Would you rather:
A: Your close friend & coworker marry your favorite brother...only for their marriage to directly result in both of their deaths a few days later?
B: The woman you believe you caught sleeping with the love of your life before you ever got a chance to make a move on him, marry your less beloved brother, whom you have no real excuse to exclude from family events, and as a result, your children will be calling this woman you hate "Aunt"?
Lucky Elayne doesn't have/get to pick.
Not sure if B is made better or worse by the fact that she is also said love of your life's sister-in-law.
While A is a former coworker turned boss actually, and to be fair... It didn't. Said brother's inability to choose to live did.
A lot of WoT's narrative, most certainly coming from RJ's own life experiences, is people, particularly young people, going through the the darkness of war, and dealing with the places that takes them, but just as importantly it is about their journey BACK from those places.
And just as Aram's role was of a man consumed by that darkness, Gawyn's was that of a man who HAD a choice. The books even going so far as to flat out SAY "This is not being decided by the Wheel. This choice is his to make, and his alone" by why of Min's vision. Gawyn is the man who can all his life ahead of him, but... Just couldn't make himself choose it.
He and Galad had every opportunity to be smarter about going after Demandred. Running headfirst into a situation pitting yourself against a vastly superior force without any real plan except to expect the guy to follow your current social rules and accept a duel is a rather stupid way to approach one of the Forsaken, not exactly known for their sense of fairness! I'll admit that Galad and Gawyn had little way to know what a potent swordsman Demandred would be, but they should have realized he wouldn't let himself die in a duel. Thankfully Lan is older and wiser than those boys.
Hell, if anything one of her faults is failing to see how screwed up he is... But she's like 18, and has a grand total of "was in a kinda sorta arranged betrothal" under her belt when it comes to guys.
Besides, IIRC he KNEW those rings were certain death before he put them on. Galad is Galad. To him there wasn't really a choice, but Gawyn was just looking for some way to get himself killed.
If he and Egwene never hooked up... He's of just found someone else to fill the role, and maybe he'd of also just of found some other way to have a "noble" death.
... Hell, given the suddenness of her "love" for him, I've kind of wondered if he didn't unknowingly, and more then a little literally, mind rape her into it in that dream. I mean, actual dreams don't have the physical effects of TAR, but... Their minds ARE there, and we know that kind of thing can be done in TAR, so do we actually know that such imposed thoughts in a dream just wear off once it is over with?
There's the fact that she was caught in the dream in the first place.... But it's not like the Wise Ones have never been wrong before.
Gawyn made his own choices with his eyes wide open to the consequences of his actions with the rings. He functionally committed suicide regardless of the outcome of the duel with Demandred.
Galad I can be more forgiving of, but he's still a moron for going after one of the Forsaken with a sword. It's like "bringing a knife to a gun fight". Lan at least prepared himself to counter a Channeler.
As for the "mind rape" ... I don't see it like that. Egwene clearly didn't feel abused or taken advantage of and Gawyn was not aware that her mind was actually in the dream with him. Rape is a crime of control and violence, not sexual release, so this scene felt more like a man having wet dream and Egwene essentially stumbling into it.
Short of him being a Dreamer and then forcing her into the situation I don't see this as rape. To your point I believe such a situation could and probably did happen during the Collapse and WOP years. All the pieces are there, we have seen people be forced into the Dream and we know that if a Dreamer pulls a person into their own Dream they would have absolute control so it's obviously possible to create the scenario you are talking about.
Of course he had no idea anything was even happening. The real issue there is simply if she actually had any feelings for him ahead of time, or if he unknowingly implanted them into her mind. The physical effects of normal dreams might not stay, but does the mental?
I see what you are getting at with the idea of "did the dream linger/is that why Egwene was in love with him" ... and it's even plausible for such a thing to happen, but that seems out of sync with the way RJ generally thought about/portrayed love. I think his intent was to show us that Egwene and Gawyn had a true love connection and therefore she was snared in his dream. The way I look at it is that if she didn't already have strong emotions for Gawyn, and he for her, she wouldn't have been trapped in the first place.
