“Setting up a second White Tower. It would mean leaving the Aes Sedai broken, perhaps forever…How could they encourage the Kin or the Wise Ones to tie themselves to the Aes Sedai if the Aes Sedai themselves were not unified? The two White Towers would become opposed forces, confusing the leaders of men as rival Amyrlins tried to use nations for their own purposes. Allies and enemies alike would lose their awe of the Aes Sedai, and kings very well might start up their own centers for women talented in channeling.”

I wonder if my problem with Egwene is that, within the limitations of fiction, of course, I understood her thoroughly, even better than I knew, and at a subconscious level recognized a fundamental difference in our mindsets, our natures, and our perspectives, that renders me incapable of trusting her because I recognize something so antithetical to my own values and understanding of humanity and the world.

There are two possibilities I can see. One, and the less worrisome, IMO, is that the aforementioned thoughts are merely specious excuses for Egwene to avoid taking a less bloody route and to continue on her current path of seeking dominion over all the sisters. That was my opinion of her excuses in CoT, when she claims in her thought process that she would have been willing to surrender to Elaida for the sake of unity, except Elaida would be so harsh with her spankings and outlawing the Blue Ajah that such an outcome could not be accepted. I have long assumed that so ridiculous a rationale must be spurious and merely an excuse for Egwene to justify her continued prosecution of an unjust and immoral war based on lies and trickery. But, and this is the far more frightening thought (as least as far as the world of WoT is concerned), WHAT IF SHE SINCERELY MEANS IT? What if Egwene REALLY DOES believe that Aes Sedai area superior flesh that must not be unjustly marred with ass-welts, and such a trespass of their sacred glutes is worth any amount of ignoring the Seanchan menace, or failing to support the Dragon Reborn or act against the Shadow? Can she really believe that nonsense that crimes done to Aes Sedai are worse than those done to ordinary people BECAUSE they are done to Aes Sedai? The very first thing she was taught about Aes Sedai was that they are NOT different, that they are NOT special or exalted, but that they are normal women with a human being’s range of flaws and virtues and channeling does NOT make them special or better. She was also told that they are no better or worse than the men who Sealed up the Dark One and went mad as a result and broke the world, but that seems not to have taken either, with her assessment that the prejudice against men in general as untrustworthy is accurate enough to be an acceptable mindset for Aes Sedai as they prepare for Tarmon Gaidon.

Here then is the possible root of my distaste for Egwene and her works: the possibility that, assuming she believes all that about the false superiority of the Aes Sedai, she is also likely to believe the above quotation, and that it truly represents her worldview. A mind capable of thinking such things has values which are the complete inverse of my own. How can I sympathize with and accept a character who seeks the power to make her visions come true, when those visions involve a distortion or rejection of core values? To Egwene al'Vere, freedom and choice for the whole world is an unthinkable outcome. For the rulers who are responsible to their people and subject to the laws and traditions of their nations to be using the One Power for those nations is unthinkable. For multiple organizations to be formed, reflecting the true interests and/or (haha! ) needs of the world's channelers, rather than getting hammered into the Aes Sedai mold, or broken on their anvil is a horrible idea. That channelers might be able to work in an organization more to their liking or that people might be free from the control of an organization outside their culture and laws or that the Aes Sedai would have EARN their position atop the channeling hierarchy (or that the White Tower could not claim the name as their exclusive right) is completely against her understanding of the world.

I have to wonder if I correctly identified Egwene as the sort of person who prefers monolithic domination to free competition, regulation by an unelected agency to personal choice, and internationalization over local loyalty back when I first started to have my hackles raised by her personal choices and responses long before she became Amyrlin. That sort of person is not one I could ever agree with or approve of holding sovereign power, so in retrospect it seems almost as if she was doomed to always be an object of disdain in my eyes.