Duh. It's all that kind of crap she pulls that is overwhelming me when I try to give her credit where it is due. It is the list of her GOOD actions or realizations that looks small and pathetic next to the iniquities I keep running across.

I know what you mean, though, about how she usually appears good at first light. I didn't initially think she was all that bad in this book (not actually good, I grant you, but she did some good things and was actually right sometimes), just as in previous books, but when you look at what she says in context and so forth, you realize that she's full of it. Or else you see a disturbing logical outcome or glaring contradictions... it goes on. Her grand finale upon her ascension is the real kicker. Look at what she tells the real Hall as opposed to how she addresses the rebels. She can only get away with this stuff because there is no electronic recording going on. If there had been, someone would be looking at the two speeches and going "WTF?" Even her thoughts. As she is leaving the Hall to address the rebels, she is displeased with the loyalist sisters following her grouped by Ajah, but when she gets to the courtyard, there are the rebels, grouped by Ajah AS SHE ORDERED!
She procedes to rip them apart for rebeling and all but announcing how she's going to crack the whip and doesn't want to hear any backtalk from now on, mere minutes after she lambasted the loyalist Hall for NOT giving the Amyrlin Seat backtalk!

Anyway, this is not the time or place. But when you read stuff like that, you're nodding along, because these are the Aes Sedai, after all, and they DO have it coming...until you realize exactly what Egwene is up to and how everything she does works to improve HER power, no matter what she piously prattles about the limitations on an Amyrlin's power and how an Amyrlin who exceeds such limits is a tyrant who MUST be deposed. And later you realize that no matter how horrible these Aes Sedai are, though they are so wretched that your first instinct is to applaud Egwene's tongue-lashings or tricks to gain dominance, Egwene is STILL on their side over everyone else's, that she will take their side no matter what, especially over Rand, and will only lower Aes Sedai to fit her own purposes. That is why she can contradict herself in reaming each group out. She has no concern over right and wrong, only over what keeps them down. She will seize any excuse to berate or belittle them to maintain her superior position. She ran the rebels through the figurative gauntlet upon their entry into Tar Valon & the Tower solely to avoid the usual price of attaining political power - sharing it with those who supported you. By reprimanding them for rebellion, Egwene forestalls them thinking she owes them anything.