Galad's ethical obsessions would make him hard to compel lightly, he would need something heavy to make him go against his beliefs. HIs "compass" would also tend to make him fight ithe compulsion, like Morgase.

But it comes down to what happened. Graendal spoke of her hidden asset, then Byar tried to kill Perrin, it failed and he got killed, and Graendal cursed the idiot WC who failed. It seems straightforward enough. Brandon is nowhere as subtle or devious or convoluted as RJ (who wasn't as much as many think, anyway) .

I agree Byar didn't really need pushing to do what he did, it's one reason why I believe Brandon added Graendal in a plot arc where RJ might not have used her. In RJ's version, I think as Perrin saved the WC from the Shadow, Byar simply snapped and tried to kill him. Adding Graendal as the puppet master made the threat appear bigger. RJ would not have needed that, in a book where the four storylines would have run in parallel. It doesn't sound much like RJ's style to have a Forsaken confrontation, then the villain escapes, turns around and goes straight into another plot that concludes a bunch of chapters later.

Adding Graendal into the mix didn't change much. She still ended up punsihed, and Byar still ended up trying to kill Perrin. It just added a layer of drama, because the way RJ had plotted AMOL, it seems most of that was to come from Rand and Egwene. Mat was rather stuck and delayed, and so was Perrin, with his past coming back at him and preventing him to go forward, figuratively and literally. With the book split, and Rand's epiphany already a foregone conclusion, hese two storylines needed some added punch.

My hunch is that Brandon also moved on the timeline Mesaana's demise, and the remaining bloodknives. I'm pretty sure this was all to be solved at the same time as Egwene's victory. This needed to be pushed forward, to add some punch to her transition chapters toward the meeting, and to the "second book" in general.

We know Brandon moved events on the timeline and tweaked others, so he could make the book split work. He has said so.