So you think a person with absolutely no free will, a puppet who mindlessly obeys Graendal is alive. Let me ask you a question. If you had a choice between that kind of existence and death, what would you choose.

Maybe you would rather exist than die, even as a mindless zombie and thats why you think it was wrong. I however would rather die than suffer like that. If WoT world were real, and I would be one of those in the palace, I would thank Rand if I could. Read my comparison to the paralysed blind mute person in one of the messages above to understand this better.

As for balefire.

If what you say is true, then I agree with you. If Rand came close to unraveling the pattern, just to kill Graendal, then indeed you are right and it would have been a insanely stupid thing to do.

But I argue that thats not what happened. I argue that LTT, having been there when balefire was developed and used knows how much to use. I argue that LTT/Rand knows far better how much the pattern can take than anyone else. I argue that despite whatever subjective reaction Min may have had, Rand did NOT significantly damage the pattern. Read some of the earlier posts for my attempts to examine this particular issue, I will not bother repeating it for you.