I see this has been discussed to death already (I've read most of the discussion, in the various Graendal threads), but I want to add a few comments.

First of all, if we are to consider the possibility that Graendal lives, my personal opinion is that we have to consider how this could have happened without Graendal puzzling out why Rand sent the idiot emissary. What I mean by that is ... any theory that requires her to have puzzled out that Rand's emissary was only sent as a mechanism to confirm her death by balefire afterwards, and therefore she Compelled the emissary in a way that would make Rand (mistakenly) think she'd been killed, is implausible.

So, IMO, we should rule out ideas like "Graendal set the Compulsion weave to dissipate after a certain amount of time", and "Graendal had another female channeler weave the Compulsion, and it was this other channeler who was killed by the balefire", because in both instances there would be no reason for Graendal to have done these things unless she had puzzled out the purpose of the idiot emissary.

As I see it, we should only consider "Graendal lives" theories that allow for her to have Compelled the emissary herself, and to have set the weave to remain indefinitely.

Given that, the only way I can see for Graendal to have survived AND the emissary's Compulsion to have been erased by the balefire is if something else was involved in the Compulsion, and that something else was destroyed by the balefire.

So what could that "something else" be? The only (plausible) thing I can think of is ... Graendal's angreal.

Consider the following scenario:

Idiot emissary arrives. Graendal Compels him, using her angreal because the Compulsion needed to be strong/delicate/etc., and sends him back to Rand, as Rand predicted. However, the emissary's arrival makes Graendal very nervous. She considers that her position has been compromised, and so prepares to Travel out of there at a moment's notice (first ensuring all the inverted Wards around her mansion, which almost certainly existed, are in place). Sometime later, Rand arrives and triggers one of the Wards. In the meantime, Graendal has put down her angreal somewhere. So, when the Ward is triggered, she doesn't have it with her, and doesn't dare take the time to retrieve it before Traveling out of there. Which she does. Rand then balefires the mansion, and (amongst other things) destroys the angreal. But Graendal escapes.

I'm pretty sure that, in that scenario, the emissary's Compulsion would be erased, since the angreal was used to weave it, and the balefire made the angreal cease to exist before it was used. I'm not 100% sure about that, though.

So in that scenario, Graendal never intended to trick Rand into thinking she was dead, she just (luckily, on her part) did so.

One problem I have with it is ... if the emissary made Graendal as nervous/alert as I suggested, would she put the angreal down (and leave the room without it) as I suggested? That seems unlikely, but not totally impossible. I think RJ/BS could have devised a plausible reason for her to put down the angreal, if that (whole scenario) is what they wanted to happen.

Another small problem with it is ... Rand discusses how clever Graendal is just before attacking, yet in this scenario it's not her cleverness that tricks Rand into thinking she's dead, it's just dumb luck. So there's a bit of a discontinuity there.

Having said all that ... I personally think it's more likely than not that she's dead, even though her death makes her Prologue scene with Moridin rather meaningless.

As has been discussed already, Graendal wasn't responsible for the spoiling food in Bandar Eban, and it's highly unlikely (IMO) that she had anything to do with the Semirhage/Rand confrontation. So, if she is dead, it would seem as if she accomplished nothing related to what Moridin instructed her to do in the Prologue scene. Although it doesn't happen often, that wouldn't be the first time a scene/plot in the series failed to amount to anything. And, Graendal's death would still allow for Moridin to accomplish what he wanted re Rand, through other characters. So that Prologue scene could still serve a purpose, in that case.

But, I'm not 100% certain she's dead, so I thought I'd throw this out there to see what you guys thought.