If critical influence on Rand is what determines who was equal to him, then Cads should be on top of the list. She somehow (inadvertently IMO) got Rand off being Dark Rand, if not for that one thing, Rand would have destroyed the world that there was absolutely nothing Egwene or the WT could have done about it.

And as far as the scene at the WT goes, I agree with Rhienne, Rand got Egwene to do exactly what he wanted. What exactly did she resist? 

And Egwene did not have a plan, her only plan was not to break the seals at any cost. BS obviously saw that she was looking like a total douche in TOM and gave her multiple personality disorder within few pages by then saying tht maybe the seals shd be broken at a particular time.But she had not idea what that time would be.

 

Correct but all of them understood where they stood with regard to their partners. Egwene always thought herself the equal of Rand when she was not. Gawyn thought himself Egwene's equal for a while and guess what happened Egwene nearly got killed.

Maybe I'm just odd that way - but I think it would absolutely be good for people in relationships to consider themselves equals. Egwene felt she could not let Gawyn be her equal, because of his place in life and tendency to express the sense of equality in public (unlike, say, Thom, Min or Lan, who would probably know exactly when to shut up and continue the discussion in private).

But if Rand were her partner? Noone would be truly shocked if they rebuffed eachother in public, and neither would be undermined by it by book 7-8 or so.

 

Only if you take away from the story that Egwene wanted a stooge would you think she would want Rand as lesser partner... and even then, I think trying such tricks on Rand would be precisely what would be needed to fix that desire.

 

In an ideal world yes you are correct. But in a feudal world you can hardly expect the ruler to be ticked off in public by his/her spouse can you?

Correct but all of them understood where they stood with regard to their partners. Egwene always thought herself the equal of Rand when she was not. Gawyn thought himself Egwene's equal for a while and guess what happened Egwene nearly got killed.

Egwene thought she was Rand's equal...mistakenly. They would never have worked in a relationship.

egwene's death was a product of sanderson. Nothing more nothing less.

 

eventually after years and the enclyopedia already out the truth will eventually merge.

 

To be honest, you could tell.

 

The lack of emotion on the super girls, the laughable taim battle, the addition of 'oh noes vora's sangreal has no buffer' last minute etc etc.

 

His refusal to come out and say outright whether he nerfed egwene or was it RJ just seals the deal.

If RJ intended Cads to become Amyrlin,he intended Egwene to die.Doubt tht u can blame Sanderson for it. However the manner of death was real cheesy,tht I think was pure Sanderson.

I think Egwene's death would have worked better if the reaction to it was more than four throwaway lines from Leanne, Mat, Perrin and Nynaeve. That was just dumb, and completely unrealistic. Elayne couldn't possibly have reacted to it as sanguinely as she's depicted to. Would have been nice to see the WO mourn too, as well as her closest Aes Sedai friends.

 

I felt it was completely absurd that we didn't get some of that in Rand's last PoV. Maybe RJ would have added it in his second pass at the scene, and Brandon just didn't want to change what RJ wrote, but to me, it seemed like it would have been perfect if, when Rand left SG, he planned to make a trip of the world, but start with a trip to Merrilor to pay his respects to the fallen heroes, Egwene at the top of the list. It would have been a perfect resolution to the "list", if he planned to go there and make sure all the dead were remembered and honored. Maybe he'd visit the pillar of crystal Egwene left behind, her own Dragonmount, of sorts. 

 

Of course, another thing that would have made this better is if 'the Flame of Tar Valon" had more buildup. Brandon said the weave was noted, so it isn't like the weave was to die with her. I'd have liked to see more discussion of what it was, its connection to cuendillar (if it exists), and how Egwene came up with it. Would have been nice to see some Aes Sedai use it too, to further shore up the Pattern, and kill some Trollocs. Would have been awesome if the remaining AS linked and started throwing it at the Trolloc hordes.

 

Plus, did anyone find it weird that she didn't link with Narishma and Merise? When I saw those two nearby when she was fighting Taim, I thought it was the perfect mirror to Rand facing the DO with a circle. She could have released them and made the conscious choice to overextend herself after Taim was killed. I just found it weird that she never used saidin. Seemed to be a major thematic miss, for me.

Er, Egwene pillar is buried under rubble.No dragonmount there!!

 

@xxx

 

Serious question for you here. Why are you so adamant about not giving her any credit whatsoever for her role in the LB(and you laughingly say to fionwe "I know this is hard for you to hear" in your post above. Can you not see how ironic that is given the topic)? You have moved the goal posts so many times about what her involvement would be. Pre AMoL you were saying she would do nothing of importance at the LB, had nothing to offer Rand in terms of information for sealing the DO, had no right to question his plans, the WT's time had past, etc. Now that it is plain how things had to fall out and that she played about as large a role as anyone aside from Rand you still try to deny what was written. What is the big deal to just admitting what happens in the books? Rand is the DR, the CoL...Egwene doing what she did does not in anyway threaten who he is or take away from how big his contributions were. Do you just not want to admit that you were wrong?

Of course he won't admit anything. His conception of the series depends on his idea that Egwene is a nobody. Why would something like facts change that?

Nobody no, equal of Rand the DR in any shape or form? 

Rand has not heard the phrase, "embrace death" after staying pretty much with Aiel for the last 2 years? That would be quite a stretch considering that is a common phrase among the Aiel.

 

Rand squeezed his eyes shut, thinking of all those who had died for him.  Of Egwene, whom he had sworn to himself to protect.

You fool.  Her voice in his head.  Fond, but sharp.

...

Let go, Rand.  Let us die for what we believe, and do not try to steal that from us.  You have embraced your death.  Embrace mine.

Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.  "I'm sorry," he whispered.

Why?

"I've failed."

No.  Not yet you haven't

The Dark One flayed him.  He huddled before that vast nothingness, unable to move.  He screamed in agony.

And then, he let go.

 

Redemption to the Redeemer!

Perhaps we are getting confused as to the order of importance of Egwene's accomplishments at her death.  Actually it may be this scene which is the most important of her accomplishments in WOT.  Rand's guilt list has been his tragic flaw throughout almost the entire series.  In book after book characters have been arguing with him over it's unreasonableness but none have been able to argue successfully.  In the beginning Rand tried to make himself hard and kill off his emotions.  Later compassion led him to attempt to embrace the suffering of others.  Even then some characters thought there was something wrong with Rand's attitude, but none could change his mind.

Rand accepts the responsibility of redeeming everyone else by sacrificing himself to kill the DO but underneath he, himself has a desperate need of being redeemed.  When he walks into the Pit and fights the DO completely alone he has achieved only partial enlightenment and thus the DO is able to crush him.  

Looked at this way it might make more sense why Egwene would be the one from the original EF group that needed to die.  She was the first one that he worried about getting killed.  He has been worried about her since day 2 in the barn in EF when she shows up with her sack demanding to go on their adventure without understanding what was at stake.  When they are separated at Shadar Logoth he refuses to accept the possibility she is dead.  Again and again he makes it clear that her death would be unacceptable.  In the end Egwene had to be the one to offer Rand his redemption and allow him to complete his path to enlightenment.  It is interesting that in the end it is not Egwene the Amyrlin or Egwene Sedai that is able to do save Rand but just Egwene al'Vere of the TR.  Throughout the series she is driving herself to an extreme or allowing herself to be physically beaten over and over again in order to build herself up and be in control.  That is certainly a pathological pattern of behavior. In her last battle she is depicted as being in an angry rage the entire time till she cast the flame of Tar Valon.  After that she is able to let go herself.  Perhaps she also was able to achieve a redemption from her own inner demons in the end.

Of course odds are I am completely wrong but it is an explanation that would foreshadow the ending of the book and there is no way Rand could have won without that scene.

 

What makes you think that it was Egwene in that scene and not Rand talking to himself?.He was talking to his father just before the Egwene scene and Tam is alive and well. Anyway why would Egwene be any different from the hundereds of other threads which were cut in the LB.She is not a hero of the horn,just a regular soul.So logically there is no way she is talking after her death unless every other common thread in the pattern can linger on after death with memories of past lives.

Say what you will about RJ and his never ending no of characters and side plots..if he said there were close to 1000 Ashaman for sure 1000 AM would have turned up for battle for the light or against the light.Same for the Aiel WO's.

Battles were horrible not just in this book but all of the final books.  

 

I get that the great captains were doing slightly stupid tactics to lose without being obvious due to compulsion, but the entire setup of the last books for the final battle was incredibly weak.  A group of posters from this site could have been history's greatest military minds in Randland because apparently nobody knew wtf they were doing for the final battle.  

 

Why were there so few channelers around?  Aside from the obvious killing power, massive amounts of channelers on both sides should have made the final battle span the entire area of the series due to travelling.  Leave the stupid Trollocs up north and have that be 1 front, they can't Travel anyway and it was already established that few channelers would be needed to stop them regardless and quite frankly, who cares about Trollocs anymore?  It's the last book, every major character has gone from freaking out about Trollocs to casually wiping them from the world.

 

If the light side has Wise Ones, Sea Folk, Aes Sedai, Damane, and Ashaman, their armies should be all over the place.  Leaving everything stupidly fractured was just a way to fragment the final battle and reduce the power that all of the Light factions showed throughout the series.  Let us see what a relatively unified Light side could do against a unified Dark side, which should obviously had been led by Demandred's Shara.

 

Speaking of Shara, terrible lead in to what should have been the defining military adversary.  Let the Trollocs be lame up north, let Shara's channelers have the mobility that the Light side has.  Let the final battle span countries.  Let us actually know wtf is going on in Shara instead of tiny pieces here and there throughout the books, spend some time building them up in the previous 2 books.  Afterall, RJ wanted the final book to be 1 massive book before BS split it into 3.  He spent 3 books to give us that failure of a last battle?  Really?

 

You want to picture yourself there, to be immersed, but the entire battle was just so dumb it killed it.  Telling us about Mat's genius doesn't quite do it...  Having Demandred compliment Mat throughout the fight was just terrible, almost as bad as Demandred's death...  The battle of Cairhien was superior in every way, from strategy to characters.

 

First reading the book I was just excited to be at the end, finally after years.  But the more I thought about it the more the last book was a let down.  The greatest military commander of the Shadow vs the greatest military commander the Light has ever seen and we got this?  Pathetic.

Well said instead of making channelers mysteriously dissapear, BS should have increased the no if enemy channelers from Shara and had the channelers from each side indulge in a WMD style fight across countries leaving destruction all around.He could have whittled down channelers on both sides this way before leaving it to Mat to show his genius and win the LB. As it turned out leaving poor Andor, the rest of the south lands got off easy.Someone sitting in a remote corner of Tear or Illian would not even noticed that the LB is over and a new age has dawned.

Imagine a massive OP fuelled battle in and around the Stone in Tear which leaves the great tower in ruins?,Moridin and Rand could have fought there,kind of fitting as Rand took the Dragon mantle in that place.

Soon to come..some proof the Egwene may be the female dragon. Hahahahaha

Ya but it has been pointed out clearly that the WO's can run as fast as the other Aiel in their skirts.Quite the opposite for the AS.

WO's can move extremely quickly in their skirts. You are right about the Seachan.For a militaristic society that is a major boo boo that their primary weapons are not easily mobile.

Okay if it was from Pevera.The point remains, the AS wore skirts to battle in which they could not move fast,And most of them were not fighting from horses but on the ground.

And where in the books does it say that the Green sisters are fitter and in better physical shape than the other AS?

 

And all AS do not have warders.And even if you do why would you not learn all these things if you ur primary aim is to fight the LB?

This is the primary aim of one Ajah. Which is notably filled with sisters who are generally described to be fitter and more capable than others. And they have mutliple Warders. And their quarters are filled with swords and knives and shields, and it can be inferred that at least some of them are capable with knives.

 

Look at the description of Keren Nagashi, and the Greens. from NS:

 

 

>Rina Hafden, who somehow made a square face lovely and a stocky build both elegant and graceful, was urging them on with a wide smile, calling, "Well struck, Waylin! Oh, very well struck, Elyas!"

 

She's clearly not clueless about sword-fighting, even if she doesn't fight herself.

 

 

The few tapestries in Kerene's sitting room were scenes of war or hunting...

...daggers adorned with gems and gold and daggers with plain wooden hilts...

...a steel-backed gauntlet stained black with what Moiraine was sure was blood...

...violence and death decorating her walls...

... Even here, she wore a riding dress, the divided skirts slashed with emerald green, and her dark hair, lightly touched with white, was cut shorter than either Karile's or Stepin's, above her shoulders, and gathered in a thick braid. No doubt it was easier to care for while traveling, cut like that ...

 

The Greens, at least, are very martial. We've seen Yellows and Blues with similar attitudes too. All that just never came across in Brandon's writing.

 

And please go see what divided skirts and riding dresses look like. They're nowhere close to as encumbering as full skirts are, and allow much quicker motion. That's what the Aes Sedai were dressed in, likely.

 

There is a statement in AMOL from Egwene I think which says that they cannot run fast in the skirts they wear.

 

I meant prepared to fight channelers in battle not the ocassional man they need to gentle. If they do how did they show up to battle in skirts they can't move fast in?

 

Do they work out physically, do any of them know how to fight with their hands,do any of them know how to use any weapons other weilding the OP? How do they ride horses,sideways I assume wearing a skirt.How can you fight like that or even ride fast?

 

They show none of the characteristics of a organization tuned to fight battles on a mega scale.

They can move fast by picking up their skirts and running.  Moiraine did it in New Spring.  And you can ride normally with a skirt - you don't have to ride side-saddle.  And if you have the OP, you don't really need weapons, do you?  Even if Mat's medallion prevented weaves being thrown directly at him, you could still throw other things with the OP, or blast the ground beneath that person's feet....

 

I don't see the need to quibble about skirts as showing that an organization is completely unprepared for the LB because it really isn't important.  The AS kicked butt in Kandor until the Sharans arrived and even then at the FoM they held out quite well considering they were completely outnumbered, and with Egwene's help even managed to drive them back until the balefire fiasco.

AS held their own till the other chanellers entered the fray and then it was a downward spiral from there. There is  a quote in the book that you cannot run fast in skirts from someone.

Even if you have OP it is a good idea to learn how to fight with hands and weapons.Rand knew that and he was a shepherd at that time.The AS with their vast knowledge did not think of it? Do they work out physically?,I do not think there is a statement about it in 14 books. When u r prepared to fight a mega battle you do all these things.

And all AS do not have warders.And even if you do why would you not learn all these things if you ur primary aim is to fight the LB?

I meant prepared to fight channelers in battle not the ocassional man they need to gentle. If they do how did they show up to battle in skirts they can't move fast in?

Do they work out physically, do any of them know how to fight with their hands,do any of them know how to use any weapons other weilding the OP? How do they ride horses,sideways I assume wearing a skirt.How can you fight like that or even ride fast?

They show none of the characteristics of a organization tuned to fight battles on a mega scale.

 

 

They are a failed institution that wasn't properly preprared. I mean we know there are individual sisters up patrolling the blight. We know they have apparently been studying old strategies and practice dueling in training. Problem being we get to see very little of this in the actual series.

 

What type of preparation is not even having a proper dress for battle?

 

Battle: 101

Kind of moot when you don't really have to move a lot compared to a swordsman and you can fling fireballs from a large distance.

Sure but it hinders when there are another channlers blasting you back with the OP from a distance and you need to run and duck. And that is exactly what happened in the Last Battle.

This plays into what I said that the AS never prepared to fight other channelers.

They are a failed institution that wasn't properly preprared. I mean we know there are individual sisters up patrolling the blight. We know they have apparently been studying old strategies and practice dueling in training. Problem being we get to see very little of this in the actual series.

What type of preparation is not even having a proper dress for battle?

Battle: 101

The AS for all their talk were not prepared to fight a war of power.It is understandable as they have not fought such a war in 2000 years since the Trolloc wars.All the experience they have since with fighting with the OP is to capture the random untrained man or fight the false dragons who show up of which there has been a handful.

I mean they came to fight wearing skirts in which they self admittedly could not even move fast.Does that scream preparation?

Why would they not carry the horn from the very beginning and blow it at every battlefield. I guess it would have made it too easy.The horn was a foolish addition by RJ in the first book and then he did not know wht to do with it.

Ya that is true,for a series built around the ability to use the OP, we did not get an epic mano on mano OP battle with AoL age weaves thrown around.

Obviously from the light side only Rand had the knowledge,so it could have been him against Demandred or Moridin or even Lanfear or a combination of them against Rand.LTT was supposedly the greatest fighter with the OP so he could have taken them on.

Can anyone tell my why the Aes Sedai would go to battle wearing skirts.There is even a line in the book that skirts are not meant for running..no shit then why wear them to go battle?Did they think they would stand and fight,drinking a cup of tea while at it?

MAssive Aes Sedai fail again.

There is one Egwene arc, written by 2 authors.Now when discussing this one character you cannot say that Sanderson's Egwene has split personality disorder while RJ Egwene does not IMO.