Aran'gar isn't the most clever Forsaken, but she's no idiot either, and her skills are rooted in how to survive among criminals, and on the other side she's an Historian, formed in puzzling out how foreign systems work. She wouldn't have survived long among the Forsaken, or seedy gangs, if she were an idiot. Graendal, Lanfear or Demandred would have had her on toast for breakfast in the WOS if she was the moron you think she is. Beware of the views of other Chosen about her: scientists like Osan'gar tend to think people in humanities are idiots, while Demandred is a man of the system, used to despise the "lower classes".

Aran'gar's whole approach to the Rebellion would have been very different had she been aware that Mesaana controlled the other side, and forcibly had BA pawns among the Rebels - and worse, Mesaana knew about Aran'gar being near Egwene, which gave her a massive advantage over Aran'gar. And Demandred is used to think strategically, and to find ways to undermine an enemy this way.

Aran'gar would have been far more on her guard, and vicious/devious, had she known she faced the trio on the other side. She had been assigned this task by Shaidar Haran in person, she didn't know she had competition.

She has done a fair job blocking the system using Delana to burden the Hall with stupid and divisive proposals (notably that ended up with Lelaine and Romanda fighting over the BA, among other things Delana managed to divide these two and others over), but had not foreseen that Egwene would use the rivalries in the Hall to her own ends, and manage to grab power, after which Aran'gar could do not much, as Egwene was terribly impermeable to influence from Delana and Sheriam. Aran'gar had no delusion that Egwene was just a figurehead, unlike Mesaana.



The reasonning is perfectly valid whether Mesaana had the two women linked to Halima via Cabriana killed, or Aran'gar really killed them.

I mean, if Mesaana had the women killed, her motive was to generate exactly the sort of reasoning these sisters came up with, that Anayia and Kairen were not random targets, and there's a link between them, and this link was that they form a trio of close friends with Cabriana. Eventually, some would reason out that Halima was the common link between these three women, and they're all dead - and this is suspicious - and start keeping an eye on her to see which men in the camp she was tied to.

If Aran'gar killed them however, these quotes highlight how stupid it was for her to kill just these two women instead of adding one or two random victims to hide her tracks. It shows Romanda is not the only one who made a connection between the victims, and it wasn't necessary to know of the connection between the three to theorize there must be a connection between the victims, that they were not random. Romanda found out what the connection was, whereas these Grays just puzzled out there must be one. That suggests in the Blue, the "coincidence" that Kairen and Anayia were very close friends, and both friends to another woman who died a few months ago, was fairly transparent. They just didn't see how this could be connected to a male channeller. We know the Blues were investigating: Lelaine told Nisao to back off the Blue's affairs. This was misinterpreted as Lelaine being BA by many, but Lelaine isn't BA.




I don't understand what you're getting at. Kairen was part of the embassy to Rand. But how is this relevant to anything?

Aran'gar was aware that the Rebels were about to get in contact with Asha'man, and couldn't predict Rand wouldn't get involved in this project of alliance between his men and the AS. Most likely he would have, or maybe not but it's because Taim is a traitor and not acting as the leader of the BT normally would have, transmitting this offer from the AS to the Dragon for approval. It wasn't a good time to commit murders using saidin, let alone kill women tied to her via Cabriana. Halima jeopardized her own safety doing this, and the risk was obvious.