But what about the mysterious good witch?

Angela the Herbalist and her werecat
companion Solembum

When reading my Females in Fantasy page I can hear you all asking me "But what about the mysterious good witch?" The wise women, the funny and sharp-witted women of power who appear at odd moments and/or are sought after by the protagonists for aid/advice. This is a trope we all know about and Angela the Herbalist from Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle is who come to mind for me when hearing it. Similar to the wise sage, what distinguishes one from the other is these white witches (for lack of a better term) are typically portrayed as having an agenda of their own, sporadically working with or fighting alongside the protagonists less because they see the necessity of it and more because they want to for their own personal and/or mysterious reasons. I cannot say more because this class of character is more a thing of fairy tales & short stories as opposed to Fantasy literature and, besides, such white witches are near-always so different from one another that trying to wrap them up any more tightly into a category together would be like trying to wrap a cactus in silk, the needles endlessly piercing and poking through the defined parameters one is trying to set.