Or is she? - Edit 1
Before modification by guttering flame at 11/11/2009 08:24:36 PM
You assume Graendal divined Rand's intention and prepared for it, but that's counter to what Graendal is said to do. She plans for every possibility. Your idea would have her plan for none except the one that occurred. She's smarter than Rand, she's not omniscient.
Well we could easily assume she also had a plan for the eventuality that Rand's people wouldn't find the conspicuous poisoner and find out the name of the lair from him. The idea that she would calmly seat on compulsed human chair in her mansion while the homicidal Dragon Reborn was just outside her mansion is bizarre.
The idea that Graendal survived is probably this book's version of "Semirhage planned to get caught all along!" Face it, the Forsaken are ridiculously incompetent and doomed to miserable failure. This theme was made clear through the books, and Verin said it right out in her chapter. Aginor killed himself in a Wilder's mistake of overdrawing on the Source. Balthamel was turned to fertiliser by a walking garden. Be'lal got balefired by someone far inferior to him because he was busy monologuing. Lanfear got tackled to death by a short woman not using the Power, while she herself had an angreal. Rahvin and Sammael were killed due to the intervention of their own allies. Asmodean died so miserably it isn't even felt necessary to tell us who did it, so unimportant it was, he got killed while getting himself a drink.
I never thought that Semiharge planned it all along. I know it's tempting to believe in your incompetent fools theory but the big problem with it is that if true, we must then conclude that, excluding some few exceptions like the main heroes in the books, everyone else in the world are even bigger fools, more ridiculously incompetent than even the most incompetent of the forsaken, since by all account they fell into the forsakens' scheme at the drop of the hat every single time.
And Semirhage, after getting caught because of an incredibly idiotic plan that was doomed to fail, dies because her priorities were skewed.
Graendal's dead. Her survival would be completely out of character for a Forsaken.
Graendal's dead. Her survival would be completely out of character for a Forsaken.
I really don't see why the Great Lord would give Rand his aid against Semiharge if he didn't want him to escape her. Even supposing a cabal of Aes Sedai and Wise Ones manage to subdue the linked Semiharge Elza and Rand (that are using Rand as their human shield) why would the Great Lord need to interfere? He seems to be a vengeful lord and because Rand used Balefire he will now be unable to punish Semiharge soul. The obvious answer is that the Great Lord wanted Rand to use the True Power all along because it made Rand a darker character, easier to control, and it made him subject to the supposedly irresistible temptation of the True Power that only the Dark Lord can give.
Nor do I believe the Semirhage incident was her idea. Remember that it was Moridin who ordered Graendal to inflict psychological trauma on Rand in the first place. This is quite clearly within the scope of his schemes.
As I said the style fits her better than it does him or the Great Lord. Why would he labor and scheme to torment Rand when he already assigned his capable minion Graendal to it?