You forgot part. It SHOULD read "I love you, even though I've been obsessed with your half-brother for the last year, and HAVE NEVER SPOKEN A WORD DIRECTLY TO YOU, or even registered any awareness of your presence* and please don't read anything into the fact that I am conveniently asking you to forgo vengeance for your mother against my ex and also take the enormous risk of betraying your Aes Sedai employers. I DO love you! Honest! It is not at all as if I am using you."

Actually, the sad thing is, she does. Usefulness to her ambitions IS what Egwene prizes most of all. Gawyn's utility is what swayed her. She persuaded herself to fall in love with Rand, because of his unique family situation - if she had married him, she would have been the matriarch of the al'Thor family, and in the eyes of the Women's Circle, the supreme authority over their household. Egwene LOATHES being under anyone else's authority, and chafes, rebels and disobeys at every opportunity, no matter how willingly she accepts their authority. If she married the typical man her age, she would have moved into a house with a large extended family, and continued her lifelong experience of being the low woman on the totem pole, only instead of the coddled youngest daughter, she would be the new interloper to her mother-, sisters-, aunts-, grandmothers- & cousins-in-law. By marrying Rand she would become Captain her first day on board the ship, rather than starting out as Ensign Redshirt. She later admits to herself that she only thought she loved him, so plainly she did not at the time. She fell in love with him for the escape and power marrying him offered her. Just as she fell in love with Gawyn when she realized she had this pre-whipped idiot who would do anything for her.


* Actually, events prove that a scenario like this is pretty much the ultimate aphrodesiac for a Trakand.