I don't know, I see that as a spur of the moment thing. Every bit of behavior we actually see is not at all the behavior of a group that has crossed the Rubicon, but rather people who are hesitant to take the ultimate step. They didn't want to set up a formal administration, they didn't want to move against Tar Valon, they didn't want to commit to war. They had to be goaded into each step, which suggests their actions during the coup were more of a heat of the moment reaction, with their attitude once they've had a chance to calm down and review the situation in hindsight something like "Light, what have we done?"

No, it is exactly what you do for safety in numbers, and to present a united front when seeking redress for your grievances. The more sisters from other Ajahs they could bring along, the more they can bury the factional nature of their dispute. A multi-Ajah presence makes it look more like universal disapproval of Elaida's actions, rather than the Blues and anti-Red Greens pitching a hissy fit.

I think they'd have kept up the general strike as along as they could under the Black plan of fostering dissent, but it wouldn't have worked without Siuan's plan and Egwene's own adaptation.
The general plans would have been to push younger sisters into leadership positions. That's how so many of Siuan's contemporaries ended up on the leadership committee, despite having no plan at all to set up a rival Hall. The law of averages suggests some women in Salidar might have been thinking it, but that's not the same as having the nerve to propose such a step. Rallying to the physical defense of the Amyrlin is one thing, but once the transfer of power is settled, bucking the Tower is just not in it. Remember Merilille's comment, that Aes Sedai will squabble as hard as anyone over who's in charge, but once that question has been answered, they turn into good little Germans.

They had already accepted Elaida in their heads, they were just dragging their feet to dodge punishment and get some concessions, until Siuan gave them a reason to reject her. Their reaction to her lie was not "Aha! We were right to do this," it was "Whoa, change of plans! We can't follow anyone who'd do such a thing." The clear connotation is that they were willing to follow her, and Siuan's story changed that.

How did a group that was condescending to Elayne and Nynaeve, go from being unanimous in agreeing to imprisoning and spanking them, to meek obedience in the space of a minute? That is what these women do. That is how they behave, how they are conditioned to put the Tower and unity ahead of everything else.

Because the too-young Sitters were rallying around THEIR leader. They were dupes, who had no idea what was going on behind the scenes (like Egwene and Siuan, though those two were running their own con AND by the time they arrived at Tar Valon, began to get a glimpse of what the Ajahs were up to), and took Egwene's Amyrlin status at face value. The older sisters were still seeing the Tower as their real loyalty.
Duh, doy.
WE know. Most of them don't. I.e. the people who had a deposed Amyrlin on their hands. My whole point is that Elaida was not experienced enough or sufficiently briefed on the classified stuff to know how things were really done. She had a similar attitude to what Elayne espoused on Egwene's first day in Salidar, that the Amyrlin is a de jure AND de facto dictator, who can make Aes Sedai jump with a word. Elaida thought once she had the stole, she could say "jump" but the sisters were all like, "exCUSE me?" Likewise, she didn't know that there were more options for dealing with her situation. She probably didn't know the details about Chunla, or only the public consumption version. She was only a Sitter for a short time before her rise, and probably spent a lot of that focused on the immediate problems, rather than rounding out her knowledge base of Tower secrets.
But again, the majority of sisters had no idea that was going on. IIRC, her deposition was secret, the only women openly admitted to being deposed were Tetsuan and Bonwhin.
Again, duh. That's something they should have been read in on, rather than find out when the rest of the world does.

And maybe that might have taught them some caution? Gentling is a thing that HAS to be done. It is not like any other punishment practiced, because it can ONLY be done to a guilty person! If you CAN be gentled, you NEED to be. Adhering to a trial, dragging the guys to Tar Valon, all that is superfluous crap only meant to prop up the Tower's image, much for the same reasons Elaida had Logain paraded through the streets of Caemlyn. I don't even see how what they did to Thom's nephew is worse than locking the men up surrounded by women doing what they can never again do themselves. The tougher "victims" might have followed Setalle Anan's path and found a new life and new reason to go on, which they absolutely would not have in the Tower.

We simply do not have any more details about that episode other than the seemingly absurd notion of illegal gentlings. And some of the supposedly guilty seem rather sure of the necessity or rightness of their actions, even after more than a decade of punishment.

In any event, Siuan is about as far from right on this topic as you can be. The Reds are the only Ajah that does NOT panic in the face of male channelers. They don't even get as nervous as Siuan did about Rand. Absolutely no Red had any notion of gentling Rand before Tarmon Gaidon, and Verin found it surprising which sisters thought Rand needed to be protected, suggesting a lot of Reds.

Given that her justification for keeping the Dragon Reborn running around a secret is "I thought you guys were stupid and panicky, when you're actually the most sober and level-headed on this particular issue," she's lucky she wasn't lynched.

Don't forget, Robert Jordan was a Vietnam veteran. He has totally put the Reds in the position of soldiers who are mistrusted by civilians, because the civilians are projecting their own shortcomings and behaviors onto the soldiers, such as presuming they are bloodthirsty or would react in as cowardly a fashion to danger as the average unprepared civilian. People who have to commit violence for a living are inured to it, in that they can do a difficult job without flinching or hesitating when necessary, but are also less prone to losing control. The Reds are professionals. Part of any professional's style is know what to do, and what NOT to do. Exterminators don't poison their clients or pets; gardeners pull up weeds, not flowers; police officers view protecting the innocent as important as punishing the guilty, and mostly have scorn for movie cops who endanger civilians with high speed chases, and firing guns on foot pursuits, while most people view that as part of the job.

Why doesn't she just share the knowledge she has, that she witnessed a Foretelling of his rebirth, and meticulous investigation has turned up a man who found a baby during the Battle of the Shining Walls, and that she has word from a sister hot on the pursuit. Or even, "I had an inkling back in Fal Dara that that ta'veren guy was the Dragon." She could even justify it by saying that her seeing his nature was the clincher for it. Instead, she magnified the appearance of her guilt by trying to pretend that the first she knew was when she got word from a sister in Tear that he had legitimately drawn Callandor. That's kind of an insulting lie on top of being untrue.
Yeah, and what relevance does this have to do with anything? You think they are not going to figure out who he is once stuff starts becoming clear? By publicizing his rebirth, at least other sisters will be looking too. The reason WHY Siuan figured out that the Black Ajah knew, was because she had the piece of the puzzle, namely she herself knew he was reborn. Without that detail, their actions would not have made sense. Likewise, by telling people "The Dragon is Reborn, and my friend is tracking him down" accidents or attempts against Moiraine and Rand look suspicious. Other well-intentioned sisters will be keeping an eye out. If Siuan really thinks no one else in the Tower is suspicious of the Black Ajah's existence, then her actions are even more indefensible in support of a clique of so many fucking morons. Even a majority denying their existence can be understood, but for the best and brightest among the true loyalists to deny it means there is no hope for the Tower at all.
How arrogant and stupid is she to assume that she knows all the resources of the Shadow? Pedron Niall would be laughing himself sick or weeping in despair if he was privy to her thought process and assumptions that she knows her enemy's limitations.
If the woman who is supposed to be of all Ajahs and None has such a view of the Reds, she is unqualified for the post.
No, she didn't. Min explicitly says that Siuan was NOT named a Darkfriend. She herself believes that people are meant to understand that, but she has no way of following Aes Sedai trains of thought. She's spent the entirety of her latest stay in Tar Valon watching for the Black Ajah and she's encountered one Black sister (that she knows of. Actually, she probably unwittingly knows more Blacks than any other Ajah - so much for Siuan's confidence that Min's viewings will out them; hell, she had a viewing of one Black sister's execution, and never clued in), so she has Black Ajah on the brain. For the average denial-prone sister, that implication flies right over their head. That Gawyn thinks the same thing is hardly an argument, given his own obsessions, and propensity for jumping to wildly inaccurate conclusions.
The subject of the grudge is not the issue, it is the unreasoning nature of the grudge, and the projection of malice where none existed. Joline seems to think Merillile tried to embarrass her students rather than teach them, and Siuan seems to think Elaida was trying to hurt them rather than help them, which no one else does. Black or not, the Mistress of Novices could not get away with lying about Elaida's transgression and punishment.
Yes it is. By Tower rules anyway. If we are playing objective morality, it's a long sight short of murdering women for not sharing your priorities. If you are going to accept the latter, as Siuan does, being annoyed at Elaida's action is ridiculous. It's like complaining about the quality of food in Auschwitz.
Well, Elaida didn't have spiders or thornbushes or Trollocs handy! She certainly was not going to KILL them, like the test's situations did.
And the "beating" as described is controlled distraction, it is not the kind of lashing out that Katerine was stopped from dishing out. It wasn't done in a fury or with a lack of control, it was administered precisely by someone who could stop short of injury or repair any harm. By TOWER LAW, Elaida was wrong in coming too close to the level of stress the test imposes, since the sisters like their victims to face that unprepared. She was not wrong in inflicting the harm she did. She was perceived to be so, by an immature, over-aged adolescent, and anyone who challenges that categorization of Siuan is a fucking moron, in light of her subsequent response.

Not by the Tower standards Egwene and Siuan adhere to. It's not that far removed from the stresses of military training, and only an idiot would think Aes Sedai don't need the discipline even more, given the power and responsibility they hold. But even stipulating that saying "This is what they are going to do to you, learn to cope" is somehow wrong, it is a wrong of the Tower that does it to them in the first place.
You keep falling back on ignorance and limitations of knowledge in defending a woman who presumed to act as if she knew everything and alone had all the answers.
Well, trying to help got her punished. No one believes warnings like a single woman's private Foretelling, witness Egwene's warning of the Seanchan attack. It was not specific enough to make policy on, like the ACTUAL rebirth of the Dragon.

Snitches get stitches. If she had gone whining to the MoN, she was plainly not fit for the shawl. As Merean's compatriot successor pointed out later on, Accepted have to stand up for themselves instead of whining to the MoN.

So how does that make her different from Egwene? At least Elaida tried to do as much within the fabric of the rules, instead of violating Aes Sedai-raising procedures by handing out shawls as party favors at her inauguration.
Which she probably regretted the next morning. Also, Moiraine was a sister at the time, and even Cadsuane has limits on how she will transgress against sisters.
And yet, she thinks she's fit to take on the fight against the Dark One and the Shadow, if she's railing about such petty injustices, and unable to pass on childish revenge when lowering her status in the eyes of her superiors with such idiocy could impede her self-appointed mission to save the world?
She was still thinking the worst of Elaida, and probably took out some of her frustrations with her behavior in Andor, lashing out at Elaida's pets since she had to appear objective and impartial in her dealings with sisters once she had the Amyrlin Seat. Prior to that, she was locked in the Tower, while Elaida was busy protecting the Dragon Reborn's most important love interest and the future CiC for the forces of the Light.
Ohhh, an unreasoning prejudice and inaccurate stereotype. That is so much better than a personal distrust.
How wonderful was that treatment, if Leane beat feet for a new Ajah the first chance she got after finding out what Siuan had done.
That's ridiculous. It's the only reason she gave, she didn't forswear all other motivations, or explicitly deny that the Ajah had asked her to take Siuan in hand. What is just as likely is that someone in the Tower hierarchy told the Blues, or the Blues determined for themselves, that Siuan needed a firm hand in the early going before she became set in her ways. So the Blues said "Oh Cetalia, she has a good reputation for thinking and puzzles, maybe you can use her as an assistant, and keep her from running wild."

Oh, yes. An unbiased source! She also thinks anything other than Healing is a frivolous passion. Anyway, Cadsuane is hardly seeking adventure for thrills' sake. I never said that was the only reason for any sister to leave the Tower, but it IS the reason Siuan gives! Sisters leave the Tower all the time, and generally the better sort, because they are out to do good and help and serve. Siuan just wanted to be a tourist and indulge her adolescent sensibilities.
Six years into adulthood, and immediately after undertaking one of the most demanding and responsible jobs on the planet?
No, just selling out and getting captured by the system. She goes from the worst version of youth - rampant immaturity - to the worst version of adulthood - selling out your youthful idealism in exchange for climbing the corporate ladder.
No, she's more flexible than Elaida. She adapts well for personal survival and power-seeking. Her own love interest, once he gets a wildly inconsistent Sanderson-style warder bond that can let him read her mind but overlook her presence, disproves her general adaptability by pointing out how she can't let go.
If she was motivated by glory, she'd be trumpeting the importance of her charges to the heavens! She's actually humbling herself for the greater good.
How would they know how often Elaida was ignored if she kept all their spies away? Her daughter seems to think Morgase likes Elaida, so plainly she listens to what Elaida says, since Elayne conflates affection with listening to advise.

More sinister an interpretation is that Siuan impressed the rest of the stay-at-home REMFs with her adherence to the bullshit aspects of the Tower that they considered her safely tamed, not knowing that she had her conspiracy with Moiraine as an outlet for her rebellious tendencies. As you say, they had a glut of good administrators, and Siuan was picked for her youth, and because they thought her an exemplar of Tower practices. No one picks a compromise candidate because they are radical, but because they are inoffensive. Siuan stuck close enough to Tower tradition and doctrine and other crap that they had nothing against her. She was picked by a White, because that's what the Whites do, take an idea to a logical extreme. "Oh, we're looking for youth, well why don't we go as low as a thirty year old?" Of course, you can't say things like that in a political debate, so she would have done all the pro forma arguments, like presenting her CV, while highlighting the point that Siuan would likely spare them from having to go through all this selection bullshit for a long time. The later books make it plain that the attitude toward Siuan was not so much "Wow, Siuan!" as it was "Eh, could be worse."

But we see Reds working with others all the time, for all that they supposedly only socialize with one another. Even when Elaida goes looking for co-conspirators, she reaches out to a White. We only see Reds getting together on internal Red Ajah business. Toveine works with Gaebrelle, Teslyn with Joline, Pevara with Seaine, Galina with Erian... hell, Liandrin works with a whole crew of non-Reds. These broads reach out. Siuan, on the other hand, never does anything voluntarily with anyone who was not a Blue or who doesn't have blackmail on her.
There is a difference between friendship and working together. The Reds do the latter, in spite of lacking any motivation from the former. Their lack of outside friendships only makes their tendency for cooperation more impressive.
Not at all. He shows no such views at all.
He no basis for understanding or forming opinions on her handling the Tower, nor would he care. Unlike Egwene, he does not make judgments in areas where he has no knowledge, nor does he feel compelled to stick his nose where it doesn't belong. He did think her plan for handling the world was foolish.
One might accuse Rand of an undue focus on Andor as well. Worked well enough for him. Really Andoran connections turned out the be the most important ones. Which makes Elaida's choice of specialization rather smart in hindsight. Almost as if she was operating on a Foretelling or something. She was in a better position to deal with the key people. Siuan, for example, alienated the future Lord Captain Commander of the Children, while Elaida had a working relationship with him. Also, while Egwene keeps trying to rein in Gawyn and fails, which contributes to her own death, Elaida had him pegged from day one, and used him, while keeping him at a distance, and planned to get him out of the picture.

Let's consider that. A foolish, impetuous man, with criminally poor judgment but superb combat skills and a devoted band of similarly inexperienced yet deadly followers, and he has psychotic & unreasoning grudge against the Dragon Reborn. Which contender for leadership of the Aes Sedai wanted him out of the way, and which one only wanted to fuck him in the literal sense of the word?

Whispers and influence matter very little against a concrete threat right in front of you. Rand knew there was nothing Aes Sedai could do, having become too accustomed to their usual methods of dealing with international issues, their habits of secrecy, and their pre-formed assumptions on what the end times will be like. In the beginning Moiraine believes the Prophecies make no mention of the Aiel or any companions, except later we find verses that do exactly that. And Rand sees that even after Moiraine learns that the Aiel are the infamous People of the Dragon, whose significance, if not identity is so well-known that even a porter in Baerlon is familiar with the phrase, she doesn't change her views at all. She acknowledges and admits it, but then tries to ignore it, telling Rand "you have no need to be an Aiel chief."

And this is Moiraine, who knows him best, and from Rand's point of view, is one up on the rest of the Tower. If she can't deal with the reality, how can he trust anyone else to do so?

Aside from the idiocy of attack Sammael with so much less knowledge, power and support than he had when he actually did fight his rather near-run battle with the Forsaken, how was Siuan to prove that Lord Brend was Sammael? It's not like there was an incontrovertible prophecy establishing his identity. It's one thing to say "I have an Oath bound sister attesting that this al'Thor character drew the Sword from the Stone in fulfilment of the Prophecies." and another entirely to say, "This relative noob, whom you all already mistrust, believes, in her judgement, that Lord Brend is actually Sammael, and controls Illian, because an innkeeper she knows claims there has been a lot more brawling in the city lately."

Yeah. That'll work. As for using the war against Illian to tie other rulers to Rand, A. they are part of the system he has to tear down to rebuild anew, so they're pretty useless anyway, and B. rulers would be much more likely to look askance at some upstart upsetting the social order. No one on the Allied side was less pleased with the outcome of World War One than the British Royal Family, where politicians and people alike were thrilled with their victory, because the dynasties of three other powerful nations fell as a result of that war, two of whom had reigned much longer than the current Brits. If anyone believes the Reds would be unable to suppress their natural reaction to a male channeler, the nobles and royals would be no less likely to balk at dealing with some parvenu conqueror picking a fight with a powerful nation.

Rand has no way of knowing that.
And he, rightly, does not trust their help. They believe they know better, when in fact, the world they actually know has come undone, and they are all equally on terra ingcognita here. Even assuming some telepathic connection between Rand and Min to let him know her concerns, he'd have seen that she reacted no better to his going after Callandor than Moiraine did. Her alignment and commonality with Moiraine was a bug, not a feature for Rand.
She doesn't care what people say about her in the history books, because she'll be, like everyone, dead when they write history books, instead of contemporary commentaries. Anything written about Egwene in the history books cannot bring her power. That's why she doesn't care. It's not modesty or any other virtue that you seem to be suggesting.
No, she wants to be SEEN as the best, so she can get promoted to more important tasks faster. If being the best was important to her, she'd have concentrated more on giving water to thirsty people and less on eavesdropping or finding excuses to spy on people. That prologue explicitly shows her doing a lousy job of supplying drinking water and explicitly states her motivation in seeming to do the best job possible is to not have to do it any more.

Well, she does. She presumes, even according to her love interest, to tell everyone how to live their lives and handle their business, when she has very little practical knowledge. It's not that there is something inherently lesser about being a fisherman's daughter, rather that means that you are woefully unqualified to handle anything other than fish stuff.
Because we don't see the rest of Siuan's training, or ANYTHING from when she was an Accepted over her. Everything else we know about Siuan's training supports the idea that she'd have mouthed off to Elaida and defied her. She actually felt qualified to challenge an experienced sister's historical opinions, based on, I suppose, her observations of fish?
And yet, you have no trouble assuming the most sensible and level-headed Ajah when it comes to male channelers, would throw an uncharacteristic fit of panic and gentle the Dragon Reborn prematurely.
The man Egwene respects most, and Siuan's love interest wanted him dead. Elaida wanted him kept close to learn more about him. I realize that you believe every word Egwene says is gospel truth, but when she tacitly accused Elaida of willful ignorance on the subject of Rand, try to recall that was the writing of semi-literate Mormon, while the actual author showed Elaida spending most of her time trying to find out more about Rand.
Well, if Siuan didn't accept everything Moiraine said with only hollow objections, she'd have done the same thing. If Tarna had recommended Rand be allowed to run free, Elaida might have been just as permissive, at least before Fain targeted her.
No, she pissed and moaned and went along, because there was nothing else she could do without looking like an idiot.
She tacitly admitted she was going to use him as a puppet, directly comparing him to a tool, telling him there was nothing wrong with being used for the right purpose. A tool, not a craftsman or laborer. That was her response to Rand's accusation that she would use him.
But how was it necessary if it was going to be useless chaff come Tarmon Gaidon? If the Tower was not so fucked up that a lot of people had to waste valuable time doing its job for it, other people, like Elayne or Moiraine or Cadsuane or Berelaine could have handled the politics for Rand. At the very least they could all have been in a poem together. Instead, the Tower's stifling influence on the world locked good leaders like Pedron Niall and Morgase into certain positions in a system that precluded their cooperation or usefulness to Rand, so he had to fix the world, the way Nynaeve and Elayne had to take care of the Tower's real business, to the chagrin of the Tower itself. The Tower was like an oil company that became so involved in politics and lobbying the government on environmental, energy and foreign policy that they forgot to go drill for oil. And Siuan was the head lobbyist.

People love to compare the Tower to the Renaissance-era Catholic Church without thinking that most of them would agree the world became a better place when the Church stuck to its specialty and stopped involving itself in politics to the extent that it did in that time. But you're applauding Egwene modelling herself after Rodrigo Borgia, and denouncing the rise of a Savonarola.

That's such a funny spelling error. I wonder why we do that. Probably a habit to type a g after in.
I think, given the opportunity, she'd have tried, and I see no reason why, absent similarly personally trustworthy input, Elaida could not have come around to letting Rand do his thing. If Siuan was so hellbent on protecting his freedom of action, why did she buy her way into the counsels of the Salidar leadership by telling them where they could find Rand? Why did she do so when she had to know how they would react - send two random sisters, chosen for the number of warders they had, rather than select someone for their judgment or flexibility or history of cooperating with non-Tower personnel? Because she, and they, don't care about Rand's opinions or agenda. All that is necessary is someone who can repeat the Tower's standard line. In other words, business as usual! In that very chapter, Siuan smugly asserts her sure and certain knowledge of every sister to the point that they can trash any proposed candidate for fake Amyrlin, so she had to know that Salidar would not be so sanguine about letting Rand roam free. She just did not care.