While there is much that can be said about the flawed character and the horrible choices and decisions Egwene makes over the course of the series, there are a couple areas that really stand out. The first is her complete and utter failure to support, follow, or even cooperate willingly with Rand. The man is among her closest lifelong friends, she considered marrying him at one point in her life, goes out of his way to help or accommodate her on many occasions, and more importantly, he is the prophesied hero and indispensable figure for humanity's survival of the imminent Last Battle. Egwene knows this as far back as anyone does, and is the first of his female friends and peers to actually articulate the awareness of this condition, though in a negative light, which we will come back to in a bit.

For a friend in general, this kind of behavior would be pretty awful, but Egwene is not only being a lousy friend, she is being lousy toward the most important person in the world, who needs every bit of help he can get, and she is the closest and most prominent person to refuse him that help, which she does on a regular basis. From a certain point of view, these actions could justifiably be portrayed as those of a traitor to the Light.

I mentioned above, that she first acknowledges Rand as the Dragon Reborn in a negative light. This is at the end of tGH, to Min. She says that he isn't safe when pointing out the obvious truth of his identity to Min. However, a book previously, at the end of EotW, upon discovering that Rand is a mere channeler, she embraces him and says she doesn't care. If the former does not faze her, why does she suddenly become repelled by additionally learning that Rand is the Dragon Reborn? If nothing else, this should be a relief, as common male channelers are objects of justifiable fear and hatred. The Dragon Reborn, on the other hand, has a reason and an excuse. Also, from the point of view of a reader, a degree of plot-armor that suggests if anyone can avoid the dire consequences of channeling, it would be such a person.

Yet, Egwene maintains this consistent attitude, more or less throughout the series. Rand's channeling inspires a great deal of fear and revulsion from someone who first declared it did not matter to her, before giving him a hug. The answer to this, and much of her subsequent treatment of Rand is in what happened with Egwene, in between the two demonstrated changes in her perspective.

In coming up with a plan to hide Rand, one of Egwene's aborted notions has to hold some sort of record for absurd idiocy, even by her standards. She proposes to hide Rand from capture...in a dungeon! A dungeon which is built to keep people in, and which is not the sort of place known for hiding places or easy escape routes. Furthermore, Egwene is very familiar with this particular dungeon, as she has been visiting it frequently over the weeks between the first two novels. She visits so frequently, the guards know her on sight, and don't even need to be asked to let her in. Think about that - she was going to hide Rand from the authorities by marching him past official guards, and place him in a room from which they control the egress! How utterly stupid do you have to be to not only give voice to this plan, but to carry it out! Egwene is still going through with the plan until Padan Fain's obvious insanity puts Rand out.

Now Egwene isn't totally stupid. Blinded, prejudiced, self-absorbed and incompetent, but not so lost to functioning mental capacity that she would overlook a tactical flaw of that magnitude. A recurring concept in WoT is rationalization, whereby people come up with ideas or reasons to carry out a course of action they are impelled to, which they ordinarily would not choose. What if Egwene is simply rationalizing her need to bring Rand and Fain face to face?

Padan Fain hates Rand and his two fellow ta'veren. He is also possessed of inexplicable powers. One of which he himself describes in his stream of consciousness as an ability to impose paranoid distrust, especially of Rand, in other people. He claims to have used it on Elaida and Pedron Niall, during his brief tenures as their Dragon-Reborn consultant. Sure enough, we will see over the course of the series, the behavior of both individuals deteriorate. They are intelligent, determined and driven and highly capable individuals, so their deterioration is not as extreme as, for example, the Children of the Light seconded to his command as Ordeith, but discernible nonetheless. Elaida, shortly after becoming acquainted with Fain, stands out among her subordinates for her clear grasp of the importance of Rand and the severity of the circumstances facing the world. By the time Tar Valon comes under siege, she is on the verge of alcoholism, and has become paranoid and suspicious of her subordinates, even noting to herself that she finds it difficult to trust anyone outside of her own former Ajah, and even that minimal level of trust probably only comes as a legacy of the Tower's indoctrination. Pedron Niall, articulates a series of rules concerning the employment of information, and over the course of the same book, more or less violates them, and eventually gets assassinated as a result. He gathers in his troops, and then waits so long to act on the intelligence he receives that his rivals are eventually able to suborn a member of his inner circle, who cites Niall's inaction as a motivation for his betrayal. He receives intelligence about the Seanchan, of whom he knows more than almost any other major leaders outside of the main characters, and initially disbelieves it, and sends a spy to check on the reports of another spy who had confirmed a third spy's initial report! There is cautious, and there is paranoid, and Fain's influence has clearly pushed Niall all the way into the point he scorns, of a man who waits to know everything, while his enemy burns his tent down around him.

So getting back to Egwene, when everyone to spend extended time with Fain shows the effects, from his Whitecloak crew, to the guards and fellow prisoners in Fal Dara, to Toram Riatin, how did she escape his influence? She didn't. It was either much more faint, due to his inexperience with his new combined nature or more subtle, perhaps because of their intermittent contact, consisting of mere visits, or maybe because he just took extra care with someone so close to the targets of his hatred. Also, it might be that knowing Egwene better and longer than Niall or Elaida (remember, a few years before, he had stayed in Emond's Field for an unusually extended period of time, under the same roof as she), allows him to impose his commands with more subtlety and permanence.

It's worth noting that after stashing Rand elsewhere, Egwene goes on to try to bring Perrin and then Mat down to see Fain, succeeding with the latter, to disastrous results. Having already seen what a bad idea bringing Rand to Fain turned out to be, why would she persist in trying to bring her other friends? How can she still think it would help him to see more familiar faces, when he exhibited his worst reaction to seeing Rand? At what point will she actually remember that she was in the room when Moiraine described how the Shadow changed him and compelled him to hunt the three boys, and should know better than to give him any access at all to them? An obvious explanation is of external forces acting on her mind.

This might also explain Egwene helping to hide Rand from Aes Sedai, just about the only time in the entire series she takes his side over theirs, and absolutely the worst of all those times. In the future, she will be aware that he is the Dragon Reborn, and thus should hold a higher priority, but she still has trouble even with the idea of him being less than subservient to even her enemies in the Tower. In Fal Dara, Egwene had no idea that he was anything more than some ordinary poor unfortunate male channeler, doomed to cause immense harm and destruction before his own death, with only Aes Sedai capable of preventing that. Later on, she will give Rand a lecture about the sanctity of the womens' quarters in Fal Dara, but she herself violates that by hiding the greatest danger to life and limb within that very section. Along with his hatred of Rand, Fain consistently evinces a possessiveness, especially where Aes Sedai are concerned. He is never happy about anyone else getting close to Rand or possibly hurting Rand without his help. Taking him to Tar Valon & gentling him would be right out as far as Fain is concerned. So Egwene makes a radically counter-indicated and uncharacteristic decision to conceal Rand from the Aes Sedai, regardless of how irrational such a choice is, in both its aim and in the impossibility of carrying it out.

As the series progresses, aside from the aforementioned inexplicable reactions to Rand's channeling, we see Egwene consistently believing the worst of Rand.

• She witnesses Rand's scornful reaction to Elaida's initial communication and his discussion with Moiraine about avoiding her embassy and being wary of the Tower's spies. For those incapable of subtleties, Aviendha actually asks if Rand is going to go along with Elaida, and receives a negative response. Yet, when the embassy actually shows up, Egwene is desperate to prevent Rand from going to the Tower with them. It is highly unlikely that ANY man would be well-disposed to such an invitation, and she has never seen or heard anything to indicate Rand in particular, would do so, in addition to witnessing his claims to the negative. All of Rand's assertions that he won't trust them, much less go with them, fall on deaf ears.

• With the rebel Aes Sedai, Egwene will recall Rand's wary-bordering-on-hostile reception of the letters from Elaida and Alviarin as gloating, and his polite demurrals of the embassy's invitation in person as "overbearing." She is so paranoid and mistrustful of Rand, that she is sure a Gray Aes Sedai with over a century's experience at diplomacy and negotiations is missing subtle slights or lying about her encounters with him. Among the other details discussed in her presence when Rand received the Tower letters was the inability of an Aes Sedai to write a lie.

• Egwene progresses to not only assuming Rand is enslaving sisters, but that he is using abominable methods to achieve that end. She has the assurances of the Wise Ones, women once she trusted with private and personal information about Rand, and whom she considers friends and role models, that relations are good between Rand and the sisters, and for him to do what she fears, they would not only have to allow it, but be willing to go so far as to lie to Egwene over it. She goes so far down this road that she accuses him to his lover's face, and asks Elayne to spy on him for her! Later on, a report that an Aes Sedai is meeting with the rebels in Tear causes Egwene to declare that it is proof he is using Compulsion on them. Setting aside assessments of Rand's character, with even relative strangers aware of his issues regarding mistreatment of women, that analysis is deeply flawed all by itself.

Egwene has seen Aes Sedai not only obeying Rand, but doing so of her own volition and explain her choice using a metaphor that is very appropriate for an Aes Sedai (controlling saidar ). For her to believe that a sister helping Rand is proof of Compulsion would mean that she cannot conceive of a sister choosing to do that of her own free will, even accounting for his ta'veren effect, which she has personally encountered. Even the goals for which the "compelled" sisters are working are not without merit for the Tower's usual M.O., as they are negotiating an end to a conflict. But the idea of helping Rand do anything is so alien to Egwene's mentality that Compulsion is the only explanation she can apply, regardless of how out of character that would be, and how suspect the circumstances. She leaps to the worst possible explanation, in spite of it not only being without precedent in his history, but with far more plausible alternative explanations available.

How could someone be so malevolent regarding one particular person, while at the same time, claiming to love him (as Egwene does when asking Elayne to watch out for him enslaving their sisters)? As if that is their actual fraternal relationship, but somehow, whenever a practical situation comes up, her brain is forcibly wrenched into the worst possible interpretation? Say, by the influence of a supernatural figure who has done that to absolutely every other person with whom he has come into contact?

While Egwene's actions and behavior toward Rand are still wrong, and inexcusable, we can at least rest assured that there is a strong possibility it was not entirely her doing.