Wasn't Tam with Perrin's army though? And Birgitte had died by that point. The whole thing was she needed to show them that 1.) she wasn't dead and 2.) that all hope wasn't lost.
then on page 824 near the bottom she talks about waving the sword and holding the sword
and then the next page...
To be fair, even at the time Elayne herself commented about how silly it was and how she didn't know if she'd even be able to swing the thing. But a queens gotta do what a queens gotta do!
And I agree with Tazren, I wasn't surprised. If anything, it was an amusing little section in a time when...
Both times "Oh he prefers men." came up I mentally rolled my eyes. It was forced, it wasn't needed and didn't add anything to the story other than to shut people up about the "Lack" of gay characters in the story.
I really didn't like how it was 900 pages of fighting. I would have prefered 500...