Hmm.. you seem to have misunderstood me because you say this, and then you go on saying...



Which is exactly what I was saying was not a reasonable assumption for Graendal to make.

It seems we agree, then.

It's really unreasonable for Graendal not to have spies near Rand during TGS. She should know he balefired Semirhage and his attitude toward women had changed a lot; she should know about his darkness. As a psychologist, she should understand Rand was now a very different man from LTT. After Semirhage, she could anticipate balefire.

The problem is, Brandon messed it all up. Graendal of all the spy networks is shown as having no inkling whatsoever about Rand's new personality (yet she is stupidly shown as having reports about Nynaeve... how logical!) yet she guesses purely out of the blue (whereas she should have deduced this from analyzing his mental state from reports) yet purely out of the blue she goes from "this man won't harm women" to "wow.. this man is going to balefire a whole palace and hundred of people just to kill me" in a split second. That's incredibly bad writing. I was rather impressed by Brandon's handling of WOT in TGS, though I had some reserves/fears hat he might have mishandled things in fact, and the prologue has pretty much, much to my chagrin, suggested my fears instead of my hopes are about to turn right.