First of all, 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. This applies to her acceptance of or requiring such behavior, as well as acting that way herself.

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.

The Pattern at work, sometimes against Egwene, sometimes her going against it

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

Taking the side of the White Tower, or a position of inherent Aes Sedai supremacy

To cope with the…issues…in the writing style of this book, I will be using to indicate points where I believe her problem or issue result from mistakes by the production team.

Also will be used to indicate an act that, while not bad or wrong, is also not nearly as heroic as many people make it out to be.

Part 17A Memory of Light
1: Early on, we are treated to scenes of the Trolloc attack on Caemlyn, which eventually culminates in the destruction of one of the greatest cities in the world, once the Trollocs have taken it completely. Although it is impossible to say if the city could have been held had the army of Andor, and the Queen’s Guard, been present, with their official leadership to provide command and control, we’ll never know one way or another because Egwene needed to make Elayne jump through her hoops to make herself feel good after she is unable to break Rand to her will during their encounter in Tar Valon.

2: Egwene is still being her old friendly self. Despite her specifically Traveling in private to Elayne’s tent, citing that method as limiting the visit to merely personal, rather than official, and with no one in attendance but their brother/fiancé, she still requires Elayne to kiss her ring, and when Elayne comments in her habitually tactful fashion that Egwene’s letter to Rand is “forceful” she claims that Rand “doesn’t seem to respond to anything else.” In fact, Egwene noted that a calm approach worked better, way back in tFoH, and spent much of the more recent books castigating Elaida’s ineptitude for alienating Rand with a forceful approach. Shrieking at Rand to show her respect had absolutely no effect on him at their last encounter, aside from making him take extra efforts to avoid letting her embarrass herself before the Hall.

As ever, Egwene simply makes excuses to bully her friends, regardless of whether or not she needs to.

3: In complaining about Rand’s intention to break the Seals, Egwene acknowledges that the Bore being open does not allow the Dark One complete access to the world, but she seems to think that breaking the Seals will allow him that access. She cites the time between the Bore and the Strike, without ever explaining how that period will be different than after Rand breaks the Seals. He’s not proposing to exacerbate the Bore, just remove the Seals so he can get at the Dark One. All that removing the Seals will do is return the world to the condition that existed between Lanfear opening the Bore and Lews Therin closing it, for two generations, and a number of successful years of campaigning by the forces of the Light. Plainly the Seals are not the only thing that kept the Dark One from having his way.

In the face of the obvious, though not entirely well-articulated, reality ( ), Egwene shifts to strawman arguments, claiming that while it might be necessary to break the Seals, the time is not right away, and she should be in charge of that, rather than depending on Rand’s plans, which she denigrates with gratuitous insults.

In the first place, since Rand, despite possessing the remaining intact Seals, has NOT broken them, plainly he also understands the concept of waiting until the right moment. In the second, aside from an empty rhetorical title, Watcher of the Seals, there is nothing to indicate Egwene’s fitness to be the one to determine that right moment. She was not endowed or imbued with any particular powers or knowledge, as Rand was, when he accepted his awareness of his prior incarnation, she merely won a popularity contest. The first thing that Moiraine told her about being Aes Sedai was that it does not change who a person is. Egwene is a snotty peasant girl from a backwater village with a couple years of irregular education under her belt. Being allowed to wear a striped piece of cloth does absolutely nothing to change that.

Finally, Egwene really has no business sneering about Rand’s “crackbrained schemes” or “overly dramatic stratagems” which pretty much describes none of his plans. Almost everything he has tried has been pretty successful, and while he has taken extreme risks on occasion, they were necessary risks, without which he and the Light would not be in as good shape as they are at this point in the series. And someone who gave the bombastic speeches Egwene did upon her elevation to the Amyrlin Seat has no business calling anyone else “overly dramatic” or criticizing their stratagems as such. Much less someone who herself has not been nearly so successful a strategist as Rand, and has had to repudiate even her relatively successful schemes and plans at one point or another.

But it’s the same issue as in the prior point, where Egwene has to trash the more successful characters to bolster her own ego, and justify her assumption of ever more power.

4: Egwene is, as Elayne expected, unhappy about her arrangement with the Kin. As previously discussed, it’s an excellent arrangement, which fills in a lot of the flaws and gaps in Egwene’s plan to use the Kin as a dumping ground for older sisters, especially since she did not make any mention of what to do with the 2,000 or so Kinswomen currently in existence.

Egwene doesn’t seem to have specific objections, merely fuming that she can’t rely on Elayne, citing her “ploy with the Kingswomen”. Note that she refers to Elayne’s plan as a “ploy”, which has connotations of insincerity and competition, when in fact, Elayne is simply trying to organize a situation that has been ignored, in a way that meets the needs of both parties, with a simple exchange of services. Egwene, since she doesn’t actually do anything constructive, and thus can only think of such practical decisions in terms of political maneuvers, seems to leap to the assumption that it is part of some gambit. Since she herself was not consulted on Elayne’s plans, they must be in opposition to Egwene! Later, with a crisis breaking out over the attack on Caemlyn, she makes a mental effort to avoid thinking of the Kinswomen as Elayne’s. Elayne has not asserted any control over them, or even claimed any authority, aside from the services she will receive in exchange for her sponsorship of their group. No one is trying to establish the Kin as Elayne’s but Egwene feels the need to object to her taking possession of them!

But even if Elayne WAS trying to claim for her own, it’s not as if Egwene was using the Kin or had any plans for them aside from making them grovel to her, and off-loading her de-Oathed subjects. Why then does she have such a problem with her best friend stepping into the breach? It’s not like she can’t trust Elayne, who has been extraordinarily accommodating to her to this point. Instead, she considers Elayne’s action to backstop her own slipshod plans as a mark of her untrustworthiness! The only way to describe her attitude here is paranoid.

5: Egwene seems surprised that Aludra isn’t going to just dump her guns and leave them until the morning. She is surprised that the inventor of weapons is not given to insanely irresponsible carelessness! This is exactly the way ANYbody in the military or in charge of dangerous equipment, or even anything remotely important is SUPPOSED to behave! And Egwene thinks it’s weird. A bad enough attitude in most people, but particularly reprehensible in someone who has been so focused on getting power throughout her entire character arc. It explains a lot of her slipshod habits of managing those people who do come under her authority.

Egwene thinks that Leilwin has “a firmness to her features, despite her tall, slender build.” She actually seems to think that tall slender people would not be expected to have firm features, whatever those are. Between this description and similar ones in immediate prior books, I am suddenly extremely curious as to what physical features do not actually belong together on the same person.

Or maybe it’s just a kind of Mad Libs for sucky writers. “Those ( blank ) features look surprising on a person with such a ( blank ) build” – Insert random adjectives, and you have a short but distinctive thumbnail description of a character, which emphasizes an artificial contrast to make it stick in the reader’s mind! If you happen to conflate personality traits with physical descriptions, that just allows you to skip efforts at characterization!

6: Egwene’s behavior over the course of the series is such that Nynaeve is surprised when Egwene offers to let Nynaeve link with her and use her strength to Heal the wounded of Caemlyn. Egwene spouts a tedious recitation of the ideal of Aes Sedai service explaining why she would offer to help, which absolutely no one else needs explained to them. Nynaeve’s entire life has been about service and helping in whatever way she could. The surprising thing is not the motivation for helping, but that Egwene herself is following through with it. Her hometown friends are never surprised by her personal betrayals, or her objections to practical solutions, or her general bitchiness. They are astonished when she offers to help when there is nothing in it for her.

It is also worth mentioning that being able to contribute in a real and practical way to the alleviation of the sufferings of wounded soldiers and disaster victims is inherently a desirable condition for almost everyone, rather than a special ideal borne of the high standards to which Aes Sedai should hold themselves. For almost everyone. Not Egwene. Egwene needs to make it all about her Aes Sedai specialness, and has to drop a mention of her rank too, just to highlight how awesomely humble and philanthropic she is.

The intuitively obvious nature of Rand’s need to break the Seals to properly lock up the Dark One again, is something that Perrin thinks Rand needs to explain to Egwene in a simplistic metaphor, despite it being pretty much a generally accepted idea among WoT fandom for years before the books came out. And in spite of his belief that Egwene needs it set out before her in babytalk, Perrin still contends that she is smarter than either of them. “She’s so smart, that she needs it explained in simple terms” is not something people say, ever.

And regarding Egwene’s supposedly superior intelligence, when has she ever been right when either of them was wrong, aside from cases where she had specific information they did not? Even when she does have such facts at her disposal, Perrin and Rand have still been right in disagreements with her, most notably in Perrin’s objections to her channeling after Shadar Logoth, and Rand’s identification of Galina with Alviarin.

Maybe she is more intelligent in an objective sense, but what is the point of being more intelligent, when other people think so much better with their lesser brains?

Rand claims he “lost last time (referring presumably to his life as Lews Therin) precisely because I threw unity aside.” Except, that’s not what happened! In the first place, Lews Therin did not lose. He won. He sealed the Dark One away, protecting mankind, and enabling the defeat and destruction of the rest of the forces of the Shadow, and driving the Shadowspawn to take refuge in the areas protected by the penumbra of the Dark One’s lingering influence. Even if the costs of the Breaking and the deaths of Lews Therin and his Companions are figured in, ridding the world of the Dark One and buying a breathing space of three millennia is still cheap at that price, as illustrated in the difference between even the fallen state of the world in the Third Age and those glimpses of potential realities where the Dark One reigns triumphant.

In the second place, there is no indication that unity would have given Lews Therin total victory. Latra Posae and her Concord were wrong about their predictions of the dangers of Lews Therin’s plan, and RJ confirmed that bringing them along on the Strike at Shayol Ghul would have resulted in both halves of the Power being tainted. What’s more, Rand’s bizarre statement comes on the heels of his revelation that the madness that resulted from LTT’s supposedly precipitous action is what has given him the insight that will enable his victory. The only way in which LTT could be said to have failed would be in allowing saidin to be tainted, and yet the man claiming he failed, claims that the result of his failure is going to be responsible for the ultimate win. All of which might be slightly tolerable, if extraordinarily tiresome, if there was the slightest indication that characters or author were aware of the irony.

7: Egwene notes the proximity of the Tairen and Illianer contingents at Merrilor, and wonders “Light, who had let those armies camp so near one another?” Um, you did, Egwene! She is the one who called them there, she claims to be in charge, and believes she has the right to order them around, so that sort of detail is her responsibility! The woman’s only qualification for power is her lust for it. At every turn she fails abysmally at discharging power responsibly.

Darlin wonders “if this meeting (called and orchestrated by Egwene) was the work of the Dark One.” Well, I’m not the only one saying it.

8: Egwene assumes that Rand will want to be the leader of the forces of the Light, and is determined to fight him on that count, to gain that position for herself. Is there a single sentence anywhere in the series better demonstrating her habits of thinking the worst of Rand, her unwillingness to cooperate with him, and her own desire for power? There is nothing to indicate the nature of the battle Rand is going to fight with the Dark One, or that it will necessarily be impossible for him to hold both roles, but Egwene is making assumptions about how this event, unprecedented in human history, will go down. And somehow assumes that she is qualified to direct a battle despite absolutely no training, experience or proven ability at all in such activities.

9: Roedran comes to Merrilor under the impression that Rand is a false Dragon they are going to negotiate into surrender. Egwene doesn’t bother to let him and his army know that they are there to prepare for the actual Last Battle or that Rand is really the true Dragon Reborn. He might think differently about what side he is on if he knows all the facts, after all…
At least Elaida never lied to people about what they face, and not a few of her “tyrannical” measures had to do with trying to open sisters’ eyes to the reality of their times.

10: When she sees flowers blooming around Rand, Egwene is so stricken with envy that she sends Gawyn to find out how he does it. Last book, she was willing to attribute the rot and corruption to him, but she is unable to acknowledge the effect might go the other way. And despite her understanding of the limitations of the Power to duplicate the effect she is observing, she still assumes that’s what it is, and sends Gawyn, of all people, to investigate. Even if there is some volitional aspect, how on Earth would Gawyn comprehend or communicate it to her?

11: When Rand addresses Egwene as “Mother”, her reaction is “So he would pretend to respect, would he?” when he has absolutely never behaved disrespectfully or impolitely to her. Of course, by her definitions of what she is due, Rand has been behaving shamefully, but it’s not as if he is groveling or anything here. The level of respect he shows when she enters the tent is pretty much in line with what he has shown throughout the series.

She is also annoyed & exasperated that Rand's friends like and trust him, and that a woman who loves him is proud when he succeeds. Most people understand “friendship” and “love” to entail exactly those attitudes. But then, for most people, success is not a zero-sum proposition, where another's gain is a loss for them.

12: Elayne observes that Egwene finds it comforting that Rand cannot just make stedding appear. It is one thing to be concerned about rapidly growing or inexplicable powers, especially concentrated in a single individual, but what on earth could possibly be bad about being able to make stedding appear, since they are places of peace and harmony where evil fears to tread? It's not exactly a power that has potential for abuse or harm, is it?

Unless you are so seething with jealousy that any shortcoming, no matter how obscure or relative, in the subject of that jealousy is a relief…

“That should be viable if we give Dai Shan the proper support.” Agelmar uses the title “Dai Shan” as Lan’s name, with no article to indicate that he or someone is aware that it IS a title. Agelmar, of all people, should be know that, since he himself also seems to be a Dai Shan. ”Ninte calichniye no domashita, Agelmar Dai Shan.” - The very first words any character speaks to him in the series.

Agelmar seems to be suffering the same affliction that makes Bael refer to his own homeland as the Waste.

The so-called Great Captain Ituralde seems to think that a military justification is required for addressing a Trolloc invasion of Andor, above and beyond the concept of “Trolloc invasion”, so he uses the most absurd one possible, stating that “An enemy force that deep behind our lines…that is trouble.” That’s not behind the lines, it’s on a separate front. Yes, geographically, on a spherical world, ANYwhere is behind anywhere else, but when your army is assembled near the Borderlands, aiming to fight a campaign in the Borderlands and Shayol Ghul, Andor, hundreds of miles away, is not at all behind your lines in a military sense. It’s a whole other place. There are no contiguous communications overland with Andor for the Trollocs to disrupt in any sense, nor are there any defenses oriented away from the Trolloc’s current location which they could attack from behind. In no strategic or tactical sense are the Trollocs in anyone’s rear, which you’d think a Great Captain would grasp.

Also, they keep using the word “entrench”, in particular, challenging the Aiel on their experience entrenching and fighting “a protracted defensive war”. Regarding “protracted” do they think Rand is going to be down there for years? Most wars tend to take at least the duration of the Last Battle. Secondly, the Aiel do fight defensive battles, since their settlements are heavily fortified, which Shienarans know, as they were the first ones to describe holds to Rand. The real oddity is this apparent insistence that they dig trenches, which were primarily used OFFENSIVELY against fortifications, and hardly at all, until the advent of firearms, which the Shadow does not possess.

Elayne is the next to succumb to this peculiar form of aphasia when she concludes the scene saying “…let’s get to dividing the forces in detail and fleshing out the plans.” By which I believe she means “detailing the division of forces”, as doing anything to “forces in detail” means one at a time. For instance, Mat, at the end of KoD, defeats the Seanchan forces scattered through northern Altara “in detail”. So Elayne’s phrasing meant “Let’s get to dividing up our armies one at a time and fleshing…”

Someone’s military dialogue is a painful example of how dangerous a little bit of knowledge can be.

13: In choosing the officiant for her pointless wedding (Warder fricking bond, people! You don’t need to swear oaths before a pharmacist when you have been magically bound to one another in flesh and mind! ), Egwene wouldn’t be herself if she didn’t pick Silviana, the one person in the world who seems to actively hate the groom.

Egwene mentally retcons the events of Merrilor to claim that she “helped to put Elayne in charge,” when, in fact, that was pretty much all Rand. It was Moiraine who convinced him to delegate command of the mundane battle, and he unilaterally chose Elayne, over the objections of various parties. Regarding those objections, Egwene said not a word in support of one of her closest friends. A far more likely contributing factor in putting Elayne in charge would be her relationship with Rand…towards which Egwene was the major obstacle who came within three days of aborting the whole affair, and whose subsequent support was almost as harmful as opposition.

She is also bound and determined to not obey the person she herself describes as “in charge”. That is literally how she puts it – that ignoring Elayne would be as bad as obeying her! The worst thing Egwene can think of as a point of comparison is…obedience to the commander-in-chief for the Last Battle! One might make the argument about the limitations on Elayne’s authority and thinking about the days to come, but what if everyone had that mentality? What if people deserted the Battle because they wanted to be alive in the days to come, just as Egwene wants to be independent of Elayne’s rule? Hell, imagine if someone balked at one of her war-time dictates among the rebels, claiming they did want to allow a precedent of too-powerful an Amyrlin? That would have gone over like a lead balloon, and Egwene knows it. Refusing to obey the lawful commander during a war out of concern for post-war balance of power is not, and never has been, a legitimate principle. But Egwene’s distaste for others’ authority trumps reason, morality and legality, so it’s not like this should be a surprise.

When seeing the overhead gateway Gareth Bryne is using for surveillance, Egwene can hardly begrudge the accomplishment its due praise, but raises a slew of criticisms as well. In typical White Tower fashion, they are idiotic problems that are easily rectified. Egwene rather stupidly opines that a rope would prevent falling through, but Yukiri isn’t much better, with her convoluted theorizing of a possible vision-only gateway, and never mind that Egwene’s problem is easily solved with a barrier of Air. Throughout the series, from early in book 2, Aes Sedai have created solid constructs using Air, which are universally described as invisible. Is a transparent manhole cover so far outside their conception? The threat of the enemy spotting it and attacking Bryne as he peers through can be dealt with by Folded Light, which doesn’t necessarily require the one-way version Asmodean used (he would not have wanted anyone on the other side seeing into the room while he was alone and vulnerable, nor to hide the gateway from Rand, who needed to come back through it). Actually, the simplest thing would be to have the gateway in the tent oriented vertically, while opening horizontally over the battlefield. RJ has confirmed that this is possible, though the characters don’t know it, and can be forgiven for not thinking of it.

As for the issue of Shadowspawn flying up through the gateway, if they are going to die the minute they pass through, gravity would suggest they will promptly cease to be a problem, rather than leaving a pile of corpses Egwene fears (unless Draghkar instinctively fly up and to the side when they die? ) As always, Aes Sedai overlook the obvious solutions to their issues, that channeling, their own raison d’etre, could cheaply solve in moments. The Aes Sedai are perennially like the characters in that Far Side cartoon who are trapped in a ladder factory, wishing they had some means of climbing to safety.

The sad part regarding the spyhole issues, is, as mentioned earlier, someone is supposed to be very clever at figuring out ramifications and uses for magic systems. Maybe Yukiri’s pointless mental exercise is an example of that, but it is also a rather hilarious specimen of the trope whereby a supposedly clever person gets so caught up in the use of his wits (or any other extraordinary faculty) that he overlooks an obvious & far more simple solution.

14: Egwene tries to excuse her possessive attitude towards Vora’s sa’angreal by comparing it to the bond a soldier has with his sword. The only people to display the slightest attachment to their swords in this manner in the series are men with particularly valuable swords, like heron-marked blades, or Rand and Lan, whose “bonds” with their weapons are more due to their affections for the people who gave the blades to them. Any “soldier” is just doing a job and does not get all giggly at the notion of the power his sword confers on him, or revels in how many people he has killed with it. Especially not in WoT. The funny thing is, Egwene had no problem empathizing with, and defending, Aviendha’s affection for her weapons way back in tSR, where she also mentioned a similar possessiveness towards the original dream ter’angreal.

As always, she is simply rationalizing her fixation with power.

15: When fighting the Trollocs in Kandor, Egwene is, unlike any other character, at all, reveling in destroying with the Power, and in particular, inflating her self-image due to that destruction. No one else contemplates their appearance or describes themselves in superlatives when directing a battle or fighting with weapons or the Power. Half the protagonists are in various stages of PTSD by the time of this book, but Egwene is wallowing in bloodlust.

16: Gawyn has only just this moment, after dealing with Warders for years, realized they can lie, like every other male human being in the world. He and Egwene wonder if Aes Sedai ever make use of this, and Egwene hopes not…when her earliest observations of an Aes Sedai dealing with the world, included having her Warder do the talking when she was traveling incognito. That’s almost certainly the reason why Lan tended to do the talking and make the arrangements and such when he and Moiraine were going about as Andra & Alys.

Gawyn also thinks that using objects wrought of the One Power that make you more difficult to see, and having physical enhancements imparted by the One Power “weren’t the way of the Warder.” Dumbass, those are exactly the “way of the Warder.” How else would you describe a warder bond and fancloth cloak?

It’s too bad that Egwene has a desk job, and they both have lifespans measured in days. I’d really like to see this pair blundering around trying to function like a normal Aes Sedai & Warder duo.

The Wise Ones speak of “the weave known as balefire” with that particular word choice implying it is yet another one of those odd wetlander terms with which they were unfamiliar until they started having dealings with Rand, Egwene and company. But the very first person in the series to use the term “balefire” was Urien, an Aiel, and a non-channeler to boot. If balefire is a word that commonly known among the Aiel, the Wise Ones should not be speaking of it in such an alien fashion. I wonder if the barriers that are breaking down and disrupting, like the arrangements of buildings, include whatever separates minds from each other. Obviously, between unexplained quantum phenomena and Tel’Aran’Rhiod there are ways for minds to touch, but whatever keeps them discrete might be failing in these end times, causing them to get wetlander ideas swapped into their heads, like the sections of the Brown Ajah and novice quarters in the White Tower. It would explain Bael referring to the Waste.

In reference to Leane’s habitual use of cosmetics, her eyebrow is described as “immaculate.” Wow, that’s always a sign that a woman is putting on make-up in a crisis, isn’t it? Immaculate eyebrows… Once again, the strange use of a word leaves the reader to question if someone is aware of its definition.

17: Egwene spends the aftermath of the Sharan attack hiding because she believes she can’t channel without being detected. Because she STILL has not learned from her screw-up with the harbor chains! Inverting her weaves should protect her from detection, since the Ayyad are not up to detecting a female channeler hiding under the debris ( Though honestly, you’d think that would have been a critical item on the checklist of any force securing a location seized from enemy channelers). It’s kind of humorously ironic, that with all the male & female stereotypes to which WoT adheres faithfully, Egwene bucks the trend by falling into the typical male fault of being so obsessed with big flashy destructive displays of Power, she completely overlooks the value of subtlety & discretion in combat channeling.

18: Upon meeting Fortuona, Egwene’s first words are accusing her of committing atrocities. Which she has not done, and Egwene cannot lie, so that makes her an idiot. The worst thing Fortuona has done, and really, the only bad thing, has been to maintain the institution of damane, which differs from the White Tower in that they are frank and open and use physical collars, rather than psychological torture to brainwash initiates into submitting to their agenda, and murdering the ones who prove resistant to their persuasion. No matter how you slice it, “Convert or die” is not one iota more moral a way to treat other people than slavery. And the subjects of the Tower’s teaching have no more choice in undergoing it than a damane does. At the very least, maintaining an unpleasant institution during your first month or so in power is not remotely an “atrocity”. In any event, there is no point to Egwene’s comments, in response to an explanation from Fortuona, she makes pointless comments just to have something to say. So, yay, Egwene. Way to demonstrate a cooperative attitude in the middle of Tarmon-freaking-Gaidon.

Later on, during their negotiations, Egwene makes what she thinks is a tenuous argument. She thinks so, because it rests on the rule of law, while Egwene herself adheres more to a “might makes right” mentality.

Egwene’s argument about Tremalking is also remarkable display of moronic fucktardery, even for this book, as it hinges upon the acceptance of the acceptance of the inhabitants of the lands of the Seanchan rule. The Sea Folk don’t live there and don’t want to live there, regarding their sojourns on the land as a temporary ordeal, making their claim of sovereignty over their islands akin to a land nation claiming sovereignty over the ocean. And Egwene has no authority for arguing on their behalf. The actual inhabitants of the land, the Amayar, are all dead (A certain notorious Aegwenist being the co-winner of the contest that predicted as much way the hell back a decade ago). There is, technically, no one bowing to the Seanchan on Tremalking, but neither is there anyone contesting their authority. That Egwene would make such a spurious argument is par for the course. That the Seanchan might be impressed by it, as a demonstration of their respect for law, is pure

19: When Min tells Egwene that Mat believes Bryne is trying to lose the battle, her news comes right on the heels of Uno’s report which strongly supports that assessment. Initially, I had believed Egwene was doing well at this point, even with her remarks to Uno. I had assumed that she was just easing his mind so that he could retain confidence in his commanding officer, while she addressed the actual problem. Except, she immediately, almost reflexively rejects Mat’s analysis. Elayne and Lan had no problems taking action against Agelmar & Bashere when it became obvious how badly they were screwing up. Why does Egwene ignore her own observations, the report of the professional soldier she has known longer than any other, and the belief of one of her oldest friends, whose tactical acumen she acknowledges in the conversation with Min? She claims that Mat is “often wrong”. Um, when? He frequently expresses preferences with which Egwene does not agree, but when has he been actually, objectively wrong? Aside from the feverish imagination of a woman with a pathological need to denigrate anyone who knew her well before she rose to her current high stature…

Hey, how did Graendal get at Bryne’s dreams anyway? He was bonded by Siuan way back when she was fleeing the destruction of Natrin’s Barrow. The warder bond is supposed to protect the dreams of its subject, isn’t it? How did Cyndane do it to Rand, for that matter?

20: Egwene’s death proves the purpose of this whole work. It demonstrates that Egwene’s detractors have not been inventing faults or twisting her actions, words and thoughts to paint an unflattering picture. The overall contention is of a selfish, solipsistic person, a woman whose highest priority and keenest desire is the acquisition and concentration of power in herself. And that’s how she dies. She destroys herself to gain more power. She fixes the balefire damage, because she is obsessively fixated on the most recent time an associate to whom she condescended managed to show her up, must, in her turn, beat balefire herself in some way, lest Perrin have done what she cannot. Perrin not only beat balefire, he did it on what is more her home turf than anything else – the Tel’Aran’Rhiod version of the White Tower.

And Egwene’s means of self-destruction is taking on more power than is appropriate or safe to handle, just as she has been doing all series. In a book series like this, building towards a predetermined end for each major character, this is not an accident. Knowing how Egwene is going to die, any author worth his salt would take great pains to establish that this is a believable character trait.

The same thing goes for her disconnection from all her friends. Egwene knows what she is doing, she is destroying herself. Other characters who get killed accept it as a risk for what they hope to accomplish, or a price for wrongdoing. Egwene wants power more than life, she wants to prove her point more than life, because she is in pain and would prefer to die than deal with it. There is no one she cares enough about to stay alive and spare them the grief of her passing. She doesn’t care that Elayne will lose a friend and sister-in-law, that Nynaeve will lose one of the four people she left the Two Rivers to protect, that her followers will lose their leader, that her parents will lose a daughter, or those just about forgotten women she grew up alongside will lose a sister. GK Chesterton said that the man who kills another, destroys one person, but the man who kills himself destroys the universe. Suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness and the ultimate middle finger extended to the rest of the world. And that’s how Egwene chooses to end her thread.

She proves us right all along, by demonstrating that yes, she is selfish and does not care about her friends, and yes, she does love power above all else, and is driven by a need to prove herself better than anyone else, and resentment of others’ successes or achievements.

This is highlighted by her backhanded inspiration of Rand. The man who has demonstrated since her first appearance and many more times over the course of the series, that he can predict her reactions perfectly, believes that Egwene would have resented his attempt to undertake the entire burden of fighting the Dark One, that she would have framed as an attempt to hog all the glory and pride of achievement.

The climax of Rand’s character arc is learning to accept and even embrace the bad parts of existence. That is the difference between him and Egwene. She’s all about one thing, like an addict, who can never be satisfied by anything else, and cares about nothing so much as the object of her fixation. Rand is all about everything, in his highest state of awareness as the champion against evil. Because of that, he can embrace the bad along with the good. He learned to stop trying to endure or avoid pain, to embrace it, because it is part of life and existence, which he loves. Moridin’s character can be boiled down to two points: he hates existence and has been made into the ultimate antithesis of Rand. He was the opposite of what Rand was meant to become, what Rand needed to become to win, even before Rand himself reached that point, and the opposite of that state was Moridin’s nihilistic hatred of himself and life and the universe and everything. Rand’s ultimate triumph is to accept and even embrace all of that, even the horrible behavior and attitude of Egwene, whom he understood as no one else did. Hence his affection for even her assumed snit over his hogging the victory. Just because Rand loved her, does not make her good or right. This is the man, after all, who found a place in the universe for the Dark One himself to exist.

In his ultimate triumph, Rand displays an astonishing capacity for love and tolerance and acceptance. It is only fitting that his entire arc, his entire hero’s journey, should be recounted with a complementary counterpart, someone who goes down a very similar road, with a much different nature. For two decades, we thought Padan Fain was the Gollum to Rand’s hobbits, but it was Egwene all along. Even as Rand faltered in the heart of the evil mountain, Egwene lunged for her precious, and died clasping it to her bosom.

No, she doesn’t get points for sparing Leilwin. She had a motive to do so, since she had just given her Warder a mission. Leilwin could not pass on Egwene’s commands if she was dealing with the rage of a dead bondholder, after all. And Egwene had a far more personal stake than most people – by her act of self-destruction, she put herself squarely in the hands of the Dark One. If Logain didn’t break the Seals so the Light could win, Egwene would have ended up eternally subordinate to another being. I believe I have made a pretty good case that she would not want that at all.

And done. Personally speaking, I have to say this really helped me appreciate WoT in ways I had not before. They say the best way to learn something is to teach it, and it’s true. In trying to explain and demonstrate for the benefit of other people in a structured way, I came to some new insights myself, including an overall understanding of her character arc. Also, the act of trying to parse meaning out of the words and actions depicted in those three collections of literary diarrhea that were passed off as the last books of the series helped me understand exactly how bad they really were.

I hope everyone else enjoyed this as much as I did, and I hope certain people (you know who you are) hated it as much as I enjoyed it. I would like to thank the following RAFOnauts for their support and encouragement throughout this project:

AgentApple
Alexis Michael
Aviendha
beetnemesis
Sselals Girl
Chas
crazyed236
echooff
fionwe1987
Fox and Ravens
gban007
Grennir
lilltempest
Nargs
RugbyPlayingAshaman
Sidious
Simon
TyrReborn
Zalvera

And of course, Ben & the various moderators and admins for not kicking me off the site years ago.