Graendal's POV in the prologue was simply marvelous. I felt that Sanderson had a big part in creating this scene because, well Graendal is the voice of the people in it. Finally someone is wondering for us where the heck Demandred is hiding, comparing Semiharge and Demandred for uber-forsakeness for us, voicing our disparagement of Mesaana.

Anyway the scene ends dramatically with Graendal planning how to psychologically destroy and torture the Dragon Reborn. But after that nothing in the book seem to indicate that anything came out of it until near the book's end Rand squashes her with a loadfull of Balefire from a distance. What gives?

All we saw was an attempted killing of a merchant lords (and suspected killing of others offstage) and getting rid of messengers that supposedly knew where she lived.

That doesn't make a lot of sense. Is frustrating Rand in discovering her whereabout that psychologically devastating to him? Sure it would irk and frustrate him but that just doesn't come anywhere near what she is supposed to do.

And preventing him from electing a new king for Arad Doman by way of their laws is not up to snuff either. He had plenty of problems like this in other countries he took control over. If he really wanted to give them a king he could appoint one. I don't see the people raising the hue and cry about this. They're pretty hopeless. He's got a least two obvious candidates for the job already. Ituralde and his loyal Cairihieni lord.

So what gives? Then I rethought about it from the other direction. How had Rand been tortured and perverted psychologically in this book? That's obvious: it's when Semiharge escapes her imprisonment, makes him a puppet with the male adam, almost manages to make him kill Min and in the process implicates Cadsuane as an incompetent fool incapable of guarding and controlling the prisoner and the objects Rand entrusted to her care. And of course there's also the subsequent effects of Rand using the True Power and killing women.

On the surface that whole scene looked unconnected to Graendel. It's the big bad Myrdraal that frees Semiharge, gives her Elza as an assistant and assumedly steals the male adam from Cadsuane's rooms. We never saw him taking orders from Graendel so we assume he got his orders from either Moridin or from the Great Lord himself.

And as for the True Power, only the Great Lord himself could control it (unless some strange bond allows you to steal it from someone who DOES have permission to use it) so again we assume it's the Great Lord or Moridin that is behind this.

But when we look at these events it and ask who's mind would conceive such a plan the answer becomes obvious. The Great Lord was never subtle in his influence on the world. His tool is always the bludgeon, and the patently unnatural. It may be intricate in its design but it is still in the end a bludgeon: Stopping the seasons of the world, coming up with insane diseases. The town Mat visits in particular where each night the people become mindless bloodthirsty madmen or the shadowspawn.

And Moridin's focus lies on the side of large scale occurrences. The changing of the direction of history, the perversion of prophecies, philosophy and belief. His attempts at controlling single individuals is woefully inadequate as we see in the first books when he tries to recruit Rand to his cause or in the rest of the series where he tries to direct the other forsaken.

Graendal on the other hand is exactly the woman to come up with such a plan. She attacks Rand's weakness in regarding women both by forcing him to attack women and by making him torture one he loves, she employs his distrust of Cadsuane and Aes Sedai in general, she pricks his ability to trust others by parading Elza to him after he believed in her so much, and she lures him with his thirst for power and freedom from limitations to the True Power.

And there's also the convenient erasing of Semiharge from the pattern. Graendal would be glad to get rid of one of her rivals. Instead of facing alone two powerful rival Chosen (with an additional weaker third) she would now only have Demandred to deal with.

How does she do all that? The answer is simple. She had come up with the plan after studying the situation and building a psychological profile of Rand AlThor and went to the Great Lord to receive his permission to it and to grant her the necessary resources. The Great Lord promises to dangle the True Power to Rand at the appropriate moment and sends his Myrdraal major domo to execute the rest of it.Graendal doesn't need to risk herself this way and operates from behind the scenes the way she likes. And not to forget, she hides her involvement from Rand who instead focuses his hatred at the red-shirt Semiharge.



Finally we come to Graendal apparent demise. It looks straightforward enough on the face of it. The poisoner Graendal left in Arad Doman is discovered by Rand and Nynaeve and he manages to tell them where she lives. They get her signature compulsion weaves imprinted on a fool and use him to corroborate that they have erased her from the pattern after hitting her entire manor with balefire.

But this chain of events has several big problems with it. The first is this poisoner. Why would Graendal use someone who knew where she lived in such a dangerous position? We are always told how careful she is not to let her location be discovered. But slowly killing with poison this messenger after Rand appears and then trying to do the same to the merchant lord point Red Flaming Bloody Arrows at this poisoner. Even if we ignore the crudity of this method, its chances of being discovered (as it was), the least she could do was prevent this poisoner from learning the obscure name of her secret mansion.

Then Rand assume that Graendal wouldn't think he would use brute force to destroy her. But that too doesn't make sense. This has been his preferred method in many of the confrontations he has faced so far, and his use of diversions to divert attention from his real plan is also nothing new. That was the method he used against her ally Sammael for example. So assuming Graendal wouldn't be able to see what he was really about makes little sense. That leaves the newfound hardening of Rand that allows him to kill everyone in the mansion (including the women) like that. If she was behind Semiharge's attack she would definitely know and understand it. If she wasn't, she would still definitely know and understand it. She is after all very well informed about events in the world.

So how can we explain the disappearing compulsion weaves on the fool Rand sends to her? All she would need for that would be one female channeler under her control. She would instruct her to make a compulsion on the fool and stay in the manor while Graendal left and everyone would believe that she has died.