rather amusing), who thinks that Faile, currently harassing and bullying Perrin with juvenile relationship games is “good for him.” She’s disgusted with Rand for not putting his relationship with Elayne at a higher priority than ruling a country and dealing with Shadowspawn attacks, when Elayne herself has more important things to do anyway. And she is accusatory in her attitude toward Rand’s actions, despite her complete ignorance of anything that is going on in Tairen politics.

17: Egwene continues her incredibly obnoxious custom of revisionist argument, by redefining people (especially Rand)’s positions in an argument, lecturing Rand on his non-existent disapproval of the Aiel Fifth. What’s worse, is Rand is so inured to this behavior that it only incites nostalgia in him. The man who is generally dead on target with his predictions of Egwene’s reactions also expects to be mocked for his choice of a horse’s name (whatever happened to Jeade’en, anyway? Did he die when Caemlyn fell? That was the last place I recall seeing him. Rand left Caemlyn on foot, and was riding Tai’dashar after that)

And of course, Egwene continues to butt into his relationship with Elayne, while being largely ignorant of the specifics or more than one person’s feelings on the matter. She is upset that Rand did not attempt to either lead Elayne on with an implicit commitment, curtail her professional career in favor of their relationship, or commit to her after three days of dating. Why? Because in separate conversations, Elayne expressed completely opposite expectations to Rand and Egwene. She told Egwene she wanted to marry him, and she explicitly reputed any such commitment to Rand. Of course Egwene did not have any way of knowing this…but that’s exactly why it is none of her business!

And let’s not forget, she is taking sides with a woman she has known for a year, against a man she has known all her life and the perceptions of a foreign woman of a radically different social & economic class’s regarding the relationship, over that of a man with whom she was ready to commit to marriage.

18: She’s also on Moiraine’s side when the (actual) Aes Sedai Heals Rand after their portal stone journey, and even Lan’s extreme declaration of support only causes her to assume that they are both wrong or wonder at his position, without bothering to draw any inferences from it. As with Elayne, she has no idea what has passed between Moiraine and Rand, and no basis on which to assume Rand’s view of their working relationship is wrong or inaccurate. She has witnessed exactly none of their conversations or dialogue between returning to Fal Dara and setting out from the Stone, but that does not prevent her from assuming she knows enough to call his resentment of having the Power used on him without permission as ingratitude. How did she like someone with a much longer & closer relationship, and thus greater basis for presumption, doing it to her just a few chapters ago?

19: On Chaendar, when Amys is finished greeting her husband, she says “There is one who came with you Rhuarc”. A well informed person might assume she means the prophesied leader of the Aiel, whose commands Rhuarc has been following, and whom the Aiel have been guarding exclusively. Or maybe she means Moiraine, to whom she wrote a letter demonstrating her own prophetic powers? Or just maybe, she might refer to Aviendha, about whom she wrote a letter expressly stating she had business on this day, in this place! Egwene knows that Amys came to Rhuidean to meet Aviendha, Moiraine and maybe even Rand and scheduled her meeting with Our Heroine after these important events. But she assumes that of course Amys would want to drop her long-planned affairs for the chance to teach Egwene al’Vere!

This solipsism continues throughout the day, as she keeps trying to interrupt Moiraine’s discussions of prophecy and the life or death of the indispensible figure for the survival of humanity, in order to move the talk along to Egwene’s interests. She interjects herself into what is obviously a ritual for Aviendha, in which common sense or standard manners should tell her to refrain until or unless she knows what is going on. Moiraine even advises her that interfering would be a bad idea. At worst, her intervention might actually embarrass Aviendha.

It would also have been interesting to have seen the reactions of any of the various males whose weapons or attachment to the same Egwene has disparaged over the course of the series, to her asking how dare the Wise Ones treat “things (Aviendha) cares about as trash” Note as well that she was able to restrain herself from saying anything to Rand & Mat, being aware that it “might break the ceremony”. Eh, men. A mere 18 years acquaintance does not stir nearly the emotions that inspire her to butt in and breach decorum as a woman she met a few months ago, with strange and off-putting habits.

Finally, when all important Wise Ones’ business is attended to, they deal with the shrill little nuisance who has been unexpectedly dumped into their laps. First Egwene inquires if she should also go to Rhuidean, since everyone else is. She is, in her mind, exactly equal to an Aes Sedai about whom the Wise Ones had prophetic dreams, and initiated mystically-inspired correspondence, a ta’veren who blew the Horn of Valere, and who that Aes Sedai is forever harping about being essential to the success of the Last Battle, an Aiel channeler about to become a Wise One, and the Dragon Reborn, who is the prophesied leader of the Aiel and humanity in general. Of course Egwene is just as significant as those four, and as important to the Wise Ones as they. Why should she not also go to Rhuidean, when they have already agreed to keep out Aan’allein, whom they regard as a hero?

Similarly, she is annoyed that in exchange for free room and board, and teaching her secret lore that even the White Tower cannot, the Wise Ones expect her to pay attention, and if she does not, to pitch in with the clean up chores. It is not fair that Rand and Mat are also not being made to wash pots, even though they are not getting free teaching either. She is entitled to the exact same treatment as they after all, and if they don’t have to wash pots, neither should she, regardless of what she might be given that they are not. Egwene, always, thinks she is entitled to the best of both worlds.

20: When Rand and Mat emerge from Rhuidean, Egwene is on the point of being excluded from their private conversation with He Who Comes With the Dawn as they are about to discuss Aiel business, until Rand demands that they be allowed to attend. This does not stop Egwene ( “rudeness toward your leader is a crime” ) from being critical of his attitude towards his Wise One minions. She then does her best to prove Rand wrong by her behavior in that conference, by volunteering personal information that he plainly wishes to keep private.

21: When Amys yanks Egwene out of Tel’Aran’Rhiod, it is almost hilarious that the person who is annoyed at Rand believing in medical confidentiality, believes Moiraine can do whatever she wants with the Power at any man she wishes to annoy, and will torture Nynaeve in the dreamworld to keep a secret, reacts by declaring to the teacher she promised to obey, “You have no right!”

22: Following Aviendha’s return, Egwene persists in interfering between her and the Wise Ones, when it is fairly plain that she is not only behaving irrationally, but badly by the standards of her people and in dereliction of her obligations. An explanation of the importance of obligations to the Aiel back on that first day in the Waste apparently had no effect on Egwene (it didn’t explain how she could get power or rank, after all). Furthermore, she seems oblivious to the hatred Aviendha proclaims toward Rand. Egwene is, once again, on the side of the woman she has known a very short time, over the man she has known all her life. Once you become friends with Egwene, a clock starts ticking until you end up being superseded for a newer one. She stays consistent in her intrusion into the affairs of other people by inveigling Aviendha into Rand’s love life. This is an unconscionable interference in his private business, and will comprise a major obstacle in Rand’s & Aviendha’s own relationship. A relationship that would later be the foundation of Rand having her guard his back while he is confronting the Dark One! Imagine if that relationship had gone just a little bit worse, and he ended up with a guard either less competent or less invested in his safety and well-being.

This is why even seemingly minor things are brought up in this list. Even apparently petty or trivial transgressions have far-reaching effects. As Moiraine will later note, everything about Rand is important, even his sex life. One could argue that Egwene is sticking up for an equally important relationship, that of Rand and Elayne. But Elayne would have ruled her lands and commanded troops at the Last Battle anyway. It had little or nothing to do with their personal romance, like just about everything else Rand and Elayne got up to. They had four days of a relationship prior to Tarmon Gaidon, three of which were behind them at the point Egwene decided to “help” by sicking Aviendha on them.

23: The interesting thing about that confab where Aviendha was attached to Rand was that while readers might pick up through various clues the Wise Ones’ true intentions for her and Rand, Egwene does not. The only thing she knows for sure about their intentions putting Aviendha with Rand would completely confirm Rand’s assumption that she is there to spy on him, because that is basically what the Wise Ones told her. Rand might be wrong, but from what Egwene knows, he is right. And she still takes Aviendha’s side over him further on. When everyone, even Mat, can tell how badly Aviendha is behaving, and every other Aiel present indicates their disapproval strongly enough to be apparent through the standard Aiel reserve, Egwene is giving her comforting pats, glaring at Rand, and telling him “whatever you’re doing to upset her, stop it!” She was there when Aviendha declared she hatred him, when Rand could not possibly have done anything to provoke her. She herself admits she doesn’t know why Aviendha is upset, but demands that Rand intuit the cause of her (not his) friend’s distress over an assignment given by people Egwene is closer to than he, and modify his behavior in an unspecified manner to rectify her distress! When the Wise Ones note that Aviendha, in the course of the explanation of Rhuarc & Lian’s relationship and the various cultural implications, omits a rather significant detail, Rand actually defends her. She spends the entire subsequent meal such being a complete bitch to him that she, of her own volition, tenders one of the very few female-to-male apologies of the entire series…but Egwene blames Rand.

I should note, BTW, that Egwene’s so-good friendship with Aviendha did not preclude ratting her out to the Wise Ones when Rand expresses annoyance with her demeanor. Rand notes that shorty after making a passing comment of dissatisfaction to Egwene Aviendha shows up pissed as all get out, but demanding to interact with him. How does she have any friends?