THE WHEEL OF TIME TIDBITS

-> Does Mat's love for Tuon humanize a tyrant? Well, humanizing a tyrant would kind of have to involve showing us human traits in that tyrant, which Mat's odd sense of love for her doesn't really do, y'know? What he feels for her tells us about him, not her, particularly with Jordan's deep reserve in writing matters of romance (and while Sanderson can write better romances, I get the feeling he was far too busy running around desperately trying to put plot threads to bed with some semblance of good order to spend time on The Grand Love Story of Mat and Tuon, you feel me?) So, Mat getting little heart flutters around Tuon doesn't make Tuon any less of what she is.

-> or does it make Mat complicit in her crimes? Given how explicitly and entirely he has no idea what he's getting into with her and with the Seanchan in general, I'm very leery of the idea that he can be considered complicit at any point during the on-page story. Sure, if he stays with her in the long run he'll end up getting molded more and more into what being the Prince of the Ravens is all about, and complicity will come there, but the simple fact of falling in love with Tuon doesn't equal automatic complicity in the iron fist of the Seanchan Empire.

Overall, too, I think the framing of this question kind of misunderstands one of the themes of the series. Jordan is pretty clear, although less explicit than with some of his other themes, that being a leader means sometimes having to be a complete bastard, and also that someone newly come into leadership can't just march in and completely upend generations of ingrained cultural practice. They can make changes, sure, and even pretty big ones, but those changes come at a huge cost, especially when the newly-minted leader in question doesn't have the benefit of being ta'veren (ie wearing plot armor). The farther they push their people away from what those people have always known, the more resistance, rebellion, or outright failure they're going to encounter, and making changes is always better done through maneuvering and careful long-term pressure rather than simple fiat.

And, similarly, crime is very much in the eye of the beholder -- or rather, the society of the beholder. The Seanchan Empire is a dictatorship, no doubt about it. What they consider criminal, and what they consider perfectly hunkydory, are deliberately quite alien to the people of Randland, to the Aiel, and probably even to folks beyond the Waste, though we don't ever get their opinions on the matter directly. But then, some of the standards of Randland are equally cockeyed to us as the readers. And judging Tuon by standards altogether different from the ones she was brought up with and trained to her bones to uphold.... eh, I don't really buy it.

Stereotypes. While Jordan is generally good at treating his various factions as being full of individual people who aren't necessarily in ideological lockstep with each other, he still very aggressively assigns each group 1-2 dominant traits that every! single! member! must portray in constant overwhelming spades. And when I say "faction" I mean groups of any size and particularity from individual Ajahs all the way up to "all women ever." The most egregious is the "slut" trait. There is absolutely zero reason, none whatsoever, for the Green Ajah to be the "man-crazy" Ajah, other than a sort of oppositional parallelism to the Red, but that stereotype is chokingly pervasive. Similarly, every single Domani woman is almost obsessively seductive. Is there not a single woman from Arad Doman who isn't lounging around in skin-tight clothes and fluttering her eyelashes at men? C'mon.

Feminism. I'm ambivalent on this one, because it's really clear that Jordan is doing his absolute damnedest to write a traditionally-styled high fantasy epic that empowers women and treats them as equal players, and in the context of the time that WoT was being written, he does a really good job! Contrast with contemporaries like ASOIAF, Shannara, etc, and by comparison Jordan's practically knocking it out of the park. But man, he still falls flat on his face in so many places. This is related to the stereotypes point above: his women are not nearly as varied in personality and particularly interpersonal skills as they ought to be, and in particular they are almost always controlling, backstabby, and mildly-to-majorly condescending toward the men they interact with. While the women in WoT are empowered and capable, the gender segregation (everywhere except among the Seanchan and Darkfriends, interestingly) is deeply pervasive and nigh-impregnable.