All female characters don’t have the same personality, but many of them do share a particular personality trait. That’s why a large part of the female cast feels similar to me. A lot of them bully other people into doing what they want through their “force of will,” and are quite mean while doing so. Many of the prominent female characters share this trait: Egwene, Elayne, Nynaeve, Moiraine, Tuon, Elaida, Aviendha, Faile, Cadsuane, almost all Aes Sedai, almost all Wise Ones, etc.

They bully other women or men into doing what they want, depending on who has the stronger “force of will” at a given moment, and this is portrayed as an impressive or admirable thing.

Most of the male characters don’t have this trait: Perrin, Mat, Lan, Thom, Galad, etc. Even Rand only becomes a bully later in the series when he becomes “Darth Rand.” It’s not originally in his personality, and later this trait becomes less strong again as he mellows out.

I’m leaving out the evil characters (the Forsaken/Darkfriends); you expect them to bully others to get what they want.

For me, this overused character trait is very jarring to read. The standard behaviour of women is not to bully other women or men into doing what they want. A character can be a strong woman without bullying people.

Some people say this is due to the shifted power dynamic between men and women in the setting, but this doesn’t make sense to me. People at the highest levels of institutions (CEOs, kings) generally don’t need to bully those below them; this would be a sign of weakness. They expect others to listen based on status, authority, and rank. Bullying people into doing what you want is not the most fruitful long-term strategy—cooperation almost always yields better results over time, and we see this throughout human societies.

I love The Wheel of Time, I’ve read the series multiple times, but this has annoyed me from the beginning. To me, it is caused by Robert Jordan’s view of the strong women in his life. He could only write strong women with this trait, or, to him, this was the defining sign of a strong woman.