a.k.a.: "Helen Keller folds her napkin."

So let’s take a look at our girl’s exploits. First of all, I have to agree – this book was her greatest in the series and her best showing so far. She more or less did the right things, didn’t shaft anyone too hard, and didn’t mess with anyone who didn’t have it coming in a major karmic way. She fought in a battle and gave a good accounting of herself enabling her to finally join the ranks of every other significant character in the series and she told off a lot of Aes Sedai. But we can’t just sit back and revel in the vicarious thrills. How does her performance really measure up? After all, this IS Egwene. Given her prior track record, saying this is her best book so far does not say much. So what are her big accomplishments, once the haze of PoV trap is cleared away and tGS is examined objectively?

She does, sort of, do some good. She DOES realize the error of encouraging dissension (which only proves I have been right all along). She starts to speak up as a voice for unity and cooperation to the sisters. However, this is undercut by the sheer ineptitude of the sisters shown in the book. She does consistently stand up for the rights of sisters and the importance of the sisters themselves to act properly towards one another. But she is also presented with ludicrously easy situations such as getting away with dodging the question when her own shoddy claim to the Amyrlin Seat is brought up by Yukiri. People fall all over her for no good reason. Yes, she is saying the right things, but these are not hard or insightful things. The conversations go something like this:

Sitters in secret conference to which they allow a proven traitor to attend as a servant: If only we could figure out the answer to the question of two plus three.
Egwene: An important question indeed.
Sitter: If only someone could help us.
Egwene: Have you looked in the secret histories?
Sitter: I have. The answers are inconclusive, but they suggest an odd number.
Egwene: Well, since two plus four is six, it must be less than six.
Sitter: Interesting. Go on, child.
Egwene: *Child!?! Oh, you’ll pay for that, Elaida!* And two plus two is four, so the solution must be higher than four as well.
Sitter: Hmm. Cogent points, I must say.
Egwene: Perhaps it might be something like five.
Sitter: Why, you know, it very well IS likely to be a number much like that.
Egwene: Doesn’t Elaida have fingers on her hand?
Sitter: Are you suggesting the Amyrlin would KEEP such information from us?!?!
Egwene: Look at the division in the Tower and tell me if you think this is a good thing! All I can say is Elaida had five fingers and has not said a word! How could she fail to notice unless she is incompetent to hold the office?
Sitter: This is troubling. I must think on what we have discussed.
Egwene: Well, I have an appointment coming up to be spanked and Healed, so I have insight into useless efforts and self-defeating activity.*Ah, good. Another seed planted. Surely no one on earth has a task as important as I have set myself.*

These arguments are not great accomplishments in themselves, Egwene being past the age of 12, and in my opinion should be filtered carefully if we are attempting to ascertain her true positions and motivations. She is not actually stating her position or feelings, she is playing to her audience. Thus, we cannot take at face value her assertion that she would send spies to harass her old neighbors looking for data on the Dragon Reborn, or spy on him, or try to placate him by her choice of Ajahs to represent the Tower in his embassy. We cannot condemn her for proposing an even smaller group than Salidar’s embassy of nine or Elaida’s public group of six. These are not meant to reveal her positions, they are meant to impress mutton-headed Aes Sedai of her qualities. If you needed to persuade a group of five year olds to see you as Amyrlin, you might agree that making Spongebob Squarepants your Keeper of the Chronicles would be an interesting idea. That doesn’t mean you’re going to do it.

Her greatest act in the book is probably obvious to many, though not for the reasons they think. Her fighting the Seanchan was a crucial step in her development. It has nothing to do with how well she wove or how many damane she did or did not take out, or how much of the Power she wielded or how many Ajah Heads she rescued (a bad thing, IMO, since it is another holdover from the bad-old-days to get in the way in the future, but she can hardly be faulted for saving someone from life as a damane). What she did was exercise power, perhaps for the first time in the series of any significance. And that corresponds to her political qualifications as well as those of leadership and combat. As Mao Tse-tung said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Likewise George Washington: “Government is not reason or eloquence, it is force...” This principle was the basis of Robert Heinlen’s Starship Troopers, and GK Chesterton reasoned that it might preclude female sufferage, since the same rationale for keeping them out of combat should also keep them out of participation in a democratic government – government actions, being backed by force, are morally equivalent to exerting force. Thus, voting is the same as pointing a gun. That is how Mao justified his violence, why Washington warned against excessive reliance on government power and why Heinlen’s world required military service as a prerequisite to voting. In standing up in combat to fight, in placing her mortal flesh “between (her) loved home and war’s desolation…” she advanced her character and claim along the path to being its true leader and justifying the later choice of her as such. Her fighting the Seanchan was better preparation for being Amyrlin than all the lessons from Siuan. Siuan could only tell her what she might do in any given situation. By fighting the Seanchan, she experienced the true underlying principles of power and its exercise first hand, and hopefully this will make her more responsible in the exercise of it in the future.

Now let us dispense with some false accolades. There are things which her PoV implies (and legions of sycophantic readers assert boldly) redound to her credit. And some of them do, but only in the sense of them not being actual faults or errors. Such things include her disposal of the Black Ajah within the rebel camp. Now, there is not a lot of credit to grab here, since Verin gift-wrapped the Black Ajah and handed it to Egwene on a platter, but many still praise her for her acting on the information. True, acting properly on this issue makes her a paragon among Aes Sedai, but hardly all that extraordinary as a champion of the Light. She has them expeditiously tried and executed, and rightfully so, but is impressed with herself for it, and praised by the PoV-entrapped, as if execution has not been the penalty for being a Darkfriend for over 3,000 years!

The only way her insistence on trials and executions looks impressive is if one counts the usual Aes Sedai practice of denial, but not even I would suggest they ignore such obvious evidence as the incriminating confessions of an admitted Black sister! Her not bothering with interrogation is held up as some sort of determined act or rejection of temptation and evidence of toughness, but what would have been the point of interrogation? They didn’t need any more information on the Black Ajah, what with Verin’s dossier, and these were not Age of Legends survivors with exponentially greater knowledge. There was nothing to be gained from letting them live, so the executions prove only the ability to resist a complete lack of temptation.

As for the issue of the rebellion she has been leading since before President Clinton was impeached, Egwene does do a good thing...in that she admits she’s been bad up until now! Now that there is no penalty or negative consequences to doing so, she admits the rebellion was wrong and chastises her compatriots. She also admits her own fault in there…sort of. Once again, she is very non-specific about her fault, makes no mention of any corrective or penitential action on her part to be taken (aside from “nobly” undertaking to assume vast powers to make things right), and the admission only comes once there is no danger of anyone asking her to put her money where her mouth is and abjure the power she has so unworthily sought.

She lambastes the rebels for their rebellion, as if they were the ones who stormed to the gates of Tar Valon against her counsels of caution or in spite of her misgivings, when she was the one who did all in her power to escalate the war and drive them to taking irrevocable steps along the path of rebellion for the very purpose of exacerbating the situation. See, back then, identifying with the loyalists in the Tower and adhering to the principle of Tower unity would have been more likely to bring them together under Elaida. Unity was no good when it meant Egwene would have had to step down to bring it about! But at least she now seems to agree that she was wrong then...

There are also some rather troubling things she does or intends, that she passes off as necessary or positive, such as her proposal to change the angreal storage room and limit the knowledge of their whereabouts to a select few. Make better friggin’ shields! All her good works done during the battle were made possible by the location of those objects NOT being a closely guarded secret! I guess Egwene is taking a lesson from her departed rival and hiding the sa’angreal lest a rebellious underling somehow use them to show HER up!

She has some ominous ideas regarding the Red Ajah, such as her intention to guide them to their new purpose in a taint-free world. As if that is any of her business! The most arguably successful Ajah and they need a teenaged girl who has not the slightest association with them to pick a purpose? She is also presented as “reaching out” to the Reds as if that is some sort of altruistic gesture, when all she is doing is trying to corral a larger group of followers. No matter what idealistic intentions a person might proclaim he is acting upon, if he profits by those actions, the claim of idealism should be taken with a grain of salt. "Reaching out" is also suspect when the reacher intends to remake the subject into something she wants once she grasps it.

In addition, there are some of her positions which come across as blatantly hypocritical, which are buried in the midst of her flip-flopping over the course of the book, as she keeps coming to new revelations about who or what was right all along. In the end, she only finds reasons to criticize and lay blame all over the Tower, without ever condescending from her moral high ground to reveal what would have been the appropriate course of action for her errant daughters, who were only trying to do their best in the midst of the jungle of Tower politics while she was off pouting over being less important than the Dragon Reborn. (Hypothetical aside: If the Hall HAD deposed Elaida, raised another Tower loyalist in her place, and told Egwene “It’ll be a cold day in the Blight before WE vote for an up-jumped Accepted!” would she have ordered the rebels to submit, and stepped down herself, recanting her claim to the Amyrlin Seat and taking her place again among the Accepted? )

She generously withholds penance from the Hall of the Tower for failing to realize her superiority over Elaida faster, because she knows some of them were working behind the scenes to fix the situation (while she herself was making the overall situation worse by stoking the war fires). She has the gall to talk about dangerous precedents set by Elaida’s usurpations of power, yet here she expresses a belief in her right to PUNISH THE HALL FOR THEIR VOTES or lack thereof! There is no concept more antithetical to the principle of a free society than this one!

She then marches out of that sitting to lambaste the rebels for raising her to the Amyrlin Seat (it’s so nice when she herself confirms my judgment). So we have one Hall that’s bad for NOT raising her sooner and one that’s bad for raising her in the first place? She says the rebels are wrong to rebel, but the Hall is wrong for sticking with the rightful Amyrlin?

Did she never consider that the rebellion’s existence made deposing Elaida problematic for the loyalist Hall, even if they had agreed that she was a bad Amyrlin? How are you supposed to stand up to an unlawful rebellion when you tacitly admit their point by deposing the woman they are rebelling against? This is why countries have policies against negotiation with terrorists, why Kipling wrote a poem about the folly of paying Danegeld and why wealthy companies and families make it a formal policy to never pay ransoms: all you do is encourage that sort of action from anyone who wants something from you! As long as people are in arms against an Amyrlin Seat, the Tower can never admit that she is wrong, because it adds legitimacy to rebellions and opens the door to it becoming a tactic in the future, as malcontents will recall that the Salidar rebellion succeeded in getting the Amyrlin deposed, so why not give it a shot?

Also in that creepy juxtaposition of speeches, she rips the loyalist Hall new orifices over their failure to defy and counter and block the Amyrlin’s power, then goes out and basically tells the not-triumphant rebels that the Amyrlin will now whip them into shape with the implication that there better not be any backtalk from this shameful group of guilty rebels.

Egwene is basically doing whatever she can to shame and embarrass all of her "daughters," so she can reign uncontested and hold the whip-hand with her affectation of moral superiority. SHE is pure and untouched. SHE had nothing to do with all this badness, so SHE will not be held back by such wretched miscreants. In this vein are such ominous utterances that they “will not pretend our division did not take place…” Well, why not? Forgive and FORGET, yes? The only possible reason for remembering it is so she can hold it over the head of anyone who opposes her.
Sitter: “Mother, this seems like a very bad idea and an imprudent course of action”
St. Amyrlin: *Sighs regretfully* “Another rebellion, daughter? Hasn’t this Tower suffered ENOUGH division and strife? May we not go X weeks/months/decades without someone once more threatening the very survival of the White Tower by factional interests?”

She tells the real Hall “You all bear a great deal of shame. You bear responsibility for…”
- the damage to Tower structure from the Seanchan attack (In reality, it's actually Elaida's fault, as the Amyrlin is charge of maintenance of buildings in Tar Valon, is the sole commander & is responsible for defense; Egwene herself used that principle to claim power over the rebels)
- Silviana being in chains for her defying the Amyrlin in the Hall (Egwene threatened to birch a Sitter for questioning her inexperience and intentions upon her own seizure of dictatorial powers)
- “the way our sisters regard each other in the Halls” (because glaring and unfriendliness are worse than raising an army, hastening the fight, declaring war on a fellow sister and scolding those who are reluctant to do all that as lacking in resolve? I’m fairly certain none of the Sitters did anything like those actions)
- “letting the Tower remain so long in division” (And who was taking credit for prolonging that division before? What should they have done? Surrender to the rebels? Depose the Amyrlin because rebels and traitors refused to accept her? Give in to the demands of those who split from the Tower and raised a rebellion in the first place? And who the hell actually made the first move of reconciliation in the first place? Not Egwene, who was deterred from assaulting the Tower only by the legitimate Hall bribing her with the Amyrlin Seat! )
- “that division in the first place” (who left and who stayed? The Hall is to blame because OTHER women, whom Egwene will later go out and chastise for rebelling, did something bad? )

She castigates them for not standing up to Elaida, yet she herself has never been tolerant of dissent in the Hall, and her words promise no great tolerance henceforth of individual sisters’ rights or opposition from the Hall. In addition, her criticisms don’t make a lot of sense in the long run. Does she WANT them to get in the habit of changing Amyrlins like underwear? The general consensus has been that the Tower can survive even a bad ruler. Shaking things up can lead to habits of chaos. And can she really say that her army and her Great Captain looming did not deter them from making a decision until that threat to the Tower was dealt with? Is not “the Dragon Reborn himself walking the land” perhaps a reason they were afraid to make another change so soon? Or maybe they were afraid of the Reds taking it as badly as did the Blues and running off to their own special-meaning village to elect a new Hall and Amyrlin and tell the world that the Blues have been conspiring to some heinous crime that threatens the world?

The very shallow merits of her complaints show that Egwene’s real intentions are political. Either she is a complete dope with no moral compass, or she is not overly concerned with the right and wrong of this whole sordid mess but more interested in spreading enough blame around to keep anyone from thinking the Amyrlin owes them some reciprocal political support because they put her in power. And that is another notch to her credit – she is brilliant and ruthless demagogue and natural talent at power politics. Of course, of all the facets of being a political leader, she does excel at the most disreputable. She has demonstrated no awareness of good government or capable ruling or any personal leadership qualities (she does her fighting herself – she still has not led anyone in a crisis, aside from novices who have obedience beaten into their heads). She has been proving herself at political maneuvering and accumulating power, and objectively speaking, her actions the day she is finally raised are a marvelous piece of Machiavellian groundwork, setting up the playing field to enact her agenda and protect her position in the future.

However, there are problems besides just her actions. Her own thoughts are dangerous:
In the aforementioned discussion with Ferane, as she herself notes, it isn’t really about Rand, so she can’t really be blamed for what she was saying concerning him. However, it IS indicative of her views on the Aes Sedai. While preaching a creed of Tower unity and seeing the Tower above the concerns of individual Ajahs, she is nitpicking over Ajahs, and sniping at choices of Ajah! She is emphasizing the differences and pointing out flaws inherent in Elaida because of her Ajah. It is not as if Elaida is a notorious man-hater or opponent of male-channeling – she has been concentrating on Andor and Morgase since before Rand was born, nearly as long as she had the shawl! If there should be one woman exempt from the usual prejudiced accusations applied to her Ajah, it would be her. Furthermore, her assertions about the Red Ajah and ‘dealing’ as opposed to ‘working’ with men are completely different from the view of the Red leadership concerning their functions! And given both their better position and actions backing their views, I kinda have to believe them. Egwene has a passing acquaintance with a single Red (note the severe shortage of Reds in Salidar, among the Wise Ones and in Tear – books 3-10 pass between her encounters with Red sisters), and from this, she presumes to know how they think and work.

She also goes on to list the ways the various Ajahs are approaching the issue of unity, states her frustration with the Green – she somehow believes that pretending to be a member of their Ajah should have made them more willing to follow her – and sneers at the idea that Reds might want to mend the divisions (and never mind that the first woman in the Tower shown to be concerned over the divisions was Tarna, a Red). In addition to her absurd reason for expecting the Green to follow her, even if it WERE a valid reason to expect their allegiance, she is encouraging factionalism! She is expecting the Greens to support her solely for “being” a Green! Not for the greater good or her superior qualities, but “I’m one you, so raising me is in your Ajah’s interest!” By this rationale, Elaida & the Reds were completely justified in their overthrow of Siuan – it benefits their Ajah and raises one of their own! By the logic Egwene presents to the Whites, this is an admirable motivation! She proves this is not mere words to sway the Whites when she mentally expresses her inner frustration with the Greens for not seeing her as more than the novice she is.

It is one thing to ignore and evade the shaky nature of her standing in arguments with the Tower sisters, but to delude herself is inexcusable. Regardless of her opinions of Elaida or who has the righteous cause, there is absolutely no reason to expect any sister in the Tower to accept the authority of the rebel leadership or their Hall. Even if one stipulates that Elaida is horrible that does not make her own faction the leaders by default! They are still in rebellion against the Tower, which is among the worst sins Aes Sedai can commit, and even if that were not bad in itself, by their own actions the rebels assert the principle that sisters do not have to accept leadership they do not wish to. If Egwene or her followers have the right to reject Elaida, then the Greens, or any other sisters in the Tower have every bit as much right to reject Egwene. Even if she cannot admit this verbally to her adversaries when trying to make her case, she certainly should be aware of the true situation in her own thoughts, and should definitely NOT expect the Greens to follow her, just because she claims the Amyrlin Seat and has her own tenuous and mostly imaginary tie to them. More and more in this book, she seems like a child stamping her feet in a tantrum and making demands.

More suspiciously, she articulates the idea that nothing she or the rebellion has done to further the division can be held against them, and that it is all the fault of the Tower leadership. She makes the ridiculous argument that Elaida’s ineptitude proves she is not the Amyrlin, and a trio of Whites sit silently at this utter illogical pronouncement. The most such incompetence can do is provide grounds for removal, NOT undoing an acknowledged status! After all, the same argument could be extended to support Elaida’s demotion of Shemerin. Shemerin’s incompetence proves she is not fit to be a full sister. And everyone among the rebels is upset over the reasons for her removal. Why? Because rather than selfish interests or petty slights to the Amyrlin, the cause is her inability to face up to the reality of the magnitude of the crisis looming over the Tower and the world! “We could accept it if Elaida was simply being a petty tyrant, but INCOMPETANCE? COWARDICE?!?! Aes Sedai are sacred & sacrosanct and above charges such as this! How dare Elaida de-shawl a sister on such grounds, no matter how demonstrably true the charges!

Another gem from the mind of Egwene is the following response to another sister’s assertion “ '…And men are not to be trusted.’ Someday, we will have to move beyond that …sentiment, but for now it is true enough to stand.” Oh, really? “With the Dragon Reborn himself walking the land," no less! Solving that attitude, which is the greatest obstacle to cooperation between men and women in the One Power can wait for “someday”? The inherent untrustworthiness of men is a workable mindset for Egwene’s brave new world-saving Tower? And what have men done without the influence of the taint that has been nearly as bad as what she was savaging the Hall of the Tower for? The untrustworthy men were fighting the Seanchan who sought to collar every last woman of the White Tower, and with rather more success than the Tower itself! Sure the Seanchan would kill the men, but Egwene claims death is the preferable fate to being collared. Despite actual violence offered them by Elaida, they resisted all provocations and NEVER marched an army against the White Tower! Oh, but she plans to seek vengeance for the crime of finding a peaceful way to restrain their assailants! She can let the attitude of unwarranted suspicion towards men stand, but that attitude of ‘not doing what Egwene says or recognizing her brilliance’ has to be rooted out immediately, dammit!

As she goes from one verbal evisceration to the next, in her thoughts, she disapproves of the Sitters following behind her grouped by Ajah as they walk to where the rebels are awaiting her grouped by Ajah, in obedience to her orders!
No wonder she’s not going to let the division be forgotten! She needs it to explain why some sisters are treated one way, and others in another!

And then there is her final speech:
“…We will be an assembly that tales will tell of! When I am finished with you, it will not be written that the White Tower was weak. Our divisions will be forgotten in the face of our victories. We will be remembered not as the White Tower who turned against itself, but as the White Tower who stood strong in the face of the Shadow. These days will be legendary!” This speech is entirely too reminiscent of military dictators and warlords. She approves of the serenity and calm of the Aes Sedai who are supposed to be above such simple emotions as this speech is designed to stir, but that is the audience to whom she makes such a self-aggrandizing & ostentatious exhortation! Even if there is a good cause to fight these days, she and her Tower are Johnny-come-lately to the battle against the Shadow. That is not the speech of someone who will bring the Tower to humbly follow the proper leader, it is the words of someone who assumes she will take command. Even if she was some sort of nascent genius with any experience whatsoever in successfully fighting Shadowspawn or genuine military leadership, she has sat out the fight thus far, even if you believe that she rightfully occupied herself with a more important preliminary struggle. She is way behind on the curve and has a lot of catch-up work to do before she can even begin to claim she is plugged in as much as Rand is. Does she have even the slightest qualm about sticking her oar in when she has never commanded troops in her life? When her comments on the subject so far have only revealed massive ignorance or blindness (four Aiel clans bitch-slap ten nations of the wetlands united under a council of Great Captains, and Rand’s plan to fight only two of those concurrently but separately, with eleven clans is “madness,” according to Egwene)? When Gareth Bryne spent most of his time under her command urging different courses of action than she decided on? Or does she expect Rand and his Great Captains & Aiel chiefs with all their experience fighting Trollocs & Seanchan to defer to Bryne’s military advice when Tar Valon is the closest he is ever known to have come to the Blight, and a swordfight with a Bloodknife the nearest to leading men against the Seanchan?

As pleasant as it might be to see her asserting her dominance over the sisters and refreshing to see them called on the carpet for their shortcomings in the days before Tarmon Gaidon, her words suggest her policies to the rest of the world will be more of the same old Aes-Sedai-are-it-and-you’re-spit mentality they have used to make the world the screwed-up place described at length in tGH by sources as varied as Siuan Sanche and Ingtar Shinowa, that she sees the place of the White Tower at the head of the nations (and herself, by extension, as having the right to rule them).

She shows absolutely no sign that she views her role as any different than the tyranny of the White Tower in times past, and her gratuitous and fascistic exhortations upon her being raised to the shawl are unbecoming an elected leader who is supposed to be constrained by the rule of law, and answerable to an elected legislature. It is better suited to a warlord commanding his sworn soldiers, and supported by accomplishment or long experience in battle than an elected official castigating her constituency for not resisting her predecessor’s attempt to lead in the exact same manner!

Can any discerning reader honestly say that those words or the following could never come from the mouth of Elaida?

The Last Battle approaches, and before it arrives I mean to see that we are once again a sword forged with strength, whole and unbroken! I will make demands of you. They will be harsh. They will stretch the limits of what you think you can bear…These days will test you! I will force you to work with those you saw as enemies just hours ago. You will march alongside those who spurned you, or hurt you, or hated you.
But we are stronger than our weaknesses. The White Tower stands, and we shall stand with it! We will become one again…When I am finished with you, it will not be written that the White Tower was weak…We will be remembered…as the White Tower who stood strong in face of the Shadow. These days will be legendary!”

Really, is this speech at all out of character for the woman who was planning to displace the Dragon Reborn in the stories of Tarmon Gaidon?

Part of much of what she says in public are words intended to gain support among a notoriously recalcitrant and uncooperative group, and cannot be entirely held against her, any more than Elayne’s public repudiation of Rand, but that is also part of the problem. There is very little danger of Elayne becoming so caught up in her charade that she truly turns on Rand, but there is a great deal of danger in Egwene getting caught up in political maneuverings and letting the political means override the goals towards which she is theoretically trying to achieve. She could very easily become that all-too-typical politician who gets so caught up in the process of getting into office and preserving and protecting her authority that she compromises the reasons for which she ran in the first place. And worse for Egwene is that she has no core support to keep her honest or original cause to be reminded of when she goes astray. Her end and cause from the first was power itself, and she set about trying to become what she thought the Amyrlin should be from her novice & Accepted perspective. No one is going to confront Egwene and say “Hey, remember when you first started out, how you wanted to make a difference and you began running for office to help the cause? Well, you’re losing the mission, girlfriend.” The mission, from day one, was “Get Egwene power.” The worthy causes and such were assumed and implicit, but never expressly articulated. We see examples of Egwene’s politicking taking over in the aforementioned castigations of the various sides which seem more aimed at creating and holding the moral high ground and knocking them back a notch with the shame of their actions.

Another instance is her confrontation with the Black Ajah committee. In an effort to impress her authority on them, and deflect Yukuri’s very pertinent and relevant point about her lack of legitimate support for her claim, she finds things to criticize about the group, primarily by mischaracterizing the Oath of obedience they administered to their captives.

When they propose ordering Meidani to assign Egwene a penance to conceal the fact that they have met with her she says:
“I thought you told me that the fourth oath was meant to restore unity…” Except no one said that.
“…to keep her from fleeing to Elaida with your secrets.” But that is exactly why they would have Meidani order punishment for Egwene – to preserve their secrets! Egwene herself laid out the logic of why it was dangerous for them to give her the punishment directly. In addition, she claims that Meidani could not give “her” Amyrlin a penance, despite earlier books demonstrating that other Amyrlins HAD been given penances in the past.

She also claims to the Black Ajah hunters that unity in the Tower is more important than rooting out Darkfriends, which is a patently absurd statement. Getting the Darkfriends but failing to unite the Tower still means less Darkfriends on the loose. On the other hand, uniting the Tower, but failing to get the Darkfriends simply means the Black Ajah has a stronger tool and more secure hiding place. When the Tower is divided, people question it and are less likely to knuckle under to a Black Sister’s alleged authority (as Liandrin uses in Fal Dara or Duhara tries with Elayne – just the fact of the Tower’s division is enough to make the Kin receptive to Elayne’s explanation, or make Borderland nobles question the loyalties of an Aes Sedai who is trying to ramrod her own agenda down their throats).

As it turns out, Egwene will be able to use the division of the Tower to minimize the efforts of the Black-committee Sitters, because had the Tower not been divided, her sweep could have been duplicated in the Tower as well as in the rebel camp. Of course, all of that is predicated on the ability to anticipate Verin’s report, so before Verin hands over the book, there was no rational way to expect the Black Ajah to fall so neatly into her hands. Before that event, Egwene’s assertion is like saying “We have to stop losing money before we look for the embezzlers.” Just as the best way to stop losing money is to find and remove the embezzlers, the best way to unify the Tower is to remove the agents of its division! And this should be even MORE obvious for someone like Egwene. I hold the Aes Sedai and the Tower (as institutions, anyway) in contempt. I would have no problem with the idea that the Tower’s division is self-inflicted and requiring no assistance from the Black Ajah. Someone like Egwene, who holds Aes Sedai as superior and above others, who reveres the Tower as the world’s greatest institution and best hope, should find the notion of Darkfriends inciting and exacerbating the split to be a given! The great and wonderful Tower would never split on its own! It could ONLY be the work of Darkfriends!

Egwene has a reason for these inconsistent behaviors with the Black Ajah hunters, however. Recall how in LoC, when Mat wished for Elayne to give him an order or make a suggestion that he could, in good conscience, disobey or refuse (as he does with the Aes Sedai demand for horses in tGS). It is all about showing who’s in charge and asserting his independence from their authority. Egwene is acting on the corollary – she is giving commands for the sake of giving them, NOT because she really thinks they are better things to do. In this way, she is establishing her position as Amyrlin. The same principle goes to work that Silviana describes taking place with Shemerin – you let the Amyrlin get away with asserting her authority or superior position, and it ends up becoming reality, even if she is in the wrong.

This then is the real crux of Egwene’s storyline in tGS: On the one hand, she does and says some pretty appalling things. On the other hand, she does and says them to Aes Sedai. The real problem is how she acts towards the world outside the Tower and in particular on those Aes Sedai who are doing actual good. Punishing the Black Ajah hunters for their extreme and retroactively unnecessary measures in order to maintain her standing and authority, punishing Nynaeve for running off to help Rand because she lacks authority over the Dragon Reborn and needs to send a message about who sisters owe obediance to, cracking down on Elayne in order to maintain the White Tower’s authority over Andor with its queen & her chosen advisor being two of the least subordinate sisters to the almighty Tower, or asserting the primacy of the Aes Sedai (those same targets of her vituperation in this book) over the nations or the Dragon Reborn; any of these will indicate she has gone down the path of getting caught up in her power politics.

A more hopeful position is that she has learned from her experiences and taken to heart the lessons about priorities. That she better understands what it means to truly fight in battle for your survival and that of your cause. That she takes to heart what Rand has suffered at the hands of Aes Sedai and that she would be better advised to make amends and offer support and not strain his overburdened and near-heroic tolerance of their ilk any further. That she recalls just how capable the Aes Sedai are of screwing things up like everyone else, only with worse consequences, given their greater power. That she remembers her words that sometimes sucking it up and taking one for the team is better than insisting on your rights to the point of disastrous division.

All her power-thirsting over the last few books CAN be forgiven on the grounds that these are Aes Sedai heads she needs to smack straight, and so she needs as much head-smacking power as she can muster – that as one of the few enlightened in the Tower, she needs to be in charge so her pro-Dragon, pro-normal people, pro-cooperation view can prevail - these grounds excuse her IF and only if, she actually carries through. It is one thing to delight in her triumphs over the sisters in her discussions and in her superior fighting, but we must remember that judging Egwene against the rest of the Aes Sedai is grading on a very generous curve. She needs to understand that these numbskulls who have been unable to grasp the consequences and short-sightedness of their behavior during the split are no more qualified to run other people’s affairs than they were to put their own in order. She needs to realize that the people who can’t figure out what to do when they are persecuted for asking questions, or don’t know how to approach the Dragon Reborn or how to handle an aging warder or how to win an argument about legality of elections when they have Tower law on their side, are also not the people to be trusted making decisions about how the world is going to fight the Shadow.

In short, if the future sees Egwene restraining the Aes Sedai and protecting the world from their stultifying & enervating influence, we can safely laugh about the dangers of her attitudes suggested in the path she took to the Amyrlin Seat, but if she turns adversarial towards the Dragon Reborn, if she advances the superiority of the idiots she ran circles around in tGS over the people who have been living in and dealing with the real world on their own or who have shed blood in fighting off the Shadow or the Seanchan, then we will know that her flip-flopping and blame-casting were foretastes of what she would offer the world. In “The Gathering Storn” Egwene is still very much an incomplete grade. Her performance has set her up to be the savior of the Tower, and more importantly, the world from the Tower’s influence, but it also carries in her words, deeds and thoughts, the seeds of a worse tyrant, both of the Tower and towards the outside world, than Elaida or Tetsuan or Bonwhin ever dreamed.