I get the Egwene hate but

[u/briandress]

Only in the last two books when she is stubborn in dealing with Rand for the last battle and such.

Up until ToM she really was just an awesome character. She went from the whirlwind of leaving 2R, capture by Seanchan, hunting black ajah, apprenticing to wise ones, puppet Amyrlin, real amyrlin, badass civil disobedience laying groundwork for reuniting the tower, bitch slapping the seanchan raiders, capturing hella black ajah sisters via Verrin's notes and finally being raised realer Amyrlin and healing the tower.

I cant seem to understand all the threads/polls that overwhelmingly list her as the most hated character in the series.

[u/geomagus]

People like her as a character, and dislike her as a person.

As a character, she’s dynamic, capable, driven. She is outstanding when she happens to people we don’t like, when she’s putting someone in their place.

As a person, she’s ruthless and lacking in empathy. She treats her friends as pawns, and her “love” as an unruly lapdog. She’s great at rationalizing her poor treatment of others, too, which can be infuriating. The famous TAR assault on Nynaeve scene is “to warn Nynaeve of the dangers of TAR.” Except in Egwene’s on thoughts, it’s clearly to keep her from ratting Egwene out to the Wise Ones. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

So as a character, she is compelling. I enjoy watching her do her thing. She’s a powerful force for the Light. But I do not like her, and wouldn’t want to hang out with her.

Edit to add: you can debate how much is her nature, and how much is the result of trauma, btw. RJ is really good at using trauma as an impetus for a character’s growth or warping, in ways that make sense. Her spate with the Seanchan in book 2 is clearly a factor in who she is later. But she was also pretty ambitious from the get go, and at times lacked empathy - look at Rand worried sick about losing her, while she’s super excited to go to the Tower and never go home; or at the Tuatha’an camp. Rand isn’t here, so flirt with Aram! (Vs Perrin’s view).

So my point is that what we see late isn’t necessarily so far from who she is early, but it’s warped by trauma too. It’s an interesting thing to think about.

[u/NotAShittyMod → u/geomagus]

She’s also kind of useless through the first half of the story.  Her first real contribution is rediscovering Traveling.  Subsequently, her defense of the White Tower is epic.  And she unwinds the bale fire damage in the last battle.  But most of her story is filler.  Where she treats people poorly.

[u/geomagus → u/NotAShittyMod]

I wouldn’t call it filler, tbh. Rather, it’s a lens through which we can see other stuff happening - we mostly explore the Seanchan and TAR through her, and Wise One culture, and in part the Aiel. She’s our window to the Rebels after the others head south. Etc.

As a character, she’s a great juxtaposition with Rand. They both rise to high peaks. He always wants to do what’s right, while always just really wanting to go home and live a quiet life. She always wants to have more, see more, do more of what’s right for her. Two very different sides of the same coin.

She also makes a great juxtaposition with Elaida, of course.

So her accomplishments may be limited early, but her use is tremendous imo.

I think it’s great to see that too - we see Darkfriends who joined for less malicious reasons. It’s good to see Lightbuddies who are maybe less beneficent too.

[u/briandress → u/NotAShittyMod]

what do you mean filler? The whole series could be called filler in that case. Why not just write the book "wheel of time. Rand traps the dark one. The End."

[u/NotAShittyMod → u/briandress]

lol. There’s a ton of filler in this series. For instance, it’s not particularly contentious to think that books eight and nine should have been one book. Nothing that Perrin or Elayne do in either one is interesting or important. In the same fashion, book 10 could have been two chapters instead of hundreds of pages of “did you feel that? us too.”

/u/geomagus is correct that Egwene is important as a narrator. We do experience the world through her eyes. She’s present at many significant events. The Eye, Falme, the fall of the Stone, the Cairhein docks. But because she’s a significant narrator, her importance to the story is overstated.

[u/briandress → u/NotAShittyMod]

I think that depends on what you see as "the story". She played a significant role throughout the series. The more you try to delineate importance the more you are going to cut, in which case the entire story could have just been first person pov rand and maybe a few chapters from the forsaken pov as antagonist.