Llltempest, it goes without saying that I whole heartedly disagree with you and I think the text supports my thesis that Egwene was no a cold hearted bitch who deserves little more than a dark friend or Padan Fain, perhaps.

That said, you win, because BS clearly agrees with you and he is the one who got to finish the book and kill Egwene.  You and all the others like you must have loved it and reveled in every moment of her pain, anguish and largely unmourned and unnecessary death. So, it must be nice. 

For me, the time and effort I spent reading, knowing and loving all the characters has come to a very bitter sweet somewhat empty end for me.  And I will never feel satisfied with Egwene's arc.  As it was clearly written by one who thinks the same as you do, dear Lilltempest.

 

  I mean, she was the AS but her plot points, not her choices, were what rendered her so alone.  I never really saw her pushing people away so much as pushing people to accept her as the true AS and not as a young girl playing at it.  And she and Nynaeve weren't friends, not in the sense that her and Min and Elayne were.  

I think that makes it very hard to be friends though.  You can only really have friendships between equals, and Elayne and Nynaeve are no longer Egwene's equals.  They know that they are friends when Egwene wants them to be friends and AS subordinates when Egwene wants/needs them to be AS subordinates.

 

You raise an interesting point about how Egwene, Elayne and Nynaeve all spent the early books (tGH-tFoH) talking about how they could get the AS to help Rand and support him.  At some point this does seem to go out the window and become opposition.  Yes, they are right to oppose him on some occasions, but the AS never make any real move to support Rand under Egwene, despite her original intentions this way.

 

Well, Elayne and Egwene, when wearing the crown and the stole respectively are equals, and when they take those off, they are supposedly, great friends.  It seems to me that most people had someone with whom they could be themselves.  I guess my point is that Egwene has to face her destiny alone and no one else had that burden.  Everyone has someone to lean on and rely on when times get tough. They get to be vulnerable and human.  They get to feel loved.  Leane and Siuan, Gareth Byrne, they are all people who love the WT and need Egwene to succeed, but they aren't bonded to her the way Min is to Rand (not to mention Avi and Elayne) or Bridgette is to Elayne (not to mention Avi and Rand and her babies!) or any number of main characters with tremendous burden.  And because we rarely see that with Egwene people just seem to hate her because she is arrogant.  Name a character in the book who isn't arrogant or who doesn't have a blind spot.  If Matt had just read Verin's letter, well...but the same people who hate Egwene just love Matt.  And I get it!  I love Matrim! 

I bring it up to further defend her character and point out something that doesn't get mentioned enough.  And to point out how her arc was to be alone, in many ways.  And lastly I make the point to further illustrate how much Egwene actually did in terms of carrying her burden.  I think that the course of the series took great pains to construct that part of Egwene's character, however, the last book throws that out the window.  It seems like her arc, to me, is like a broken rainbow, something bright and beautiful that just gets snuffed out at the end.  Sorry, I don't mean to wax to poetic.

One thing I want to point to, is the idea of friendship, especially sisterhood.  I loved the books because the idea of sisterhood was so powerful.  Even with the plural marriage Aiel, it was the bond between the women that was the thing of true beauty and wonder.  It is what held the Aiel together.  Spear sisters, near sisters.  And the AS, being bonded by the same power but also the same symbol of the light, the same oaths.  I just love when Egwene, Elayne and Min fell in love and said that they would never let anyone some between them, "not even him" meaning Rand.  Which is an echo of what happens at the end when Rand tells the DO, its not about him but rather sisterhood and brotherhood and fighting for and with people because you love them.  When Perrin said to Rand, I got your back at the end (well, said it in his head) I broke down.  But where was that for Egwene?  Symbolically, she deserved an equally powerful moment where that sisterhood is revealed.  I HATE that she died, but I need to see Elayne or someone mourn for her sister.  No, instead we see the three wives staring after Rand.  Making sure he survives.The scene between Perrin and Nynaeve wasn't enough nor was it satisfying.  Nynaeve was upset because she saw it as her duty to make sure all the Two Rivers people made it out alive. Seriously, did BS hate Egwene as much as some of the folk in fandom?  Did he snuff out her arc as an homage to the "Eggy" hate?

I think Egwene was a truly loyal character.  She maintained her ties to her home as best she could and she insisted on marrying Gawyn and doing what was "right" based on how she was raised.  She was the AS and she insisted on marrying the man she loved because she couldn't go against her upbringing.  In that way, her and Nynaeve are very similar.  Just because she left didn't mean she wasn't loyal to her upbringing.

And while I agree with you re: Egwene being the AS and needing to remain apart, I really feel that in her heart she was doing her part.  Elayne accepting her duty to be Queen and dealing with the mess in Andor, Avi needing to be a Wise One to help guide her people.  And Egwene accepting the reins of the WT because really, she was the only one who could be trusted and who would have Rand's back.  Wasn't the plan, oh so long ago, to make sure Rand was surrounded by people he could love and trust.  I mean way back when they were all Accepted and just sent to search for the Black Ajah?  I am getting off topic, but Elayne was bonded with Bridgette and Rand, not to mention her near sister bond with Avi.  Nynaeve got Lan, enough said there. Egwene got dealt a really tough hand.  I mean, she was the AS but her plot points, not her choices, were what rendered her so alone.  I never really saw her pushing people away so much as pushing people to accept her as the true AS and not as a young girl playing at it.  And she and Nynaeve weren't friends, not in the sense that her and Min and Elayne were.  

And I will leave it at that for now, because the friendship, indeed the sisterhood between the women in the book.  Especially, between Egwene and the other women.

@bathedinthelight: I agree with a lot of your post, but I think it was Egwene's choice not to have close friends and people who loved her.  Both she and Rand felt they had to drive the people they loved away from them (Rand did so because he felt people close to him would be threatened; Egwene did so because she couldn't afford to compromise her position as Amyrlin).  Rand eventually came to terms with letting people love him, as we saw with the numerous scenes in AMoL where he has very personal moments with people (e.g. Tam, Lan, Elayne, Aviendha).  Egwene can't afford to change her stance because she believes she will be Amyrlin for hundreds of years, and her Amyrlin-ship is still in its infancy.  I believe she does consider Nynaeve and Elayne her friends, and Gawyn her husband, but I think she considers them her subordinates as Aes Sedai and Warder first.  Rand, strictly speaking, doesn't actually have subordinates (apart from perhaps the Asha'man), while Egwene very much does.  

 

I agree 100% about the scene at Merrilor.  I know some people liked the way Rand and Egwene were written, as they felt it highlighted the fact that only two years had passed, and they were still just two young people from the Two Rivers, struggling under massive pressure.  I found them both to be petty, immature and spiteful, and that the scene went backwards in terms of character development for both of them.

 

Something I find very interesting r.e. the seals is how many people sympathise with Rand and feel like Egwene is completely in the wrong, when actually they were both partly wrong and partly right.  But from the reaction of the vast majority of fans, Egwene's 'rightness' wasn't conveyed very clearly or well at all.

The last part is spot on!  Rand and Egwene were both right about the seals.  But, Egwene is the one who receives the blame for the scene.  Why is that?  They needed each other in that moment and they both acted ridiculous.  It's almost as though the scene were written by one of those rabid "Eggy" haters.  

It has taken me a long long time to find the words and the time to write this post.  Even now, my feelings are incomplete, but I feel the need to write things down in order to heal from what I believe to be a broken heart when it comes to TWOT and the most polarizing character of the book, Egwene Al'Vere.

Egwene was, like the other characters, extremely flawed.  But, we see her, time and again, swallow her pride and make an effort to humble herself to something bigger than herself.  In the White Tower, with the Aiel, in Elaida's WT.  The only time we don't see that is with Rand.  And I will agree, it was beyond frustrating.  After everything we have seen from Egwene, I could not believe that she would not just relent. I also could not believe that the fight between wasn't more epic.  If she was going to fight, then it should have been bigger and more private and we could have seen (like we eventually see with all the other characters) that love was driving her to fight him.  Love for the world, the WT and even love for Rand.  She doesn't want him to die and really, why would she think that he could kill the DO.  And in actually, she was right.  He can't really kill the DO.  Rand has proven to be powerful and compassionate but he has not proven to be infallible, not by a long shot.  I do believe that Egwene did the best she could with the information that she had available to her at the time.  But, she eventually comes around, when it is important so why be upset with her over the seals?

Which leads me to my biggest issue which is that I don't think that the character was written faithfully.  Egwene was a loyal, Two Rivers woman to her core.  Just like Nynaeve.  Even though she became the AS, she still held to her core values.  I don't think she held to those values in her final scenes with Rand.  Especially not when they were arguing with each other over the seals.  I just don't think she was that petty and small at the end, and yet she was written that way.  Which left me as a reader feeling very betrayed.  Egwene was willing to restructure the whole WT and take Nynaeve's words about the WT to heart and yet she acts like that in the meeting with Rand?  Maybe for people who absolutely hate Egwene then that was further fuel to the fire, but it just didn't make sense to me.  For the point above about Rand being "obviously" right about the seals (which he wasn't), Egwene was obviously right about the WH needing to be whole when it came time for the Last Battle.  Can you imagine if the WT and all the women had been taken hostage by the Seanchan?  They would be in Seanchan, and not fighting the LB.  Remember, after the attack, the Seanchan went back to Seanchan while Tuon stayed put.

Egwene has gone through more in the series than anyone, except Rand.  And maybe more than Rand because Egwene is really alone.  She has no one.  Rand has Min pretty much the whole time to keep him sane and grounded and feeling loved.  What does Egwene have? Rather WHO does Egwene have?  No one.  Yes, Siuan but she is an advisor.  Where are here friends? People who love her?  Really and truly love her?  Egwene does what she does, by herself.  And yet, I feel that never gets thrown into the equation of why she can act aloof and arrogant at times.  And she doesn't really have Gawyn, for all the good her eventually does her, until the second to last book.  And yes, bonding Gawyn and marrying him was just the worst thing ever.  She should have chosen Galad.  He would have been a better choice it turns out.  But, you can't help who you love.  Just ask Matt, or Perrin or Rand.

I actually have more to say, especially about her final moments, but I will leave that for another time.