When you consider that the central protagonist of the series is a male channeler it makes sense that the Red Ajah would become antagonists, as indeed they were in the early books. But Jordan fell into the same trap with them that he did later with Egwene: treating opposition as wickedness. The hero is doing the Right Thing, therefore anyone who opposes them must be Bad and Wrong. And so where all other Ajahs were allowed their good and bad members, Reds were almost to a woman portrayed as cruel, arrogant, insular, suspicious and virulently misandric even by WoT standards. When we did eventually start to see 'good' Reds like Tarna and Pevara, Jordan made a point of telling us they were exceptions to the rule. The same thing happened with Elaida. Early Elaida was harsh and unpleasant, but she wasn't evil and seemed a reasonably competent Amyrlin. But by the time of Egwene's capture she had devolved into a frothing, paranoid megalomaniac. It's a pity. It would have been a much more interesting story if she hadn't, or if Siuan had remained Amrylin and Egwene had had to oppose a woman already established as 'one of the good guys'.

I don't agree with this. A prisoner should do whatever they have to do to survive, and if Elaida didn't realise Egwene was still opposing her at this point it's because she had crossed the line into being completely delusional. She truly did believe that Egwene had been broken; if she'd realised that she was still actively formenting dissent and furthering the rebellion, Egwene would have been back in the cells for certain, probably stilled and maybe even executed. Open defiance would have been stupid and counterproductive.

This, I'm sorry to say, I'm putting down to Sanderson. Every single character dropped about thirty IQ points when he started writing and all subtlety went straight out the window. I still haven't forgiven him for what he did to Tuon.

Don't remind me. I loved the BA hunters plotline, it was one of my favourite in the entire series. They were smart, they were careful and they were under no illusions about the hideous danger they were in. And then they met Egwene and turned into fawning lapdogs.