YES, Siuan's death was Bury Your Gays, for multiple reasons.
-The narrative framing of her death focused SPECIFICALLY around her queerness, w her love for Moiraine being the core centerpiece of her last words, & Moiraine' grief over her death serving as character motivation in her battle with Lanfear
-It was RIGHT after she reconciled with Moiraine. Killing queer women right after getting together/back together with their love, and the narrative implicitly treating that love as the inevitable source of their doom, (whether textually or meta-textually), is also a CLASSIC element of the BYG trope. They did that to Siuan.
-In-universe homophobia has never been a prerequisite of the trope. Itβs about the NARRATIVE punishing the character for the queerness, them being treated as disposable due to their identities, or having their queerness/the grief of their lover be the focal point of their deathβ¦ All boxes checked.
-Siuan in the books was a powerful, competent Amyrlin who was blindsided by the coup, and who always supported the Dragon.
They also had her oppose Moiraine last season to fuel Moiraine's story even though that was a disservice to her own character, then had her do a 180 and get back on track with her canon storyline...Only to give her zero agency all season and completely disempowered her. In this season they had EVERYONE warning her about the coup and her blithely ignoring it, and had her initial ascension to the Seat be a total fluke. Essentially the only thing LEFT of her character in the books was her loving Moiraine.
It reduced a powerful, complex queer black woman to her relationship w the white heroine of the story, then killed her, repeatedly emphasizing her relationship to Moiraine as her downfall. Bury Your Gays, (along with Ihvon) and since S3 killed off no less FIVE black characters prematurely, racist as well.
-Thereβs always SOME excuse or reason why THIS TIME itβs okay to kill the black character(x5), kill the queer character (x2), etc.
-This goal-post shifting ignores the fact that this type of criticism is never about one individual storyβs merits, but the broader picture of representation in media it falls into.
-Siuan's death as Bury Your Gays is about the PATTERN of queer women being literally TEN TO ONE (yes, there are statistics) disproportionately likely to have narratives ending in tragedy over happiness, and the PATTERN of disproportionate levels of violence being done to black and other dark-skinned POC characters...
No matter what the justifications there are for ONE death, within ONE particular story, it's always been bigger than that.