“Her favorites were always … stories about women outwitting people who were supposed to be smarter than everyone else.”

In Eye of the World, Rand, who knows Egwene best, is surprised by her choice of stories to request from Thom, noting she usually doesn’t like tales of adventure or stories about long journeys. Later in the series, when he tells her his horse's name, taken from “The Travels of Jain Farstrider” she misses the reference, despite having read the book. Jain Farstrider is still living, in a world without electronic communication. It’s very likely that “Travels” is a recent best seller that Ewgene would have read it because everyone else is and she wants to know what’s going on, the way I still watch “The Walking Dead” or “Game of Boob-Dragons”

The irony is that they are about to embark on a long journey and they are, in fact, central characters in an epic adventure story. And maybe that’s Egwene’s problem. This interest in adventure and long journeys is a novelty taste. More consistent with her character has been those female triumph tales, or lighthearted and humorous stories (whose distinguishing feature is a lack of serious consequences; one of the key differences between comedy and tragedy is that errors or flaws in the former result in humorous scenarios where they would lead to death in the latter).

Note, however, that for someone who prefers humorous stories, Egwene seldom makes jokes or wisecracks. Her snark or comments usually have an edge, and could at most be seen as kidding on the square. What’s more, she has little tolerance for other people’s humor, except very close friends, sharing private jokes. We don’t see these jokes, we are just told that she and her companion giggle together or share laughs, because it’s not actually funny, just bonding over shared moments. Even her one good burn, to Perrin about training for gender roles, which gets a laugh from Elyas, is not delivered in a humorous manner or like a zinger. It’s very probable that Egwene was not really joking, that her intent was not make her audience laugh, but to “win” an exchange with Perrin.

In the past, I have noted several times that Egwene’s actions make no sense, unless she is aware that she is, in fact, a main, if not the main character in a fantasy story, especially the escapist kind with a similar lack of harsh consequences to a comic drama.

My idea here is that Egwene’s issue, the thing that explains a lot of her odd or counter-indicated behavior, is her own self-identification with stories, that she takes them to heart and lets them inform her view of how the world works. Now, to a degree, that was one of the functions of storytelling in human society, to pass on lessons and modes of thought. Fairy tales are full of people getting tricked or trapped by absurdities, because their point is to teach children that certain rules are unbreakable, that one always keeps a promise, no matter how unconscionable a contract attorney and jury would find it, that a guest must be treated as if he or she were a wizard, a fairy, a princess, a king, or even a god in disguise. The problem in Egwene’s case is her limited preferences, which curtail the lessons she learns to a relatively limited scope.

And the lessons Egwene learns from “Mara and the Three Foolish Kings” or other stories where the women outsmart the authorities or experts, or which are light and funny, is that consequences are not fatal or final, and that the system, tradition, institutions and experts are just obstacles, that a woman only has to believe in herself and she can figure out a way to get around them. The one line we have from the story of Mara has the titular kings wallowing in their own preconceptions and ignorance, to the degree that we don’t actually need to believe Mara is clever. The kings are THAT dumb, to the point that the authorities they represent are easily circumvented. You don’t need to actually be clever or original, just decide not to accept what they tell you, and you’ll eventually win. In real life, as many WoT characters know, if you think the king is an idiot and you’re not going to listen to him and run your own affairs, ninety-nine times out of one hundred, that king has a lot of fellows with sharp objects to correct your error. But those kinds of fiction are fine, so long as they are not the totality of your view.

Egwene’s takeway from her choices in fiction has several major results for her mindset that I can see. These include a certainty in the correctness of her own choices and the inevitability of her success (because the women always win), an ignorance or disregard of consequences (because nothing REALLY bad happens in funny stories) and a distorted perception of her own relative importance (because she self-identifies with a hero, and in stories, the important things all revolve around the hero, so their stuff IS the important part).

Hiding Rand from Siuan’s party in Fal Dara, for example, is like hiding an Ebola patient with a nuclear bomb chained to his back, from the FBI. He’s a main character and the primary point of view to the reader, so it passes unnoticed to us, and many who do think about it view it as heroic. But we are readers. Egwene is not, she is a woman in a world where men like Rand are the greatest danger imaginable. Egwene herself was the recipient of the private lecture from Moiraine in which she was informed that male channelers were not consciously evil, they did not choose to do what they did, and it was the madness which afflicted them. The obvious corollary to that lesson is that if they did not choose to do what they unquestionably do and did, they cannot choose to refrain from it. Therefore, knowledge of a person and faith in his character is irrelevant. He is dangerous, not because of who he is, or what he might do, but rather what he is, and what he will do

Concealing Rand can only be reconciled if you have assurances of his surviving the taint or are aware of a mitigating circumstance. Siuan, Moiraine & Verin know he is the Dragon Reborn, and believe they cannot risk gentling him before Tarmon Gaidon. We, the readers, knowing he is the main character of a fantasy novel published before "A Game of Thrones", can be certain he will remain alive and sane through much of the rest of the series. Egwene knows none of this.

But if Egwene is the main character of a story, in which the female protagonist outsmarts the people who are supposed to know better, her action is perfectly normal. Of course the Aes Sedai are going to be wrong! Of course Our Heroine can save her friends from something no one else has been able to stop in three thousand years!

In Egwene’s favorite stories, the heroine does whatever she sets out to do, or else the unavoidable consequences of Rand’s curse will result nothing worse than hilarious shenanigans, like him in a corridor in Fal Dara, dodging Siuan in and out of various doors, all while Thom sits in a corner playing Yakety Sax! And at the end, everything gets straightened out and there’s a wedding!

Egwene can’t conceive of Fal Dara suddenly becoming the epicenter of a brand new volcano. That’s not how her stories go. This keeps coming up at various times when Egwene asserts in her stream of consciousness an intention to do something that apparently can’t be done, even though she seldom gives it any more attention. Teaching Rand to channel is one such, instance. Although it’s really a pretext to spend time with Rand, so that she can ease into their breakup and also accustom him to Elayne’s company, Egwene still thinks as a side project, she can teach Rand to channel and persists in the view despite a demonstration of the very lethal dangers of both encouraging the exercise of Rand’s untutored ability, and applying the principles of channeling one sex’s half of the Power to the other.

And during their encounter, Egwene makes a number of appalling assumptions. First, that she can reasonably match Rand in power. Granted, she was not privy to the assertions in tGH of the vast power it was predicted the Dragon Reborn would wield, or the comparisons of her own power to Nynaeve’s, but she is still thinking like the girl who objected to men getting the stronger powers of Earth & Fire or wanting reassurances that male channelers were the ones at fault for the Shadow and the Breaking and that the women were not. The women always come out on top in her stories, and she has invested her estimations of her worth as an Aes Sedai and wielder of the One Power, so she’s pretty sure she, the protagonist, is going to be at the top. She also tries to Heal Rand’s wound, even though in the immediate prior book she admitted to Nynaeve that she does not understand the weave. But the heroine can do whatever she sets her mind to, so she goes right ahead to try.

It is telling that her stream of consciousness motivation has little to do with compassion for Rand’s injury, rather she sees it as a technical challenge that she can surely overcome with her incredible strength in the power, even if she lacks the understanding that comes of study. Comedy stories or clever feminine protagonists don’t follow the rules, don’t bother spending thousands of hours mastering the knowledge of skill, beyond natural talent.

That’s another aspect of stories – the variable timeframe. Events in a story are expanded or compressed to the length of time needed for the narrative to play out, especially in the relatively brief times available to an audience or reader. And Egwene never wants to invest time in learning a skill or mastering a job or working her way up. She wants the success that seems so quick and easy in her stories.

And again, Egwene, though she does not know it, IS a character in a story. The Wheel of Time in a Doylist sense, and the Age Lace woven in the Pattern around three ta’veren in a Watsonian sense, so she never learns the harsh truths that most people do regarding the difference between reality and a story. The Pattern has needs that can’t wait, so Egwene largely gets to skip the training montages, and has ways open up for her to succeed in defiance of expectations and without the proven or traditional methods. This serves to reinforce that story-influenced perspective. She’s bucking the system like her heroines, and like them, she’s succeeding.

The problem, which makes her such a polarizing character, is there is usually only one real hero in a story, and the other people’s arcs revolve around that hero. And Egwene doesn’t pay much attention to the stories where the woman is a reward or foil for the hero, she prefers the ones where the women show up the people who everyone thinks are top dogs. Egwene can’t see that Rand or Mat or Perrin is the hero whenever she is around one of them, to her, they are the Three Foolish Kings, and she is Mara, and her job is to point out their foolishness and scoop up their crowns when they fumble them away. Because she is their friend, she’s not going to let them wallow in the mud or expose their idiocy to all the people, and the best way to spare them that is to prevent it from coming to pass, with her corrections and admonitions.

Another thing about characters in a story is they don’t have important or relevant secrets. The facts about characters are known to the audience, so Egwene does not really comprehend some types of privacy. She freely tells the Wise Ones things Rand wants to keep secret, which are private anyway, because in stories, people learn what they need, and only villains withhold important information. In her stories, it is the role of the heroine to bring those secrets to light, and prevent them causing a disaster. So she tells the Wise Ones whatever they want to know. Rather than seeing Rand’s dream ward as a demand for privacy in that most personal of areas, she views it as yet another challenge to overcome.

She decides she will make use of any information volunteered by Gawyn, even if accidentally, and even though she knows from his words that he sees giving such information to her as spying and a betrayal of his duties. That means she will use information he does not want anyone to have, and which he would only reveal out of carelessness or relaxation in her presence, because he trusts her. Egwene does not see trust as a relationship that must be maintained, it is a quality a heroine has. Everyone should trust Egwene, because she would only ever reveal secrets that need to be exposed, and she would only ever act for the good of the plot. To her friends, this is just how she is, so even if they don’t understand how or why, they know that they can’t trust her not to reveal whatever they let her know, to whomever she thinks needs to know it.

The other side of the knowledge coin has to do with her reaction to teaching. If she wants or can use it, it’s important. Otherwise it’s peripheral. We see this in her reaction to Elyas, and to Mother Guenna and the Wise Ones. Egwene wants to learn mysterious and preternatural knowledge, about talking to wolves or Dreamwalking. When Elyas denies any ability to teach her, but offers instead more mundane, but no less valuable, commodities of food, guidance and protection from Shadowspawn, Egwene refuses and plans to camp apart from him. On Chaendar above Rhuidean, while the Wise Ones are clearly preoccupied on momentous events taking place, and the fulfillment of prophecy, Egwene is only concerned with her lessons. She tries to change the subject when Moiraine appears to be alienating them with her probing questions, and keeps asking for lessons, no matter how inappropriate her demands. Because in her story, the function of the Wise Ones is to be her mentors, and Moiraine is diverting them.

In Tear, she ridicules Nynaeve’s conversation with Mother Guenna, which takes the form of an exchange of knowledge and professional lore, because it’s got nothing to do with Nynaeve’s life plans or future or their immediate circumstances. Because in stories, Mother Guenna and Elyas are tempters who waste your time and lead you astray. Guenna is an authority figure and Elyas is a strange man, who does not conform to proper behavior. Stories like Egwene’s are gratifying and comforting, they are not intended to challenge the audience, but to reassure them, so you generally don’t get strange or off-putting characters who prove to be assets. In the comedies, they are there to make jokes, and Egwene does not want to be the butt of one.

Egwene does not much like adventure stories, in which the oddball, strange or abrasive person you encounter is not someone to overlook, but might very well hold the key to your quest. Perrin, who probably does, or at least more than Egwene, IS willing to accept Elyas’ help, despite wanting nothing to do with his teaching.

The Trollocs are a distant threat, and heroines don’t get lost or starve to death. They might be uncomfortable until they solve their current circumstances, but they don’t need to hang with this creepy weirdo who might delay the point of their journey. Which is get Egwene to Tar Valon so she can become an Aes Sedai. Yeah, the boys have their reasons for coming along, but they’re just villagers. They derive their significance to the plot from Moiraine picking them out as such, so their importance comes from Moiraine, who is an Aes Sedai. Thus, Aes Sedai business is the priority, and as the one in their group who’s going to be Aes Sedai, their plot has to follow that track.

From an objective point of view, the idea of an inexperienced teenager wielding the real power and extensive influence of the Amyrlin Seat (hell, even an Aes Sedai, given the extent of their practical authority in the real world, that Elayne demonstrates with the Borderlanders) is appalling. The idea that such a teenager should plot and scheme to undermine and circumvent the elected legislature is even worse. But they are not real people, with interests and constituency. They are characters, like Egwene, and the validity of their interests is measured in how those interests serve the plot. Egwene, as the clever heroine, is the one designated to bring the plot to fruition, so bringing them into line is only the proper course of action.

All the people above Egwene, from the Hall of the Tower, to the Wise Ones to Rand himself, are just obstacles or helpers to Egwene’s story coming to pass. This is not to say she is malicious, like some sort of sociopath – though the behavior brought about by this attitude is close enough to make the distinction immaterial in many ways – it’s just that she suffers from a distorted viewpoint. She does, in fact, hold some of these people in affection and is concerned for their well-being…but at the end of the day, she’s still the heroine, and her arc takes priority. Good supporting characters understand this, and fall into line. The bad ones never learn and turn to antagonists. So when Egwene brings someone to heel, imposing her will on them and coopting them to her agenda, by force or threat or exercise of authority, in many cases she is doing them a favor. She brings them under her hand, so she doesn’t have to apply her fist.

It’s how she rationalizes her cooption of the Salidar council through blackmail, in defiance of her expressed principles just the night before, and then her assumption of dictatorial powers. These people are supporting characters, and their contrary interests are invalid. Stories are not about figureheads, so Egwene is not going to serve in that fashion. The important thing is her own development, so when the leaders of the Hall demand to fix the messes she created, she ignores the point that they are sworn to the Three Oaths, and their sincerity is unquestionable, particularly when she is told that she needs more experience before she can be allowed to make life or death decisions concerning the disposition of armies. The notion that takes priority is that she could become captured by the system if she submits herself to the institution through which she intends to wield power. The right, wrong or practical good or genuine dangers of the situation are not as important to Egwene as her professional development or the stalling of her career track.

The hero’s character arc is the most important thing to service in a story, rather than have their life experiences follow a plausible timeline. This is also why Egwene dances around the issue of surrendering or calling off the war, to avert harm and serve the greater good, because that’s what a hero would do, and it’s evidence that her motivations are benevolent and not self-serving. But in comedies and triumphs of the wit, the heroine always finds a way to split the difference, to achieve the end without compromise, but still managing to avert the potentially disastrous blowback from a risky course of action. When presented with an impossible choice, she figures out how to have both. Risks pay off, and when you’re staring down your foe, the antagonist always blinks first. The most important move for a heroine is to maintain her resolve until she can see the way around the foolish obstructionism of the antagonists.

To some readers, as the end of the series draws closer, in the number of Doylist signs pointing to Tarmon Gaidon’s impending arrival, Egwene’s balking at taking a decisive step to end the contest for the tower is inexplicable, from both the Doylist and Watsonian perspectives. From the former, we know that the Tower is a political entity, and its channeling, and thus its value as an action vector are not as significant as many other institutions. Therefore, we think the Tower’s role is going to be guiding and preparing people to fight. Rand can throw a lot more One Power wielders at any given problem than Egwene can, so we expect the Tower split to be resolved a bit ahead of time so they can prepare. From the Watsonian perspective, they don’t know that their problem will be resolved shortly by events they cannot anticipate. Based on what the characters, including Egwene know, there is no solution on the horizon. It turns out that all the preparations and plans Egwene was making for the siege itself were only intended to improve the siege, not bring it to a conclusion. Changing the harbor chains does nothing to force the conclusion, it only stops the Tower from bringing in more men and supplies, and that tactic will lead to vast suffering and ruin for a lot of innocent people, long before the loyalist sisters feel the pinch.

To the reader, it looks, especially when Egwene refuses to authorize an assault that will end the siege one way or another, citing the certainty of casualties among the sisters, it looks like Egwene is valuing their lives higher than ordinary people and that she’s willing to wade through oceans of other people’s blood, to claim an undivided Tower and avoid losing one more Aes Sedai minion than she has to. But she’s not that deranged, evil or indifferent. Egwene is a narrative heroine and in her stories, a way always comes up if the heroine is clever enough to see one and bold enough to take it.

It explains why she takes over the harbor chain operation. The heroine does what needs to be done. She does not sit back in a tent while others do the physical tasks. It explains her seemingly hypocritical attitude toward Nicola, who shares many traits with Egwene, and the apparent similarities of Elaida and Egwene – Egwene is the heroine and they are not. Egwene’s doing what has to be done, and she’s in charge of making sure the plot happens. Their contrarian stances and failure to prioritize the plot over their own good is what condemns them. The irony is, of course, that Elaida is perhaps the one character who thinks of her role in the story even more explicitly than Egwene does, contemplating her place in the histories of the Last Battle. And it is Egwene who, upon taking the Amyrlin Seat for real, gives a speech promising the Tower that place in those histories.

And Egwene is only paying attention to her version of the story. No matter how many times you tell her the reality, her view does not change. Mat has a set role. Egwene can be there when Moiraine says that he blew the Horn of Valere, a role second in the expectations of Tarmon Gaidon only to that of the Dragon Reborn himself, whom some people actually believe will sound it. She is at the battle where Mat takes command of wetlander forces and slays an enemy leader. She is there afterward when both Rand’s and Moiraine’s words make it clear that Mat is the leader beyond their machinations or authority and that he has enjoyed success in that role and is garnering a reputation. But that’s not his role in her story, and what is some mundane military command next to the One Power anyway? It’s just boring ordinary people crap. So when Mat shows up at Salidar leading the Band, Egwene just assumes he holds his command through Rand’s appointment. Evidence from Gareth Bryne that he contributes to its success and record surprises her, and she is surprised again when Tallanvor expresses his own loyalty and allegiance to Mat. Because Mat is not a hero, he’s one of the Fool characters, he is comic relief who beleaguers her for the amusement of the audience, and whom she will eventually save with the rest of the world.

Perrin, during their journey after Shadar Logoth, is the Oaf. Strong, dim, possibly loyal, but not someone whose opinion you really respect. He’s good for heavy work, and you have to keep an eye on him, because big brutish guys like him like to solve problems with violence, rather than cleverness like Our Heroine. That’s why she takes it for granted that he would never give up his axe, or accuses him of thinking his muscles can solve every problem. As with Mat, the facts of someone’s character, even facts to which she has been repeatedly exposed, don’t register with Egwene.

Nynaeve, likewise, is her Mentor, who can make Egwene the Wisdom when that’s her best career option, and an obstructive former authority figure later on. Nynaeve, in Egwene’s story, is a stand-in for all those skeptics and scoffers who don’t appreciate the true value of the hero. She treats Egwene like a kid or someone whose judgment is not to be trusted, as if she had very little experience, or was suffering PTSD from a period of enslavement, rather than the heroine who outsmarts people like her. Egwene’s outrage over Nynaeve’s supposed condescension, and her refusal to run command decisions by Egwene first isn’t over the reality of their situation, in which numerous factors support Nynaeve’s position (not least the tacit if discreet support of Elayne who has no reason to favor Nynaeve over her best friend). She’s not mad about Nynaeve thinking her greater age, experience, time in grade, strength in the Power, positive assessment from the Amyrlin, and track record of not getting captured yet mean she should be in charge, she’s mad at Nynaeve usurping the heroine’s agency and hijacking Egwene’s quest. She’s indignant that anyone would not believe her claims to be a full sister (the Clever Heroine always succeeds with her ruses) and she wants to exhibit all the trappings of the role they are playing. Aes Sedai don’t perform surgical strikes, they run the show. How can she (and her companions) do that if they aren’t playing it to the hilt. Nynaeve isn’t going along with the plot. Her plan would have them behaving very much like the village girls they no longer are! The story has moved on, and the heroine doesn’t go back, she rises in the world. Can’t Nynaeve see that?

And then there’s Rand. Hoo boy. How does Egwene reconcile the explicitly central role Rand is assigned by prophecy and acknowledged by every significant person? The comedies. There are enough hints that the tropes of humorous stories are similar in WoT to our own, especially given the greater prominence of the female gender role, to believe Egwene loves the stories where the woman runs the show without her husband being aware, or puffing himself up over his success without realizing it’s his wife’s doing all along. It’s not too far removed from how the Bashere women see their marital duties and not out of the realm of possibility elsewhere. The world of WoT is not matriarchal, contrary to a lot of casual labels, except for among the Aiel and maybe the Sea Folk. Rather, I would call it gynarchal, because their familial setups are much like the real world, with the role or authority of women simply increased. Even in Ebou Dar, one of the most female-privileged communities in WoT (Far Madding being an extreme outlier), women, even strong, assertive women, like Setalle Anan, take their husband’s name when they marry. Rand asks why, if Souran Maravaille still has descendants in Andor, there is no House with his name, and Elenia takes it in stride as she does not his suggestion of imagining kinships through the conventions of commoners. Even a country where the monarchy is the exclusive domain of one sex, women taking a husband’s name is the rule, not the exception. It also stands to reason that husbands would hold a position of superficial dominance, albeit one more superficially than actually dominant, relative to similar eras in the real world.

So in Egwene’s position with regard to Rand, the Clever Heroine’s job is to make things work for the man who is “in charge” while guiding him along the proper path. And that’s how she continues to think of their relationship down to the end of the series, regardless of the reality of any of their interactions. As late as her captivity in the Tower, she is frustrated over not being free to guide Rand. She offered no guidance the entire time she was free as Amyrlin, and had never attempted to offer it after she assumed command and was free to do so. There is mention of off-page attempts between LoC & aCoS, but given her puppet status at the time, it is as likely to have been an attempt to highlight her special connection to Rand to increase her stature among the Sitters as any real intention to guide. When she was there, she never offered Rand guidance, except when she wanted something. She was generally content to sympathize with Moiraine’s & the Wise Ones’ efforts in that regard and offer what help she could, but she had no agenda where Rand was concerned and lacked the knowledge or experience to formulate one.

Instead she reacted to personality issues she saw. Rand was just the subject of the Heroine’s machinations, but he was acting like he was the hero and the star of the epic. He insisted on doing things himself instead of running them by Moiraine. Who was Moiraine? In reality, she was an Aes Sedai with only enough experience to get in trouble, and something of a bottom-feeder with very little real authority in the White Tower. Joyia Byir’s comment about her ignorance was self-serving, but not without basis, and she was very wrong on a number of important issues, especially in clashes with Rand on his course of action, and Rand did rather better going off on his own than in her company. But to Egwene, she is a valuable mentor, because she is the connection to the White Tower, which is Egwene’s path to achievement. Egwene’s not even very wrong to support Moiraine over Rand, from her point of view, because Egwene is the heroine and if Rand gets the upperhand over the Tower, Egwene loses a key resource in her ability to solve the plot. What can possibly keep Rand in line if the Tower goes down before him? It’s all on Egwene, and she can’t lose this asset.

As with her role in the Tower’s internal conflict, the appalling risks she is running are not a possibility in her eyes. Of course, once Egwene has the Tower firmly in hand, and Rand is firmly under the authority of the Tower, everything will go well, because things will be under her control, and she is the Clever Heroine. She’ll see the way to win at Tarmon Gaidon. We see this same mentality play out with Gawyn. The demands of obedience she makes are utterly unprecedented in any known relationship between a Warder and a Sister in the series. Even Merise, held up as the gold standard of strict authority over her warders, allows Narishma to argue, even in public, and slaps down other sisters who approach or give him commands without her permission. But Egwene demands even more than that. Again, it’s not unconscionable authoritarian behavior, if you’re the only one with brains or the one who is going to save the day.

But the problem with a story heroine, is that a lot of the reality is elided to make it flow better. Most stories don’t show you how the heroine does her thing. If she’s the boss, she gives the orders and they happen. That’s why Egwene is full of plans, but carries out remarkably few of them. She was going to teach Rand to channel, no matter how hard that first lesson went. Except she didn’t. She had a plan for the Kin…with some huge flaws, and when Elayne filled in the gaps, Egwene got paranoid about it. She opened the novice book to all, sincerely convinced it would make a difference, and not just doing it for appearance, but had no plans to deal with an influx of novices, and was only saved from an organizational nightmare by one of the newcomers fortuitously stepping up. She is surprised to see that after escaping Caemlyn with the Band, Aludra’s first priority in setting up camp is seeing her weapons and explosives put away properly. The stories don’t mention details like that. The stories tell about the long lost Kin returning to the fold and working together with the Aes Sedai henceforth, they tell about swarms of woman finally getting the opportunity to pursue their dreams as Aes Sedai, they tell about the heroic fighting retreat from Caemlyn that ends when they reach safety and can relax, or the brilliant inventor who shows up at the meeting and announces her discoveries to acclaim and applause. They don’t discuss the problems of integrating two organizations that have not been in contact in millennia, they don’t discuss finding food, shelter and something to occupy the time of hundreds of women (who need slightly better toilet facilities and more elaborate clothing and hygiene accommodations than men) joining a wagon train, they don’t talk about how the people in charge can’t just sack out when they reach safety, they have to see to preparations for all their men to sack out, and ensure their safety and provisions. Inventing & deploying dangerous weapons isn’t as simple as “Eureka!” to “Take that, Shadow-scum!” to “Check this out! It’s gonna save our asses at the big battle!” The reason why Aludra made it from one step to the next to the last, is precisely because she is the type to first thing, make sure they are all taken care of, put away and accounted for. People who are careless with guns and bombs tend to have only a very loose attachment to their extremities.

It’s just not a great story. What kind of constitution or charter did the people establish once Mara demonstrated the foolishness of the kings and they repudiated monarchy? How did they adjudicate disputes? Who undertook the responsibility of protecting them from a fourth king who might be more ruthless than foolish? Eh, that’s not important. Isn’t it hilarious to imagine them trying to keep their dignity rolling around in the mud like that?

And again, that’s fine on its own. The problem is that people take all their lessons from those types of stories. The other characters all speak at one point or another on the discrepancy between real life adventures and the stories, or between the glory of war and battle, and the ugly reality. Their victories are tinged with weariness, misery and relief that it’s over. Only Egwene revels in fighting and celebrates her own performance, framing her accomplishment as it would appear in a story, and prioritizes that over the losses and sufferings endured by both sides.

Egwene is what you get when someone believes too much in the story, and loses track of the human cost, because those lives are less important characters than the one with the arc.