And what would Rand assume leadership of in that case? 1/3 of AS, without their millennia-old home (which BTW ties the Kin to them as well)? I think that regardless of how you approach this, 1000 channelers (plus thousands of novices/accepted, many of whom will be Raised shortly) is far better than maybe 250, many of whom might be BA, unbeknownst to Rand.



Actually, I think that equal importance is given to Mat's story (how many chapters went towards simply courting Tuon?), Elayne's story (RJ could easily just have made her ascension easier, and dropped the irrelevant subplot about Adeleas's murderer), and of course Perrin's story (save Faile, save the world? Really?).

The simple explanation is that RJ didn't intend for this series to be about "how Rand defeated the evil lord of vile darkness", but rather to map a series of characters as they progress through a time of strife and change. By contrast with Perrin and Elayne, Egwene has done far more for Rand if she can deliver the tower to him (or even if it just fights the Shadow on its own). Even Mat might turn out to be less relevant, as we still haven't seen him impact Tuon in any way, nor has he saved Moiraine yet.

"Oh," I hear you say, "he's going to do that in the next book, silly!". Yes, no doubt. But Egwene could equally make large steps in the next books as well.

If you're a fan of chess, then you'll appreciate the link I posted. Sometimes we think the author is wasting time or pages instead of cutting to the meat of the plot. Only once the series ends can we claim that it was truly wasted space.