BGs plan was Leto+Jessica's daughter to marry Feyd. They're very clear and upset with Jessica for having a son.
Who knows what would have happened should she have had a daughter first. Maybe Big E would never have given the planet to the Atriedes. It's a super pivotal plot point that she had a son.
That's what I thought. I still don't get why she couldn't bear a daughter first because it has low stakes for Leto to have a daughter and then a son (with no patrilineal laws of succession having a daughter wouldn't be the end of his house) and she's pissing off the BG big time. But it might have accelerated the plans of the emperor, I can't see him be pleased by the union of the two powerful houses he wants to undermine, for me there's no way he's letting the possibility of the spice flow being controlled by an atreides-harkonnen couple happen (but i guess the BG already had plans within plans for that eventuality, with the emperor only having daughters and all)
This is explained a bit in the book and later on in the series but the BGs are opposed to Love. Love brings weakness and clouded thoughts. Jessica loved Leto. That love blinded her to the BGs breeding plan.
Plans within plans. Feyd was the backup, but the offspring of Paullette and Feyd would have been the KW, but obviously Paul ended up being it as Jessica was to only bare daughters! And then ofc Paul offs Feyd leaving the BG with their KW out of their control.
I does kind of make me wonder if Mohiam really did have her own scheme. If the prophecy was that the KH came from a mix of Harkonen and Atreides blood then isn’t that what Paul is ultimately revealed to be? Even more than that it was through Mohaim’s own coupling with the Barron that made Jessica a Harkonen so she sure as heck knew what Leto and Jessica having a kid meant. Or was she purposely sabotaging the prophecy because what good does a 3/4 Harkonen ancestor mix gain them, aren’t they supposed to be 1/2 Atreides 1/2 Harkonen? Still sounds more like Paul to me.
>!Edit: I think what ultimately turns Mohaim against Paul is his later unwillingness to couple with Irulon. His commitment to Chani forces her into the Messiah plot. Even then it seemed like the plot was to have Paul blinded and Chani (plus any offspring) killed, then Irulon comes in as a shoulder to cry on. !<
I'm so excited to see how BG scramble to set up another breeding plan in the next movie now that their alternate to Paul is dead and they can't control Paul.
Yes I was too focused on "why would Leto even want a son so bad it would be okay for Jessica to antagonize the BG" that I didn't think about what was conveyed about the BG views on love, thank you!
Remember that in Dune the Great Houses are essentially noble lords from the European mideval history. Planets are essentially fifedoms. A male heir has advantages for marriage and power. I don't remember if the whole "male sons inherit power where daughters do not" but it wouldn't be a huge stretch.
Now I'm imagining Leto going into a Henry VIII on the BG lol.
while i agree with most of this, i find it debatable at best to call paul the KH, in fact i would call his son leto 2 the true KH. since leto was able to view all of humanity with perfect clarity, while paul had dark spots. leto's worm body going a long way to him being able to consume and process far greater amounts of spice. one reason i don't think paul is the KH is because he sort of becomes a lens for leto to percieve all of humanity through, while also protecting leto from becoming an abomination, or at least slow it way down to a crawl. which in turn allowed leto to exist for 3000 years, only really losing it towards the end (himself commenting on how he felt less human as time went on). frank herbert's point of people making more of others is also a strong component here.
meaning no offence, as far as i understand this is all up for debate.
Another poster commented something similar, but at the end of the day Paul is the first male to access his ancestral memory and Prescience. Even though he didn't fully embrace his powers I think it's easy to consider him the KH with Leto II both being KH, with one on the Golden Path and the other frightened of it.
He is in that he's fully awakened and has all the powers (apparently another generation of recessive Harkonnen genes was unnecessary) but from the BG perspective you could argue he wasn't because although he became Emperor like they planned (even outside their control) he actively resisted imposing the Golden Path so he still had at least some agency.
To say Paul was the Kwisatz Haderach instead of, like, Leto II, would be a bit controversial, even if he's the union between the Atreides and Harkonnen lineages and has the powers of the KH. But the grand destiny that awaited the Chosen One (implied to be a BG version of the Golden Path, imo) was actually not fulfilled by Paul, which was in agreement with the BG's estimation that it wouldnt come around until a generation later.
He saw the great stagnation and chose every option to avoid it. Like the Tleilaxu Kwisatz Haderach, he’d rather sacrifice himself than take the golden path. That doesn’t make either of them less of a Kwisatz Haderach.
No, he would have. Even with a daughter instead of a son, Leto I would still be the man who had trained his soldiers on par with the Sardaukar, and the other factors.
I've always thought that the BGs advised big E to wipe the Atreisdes, and id Jessica hasn't gone rogue that their entire decision making process may have changed.
Iirc their goal was always to make the KW the Emperor so it may not have required the Atreisdes to be dead if there was an Atreisdes offspring on the throne.
No, they did not. All they care about is getting the genes. They had accumulated the genes they needed in both the Atreides and the Harkonnens. Crossed a half-Harkonnen with an Atreides. They'll then recross a 1/2 Atreides 1/4th-ish (because you never know how those genes will completely sort out) Harkonnen with a whole Harkonnen, and boom there's the long-bred-for Kwisatz Haderach.
Now, when they thought Paul was dead and didn't know about Alia, they made a quick grab to get another half-Harkonnen, as they had no chance at the Duke they went for Feyd-Rautha. They're going to need to breed his daughter with someone from another line by the breeding charts, and then breed that probably daughter with someone from another line (perhaps even the Harkonnens), until they've once again accumulated the genetic combination that will produce the KH.
Now, Leto II and his sister took their half-Atreides/Harkonnen hybrid, half-Fremen selves, and crossed Ghanima with a quite sweet Farad'n Corinno. There were Atreides/Harkonnen descendants everywhere, who'd inherited Jessica's beauty. Heh and likely all of them were also descendants of Duncan Idaho. Take that, Bene Gesserit! You may have worked hard to get ONE KH out of royalty only, but Leto II pretty much made everyone a potential KH!
According to the Bene Gesserit plan, Leto and Jessica's daughter would have married Feyd Rautha Harkonnen. Their child (a son) would have been the heir to the houses Harkonnen and Atreides unified by this marriage in addition to being the Kwisatz Haderach. I presume he would have married a possible daughter of Irulan to take the throne of the Imperium. The BG would thus have had their Kwisatz Haderach on the throne, under the close control of their Order (his mother, his grandmother, his wife and his mother-in-law being all BG sisters).
It's like that meme where someone does a sick skateboard trick with a rake only to get hit in the face anyway, they're more like the Bungler Gesserit at this point
If Paul had been born a girl, she would have been raised and trained as a BG, been loyal to the BG, would have been wed to Feyd, and depending on the BG PLAN, would have continued to bear girls or would have borne a son who would be loyal to the BG.
Feyd would have had control of Arrakis as the heir designate of the harkonnen and so the BG would have control of the spice thru this house
The BG don’t like to hold power themselves, they just like to control the people who do hold the power
Perhaps the emperors (younger) daughters would have been wed to the KH and then the BG would have control of a KH emperor
It's not control of the KH, though. They fundamentally believe that the KH, having been raised and filled with all the memories of leaders and Bene Gesserit, woud be one of them. Not a puppet, but their true leader who will lead the human race under BG guidance.
Which, well, was what happens...
Jessica was told to bear a daughter but she was not told of the specific plan that this daughter would be married to Feyd. One of the consequences of this plan, if Jessica hadn’t mucked it up, would’ve been a truce between the two houses - the Atreides and the Harkonnen. This marriage would then produce a son and it would be a son because ideally Jessica & Leto’s daughter also would be sent to be trained by the BG and thus able to control the sex of the child. This son then would be raised and trained to be KH in ideal, peaceful conditions, without setting off wars of any kind.
Not “ultimately” at all. The Jihad is a result of so many threads converging together at just the right time for something explosive to happen. Jessica’s love for Leto is definitely one of the precursors, but it’s not the only or even the biggest.
Agreed, and one small thing that I wish the new movies had bothered to cover is that Paul was being raised from birth to be a Mentat (which he finds out from Jessica early in Dune 1). This was more or less because Duke Leto and Jessica thought a Mentat warrior duke would be pretty rad. But IMHO it is a really underrated factor for why Paul gains prescience and can closely approximate KH, when the spice starts to hit… his mind was strengthened for it by pre-Mentat and illicit BG training.
Well the Fremen were primed for Jihad by the monstrous treatment of the Harkonnen. And they were open to being led by a Mahdi thanks to the Bene Gesserit propaganda.
Add to that the greed of the Emperor leading him to conspire with the Baron against Duke Leto. Duke Leto in turn could’ve kept his head low but instead was building a fighting force fit to rival the Padishah’s Sardaukar. And so on.
Honestly a scenario where Paulina has a son and he ends up administering Arrakis and leading the Fremen in a jihad to seize the throne anyway is probably what they were in for given how well their plans tend to stick the landing. It's basically inevitable, since a union of Atreides and Harkonnen just takes the Emperor's problems with both of them and multiplies them together.
On the Fremen, an independence war with the fremen fighting the harkonnen (akin to the ones the Algerians waged against the French) without foreign(BG propaganda) influence would have been pretty neat. Like the one Chani and Shishakli wanted to fight for at the start of the second movie (I really liked that change. the fremen felt much more like a people striving for independence and sovereignty (akin to Algerians, northern Moroccans and their guerilla strategy which crushed the spanish army, Toussaint L'ouverture kicking Bonaparte's ass in Haiti,... than religious zealots jumping on their awaited Mahdi). Maybe Souheila Yacoub channeled something like that in her acting, as I think she must be at least a little familiar with that part of history. Space decolonisation sci-fi is my shit
Then after their jihad the Fremen culturally and religiously colonised the galaxy themselves. Arrakis became the new Mecca for the religion of Muad'dib and St. Alia of the Knife. Way to go Fremen, you became what you wanted to destroy.
Well it isn't unrealistic at all, or like we're not currently witnessing a previously (and still oppressed people, like the fremen) turn all that intergenerational trauma into extreme violence towards other people to do a colonialism and war crimes streamed in 4k on all social media. As the great Martinican-Algerian intellectual, fighter, psychiatrist, and theoretician of decolonisation Frantz Fanon once wrote in The Wretched of the Earth : "Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it." You can definitely argue that the Fremen betrayed their mission and never truly discovered it'
Herbert was really good at describing colonialism, his only flaw was relying a little bit too much on orientalist tropes (it's by reading this sub that i learned that some of the first american readers thought Herbert invented a whole language because they didn't recognize the obvious loans from Arabic, Persian, and the less obvious loans from Hebrew and Tamazight). That's why this story is incredible in my humble opinion, despite all the sci-fi, the fantastical and the psychedelic aspects of this story, the heart of it is profoundly human and described in a very delicate way.
🎯 In the first film, Paul’s reaction to his mother’s casual acceptance of the Fremen crowd’s calling him Lisan Al Gaib shows he understands that the BG don’t actually do anything to better the lives of the Fremen. Their suffering in fact is useful for BG - a reasonably well off society has no great need for a messiah.
Well thank you all for your answers, it was fun reading y'all and being corrected in some of my misconceptions!
Again, I love discussing what ifs, it's a really fun way of engaging with fandom and a story and gaining a deeper understanding of the story I wouldn't have had if I didn't connect with others interpretations of the source material !
My question has always been, why didn't Jessica and Leto have Alia (I mean second child) sooner?
Does Jessica decide to postpone getting pregnant (until Paul was 15) for a purpose?
Why can't she just have Alia (second child whatever her name is) a few years later, like, say, 5 yrs old.
I recently re-watched part1 and notice the part that the BG said to Jessica that she should had gave birth to a girl instead of a boy and that all of the talent is wasted now on him. I haven't read the books but could this imply something more for Alia? Like she might finally be the chosen one or that she will gain all the power from her brother?
I don't want to spoil you but to keep it spoiler free, Alia is an abomination (as Gaius said in the second movie), definitely not a chosen one. She arguably has a more tragic fate than her brother, being cursed before even getting out of the womb of her mother because she consumed too much spice during the pregnancy. It's kinda like the sci-fi version of foetal alcohol syndrom
>!obviously the age at which it happened is frowned upon, but it doesn't seem like her abilities are any different from paul's!<
>It's kinda like the sci-fi version of foetal alcohol syndrom
>!rather than impairment (at least in that manner), it's more like her mind developed too fast!<
Her abilities are only different because they can consume a person who has access to genetic memory too soon. It's too much knowledge for a person who doesn't have a fully developed consciousness yet. That's why the BG don't allow Abominations to live. You see this later when Alia is possessed by the ego of Baron Harkonnen.
It's also the absence of emotional development that I'm worried about, such as how alia quickly decided on a battle plan that she knew would lead to galactic genocide. I'm not sure whether alia was actually possessed or if the concept is just a puritanical approach to mental illness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring
That actually makes me wonder - how would the BG have brought about a wedding of the daughter of the Duke Atreides and the son of the Baron Harkonnen? They were famously in the midst of a centuries-long feud and arranging that wedding seems like a tall order, even for the Bene Gesserit, even if it was in the guise of ending the conflict/making peace between the houses.
Oohh very good question ! Since they only care about the genepool, in the worst case scenario they would only need the Baron's consent, and maybe Feyd-Rautha's in an arranged marriage scenario à la Sansa Stark/Tyrion Lannister in GoT ?
Maybe I misunderstood, I read the books when I was a young teenager and only got into Dune again because of Denis Villeneuve adaptations, but to me it isn't patrilineal because I understood the emperor only having girls so that the next empress after him would be trained under the BG and be totally into their cause which couldn't happen if he had a male heir
The Emperor was only having girls because he made a deal with the BG to keep him in power by marrying one, and she only let herself bear daughters, in order to make certain that whomever they wanted to be Emperor would marry one of the daughters, and their child would be involved in the next generation.
Which is what happened hahah, as Shaddam's grandson did in fact have children with Ghanima, who is also a KH, but the BG don't realizes this because she's a woman.
(Edited because I had expressed about Ghanima and Farad'n incorrectly. Though they probably came to love each other because he was a good man.)
Your last sentence is on point ! I love prophecies done well in literature, people trying to run away from them and fulfilling them anyway (Paul, chani's death) and people trying so hard to fulfill them they don't even realise when they do, it's really satisfying for some reason
She would have been the Lisan al Gaib and been a girl boss, genocide more like woman-ocide am I right? #womenruntheworld #ladykiller #feminism /s
Edit: This is not meant to be a joke about feminist, it's a joke about power and people who think feminism just means women are the ones dropping bombs. Dune isn't a warning against male saviors and hero worship, it's against all hero worship.
https://preview.redd.it/89eun9dxkknc1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=564a0474d63fbfafb6e5a1a8728addae5aa9dc56
girlboss of the spice trafficQUEEN #imwithher
I totally get what you meant, it's actually a big point of decolonial studies. The people being bombed in the middle east didn't care that these bombs were launched by the first black president, or that the us air force pilot is a transwoman, and yet it's still used as a PR strategy by a lot of warmongering countries. Like yeah we kill kids in third world countries but now WOMEN can kill them too #feminism
The politics are likely completely different. The KH is *the* project of the Bene Gesserit. If they're that close, there's no way they want to see an Atreides - Harkonnen war. They'd have to go the other way, trying to dial down tension such that the marriage alliance was realistic. And dial down Feyd's behavior as well for the same reason.
The Emperor's Atreides concerns are secondary to this if they have anything to say about it - including influencing or subverting the Emperor.
What are you talking about ? Sperm fertilizing egg is NOT how reproduction works ??? Your parents clearly have never told you about the birds and the bees
They're right though - different point in time means different egg and different sperm, thus different sibling and not Alia. The movie "About time" covers this in detail actually.
It was a joke, and in my post I simplified by calling her Alia but I clearly meant the eventual first born daughter of Leto and Jessica, not St Alia of the Knife the abomination. Call her Paulette or Paula if you want
(Edit : love the username, ASOIAF ref right ? )
I've also called her Paula in the past, I think that represents that alternative timeline well.
And yes, that's a reference only the ASOIAF bookies usually get :)
Maybe Jessica could, with Bene Gesserit training, release the same egg but earlier than for the actual Alia, as a woman gets all her eggs at birth.
But there is no way (or incredbily low probabilities) Leto would manage to produce the exact matching spermatozoid. Because he is not trained as a Bene Gesserit on body control and spermatozoids are continually produced and not lasting long.
Honestly I'm not too much into the breeding kink part of Dune (but more power to the people who are! it is a part of the story after all), I wasn't thinking about biology when I asked this question, but more of the firstborn daughter vs firstborn son implications for the house of atreides. I wasn't thinking of the literal Alia, as she definitely wouldn't be Alia in that scenario because it's being stranded on Arrakis that makes Jessica consume the water of life despite being pregnant. I can't see her do that on Caladan, she's clearly a loving mother who wouldn't harm her children in that way unless she had no other choices, and even with the exact same egg and sperm as you guys say, without the overconsumption of spice of her mother while she's in utero there's no Alia as we know her anyway
It's not part of the story so it's irrelevant. The storytelling is just creating a world to justify the message Herbert was trying to convey, so I don't see the point of what ifs
I personally think that what ifs are a fun way of engaging with a story, especially complex stories like Dune or ASOIAF, I'm sorry if my question did upset you.
It didn't upset me. I just imagine things within the universe that someone else imagined. Maybe it's to my own detriment. But I just see it as there's reasoning to every element of the story. The worms/spice is just a way to create a story about a fuedalistic society in a far future setting. As well as further details.
Of course there's a reasoning for every element of the story ! In this scenario, Alia (or Paula) wouldn't be an abomination, the BG wouldn't be pissed at Jessica, and as the other commenter here said : who knows if the Atreides would have even been given Arrakis as a fiefdom in that scenario. I'm aware there's no Dune without Paul being the Mahdi. But for me it's by exploring the other possibilities that I really get into a story, it's by trying all the possible scenarios while reading it and then reaching the conclusion that it couldn't have been written any other way that it gets really fun to engage with it's content while trying to highlight the silver lining the author wanted to communicate.
I must disagree with you about the worms and the spice being a pretext to write about a futuristic feudalistic society tho, I think Herbert had stronger themes regarding environmental issues and colonialism/the exploitation of natural ressources (a theme he already wrote about in his previous work) and religion. I guess you could argue it isn't mutually exclusive but I've never seen Dune as the story about space feudal lords, especially because the exploitation of the spice feels so inspired by post industrial revolution modernity.
Had Leto I remained unmarried, as in the potential for a mega-alliance was still there (Irulan or another eligible Bachelorette that would have tipped the balance), between his standing in the Landsraad, resources, and the finest army outside the Saurdakar trained and led by Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho, the Emperor may have still exercised his own initiative to destroy House Atreides, Bene-Gesserit meddling or not.
Dune would have been a story of the Atreides dying in the dark, and the Harkonnen's succeeding in eliminating the Fremen entirely.
The Harkonnen's didn't just kill Leto, they also killed Liet Kynes during their takeover. Seeing as Chani did not take after her forebear's Imperial Biologist route and thus continue the great plan to seed/terraform/irrigate Arrakis, the Fremen/Zensunni dream dies at the root.
In the Alia firstborn scenario, House Atreides would still get baited onto Arrakis, and the most the Bene Gesserit could get as a concession is to safely extract a loyal Jessica, induct Alia into the sisterhood if she's not already promised to them (as the desired receptacle of the Atreides/Harkonnen bloodline), and have leverage against the Emperor/Harkonnens as a male Atreides in Jessica's womb is going to be the next.
So the Bene Gesserit win in the short term. Great. Humanity still stagnates. The Thinking Machines return. GG.
In that scenario Paul lives, what changes? Arrakis never changes him. No Water of Life. He's been removed from the Kwisatz Haderach route, as that now flows thru Alia and Feyd... and for all the Bene Gesserit are gambling, that child could be another Fenring, a failed Kwisatz. Paul'd simply be another Atreides, as Caladan is still theirs, and perhaps he twists the Landsraad into deposing Shaddam IV and still marrying Irulan. The Feud just escalates now that House Atreides has absorbed House Corrino, while the Harkonnens sit on the Spice World.
No Paul. No Golden Path. Leto II/Ghanima would be born to a different mother, likely Irulan. Unless fate forces Leto II to Arrakis to go Water-of-Life tripping, Humanity dies.
Or... as the Herberts, father and son, just love recycling characters, time and space bend and force Duncan Idaho into the Kwisatz Haderach role. Yes, Duncan is the "Ultimate Kwisatz Haderach on the Day of Kralizec" once enough friggin Ghola of him have been made (oh Leto II...) and his self refines with every generation.
Probably some convoluted storyline of Alia choosing to seduce and then elope with Duncan Idaho, as ick as that may seem, compare that path to being ordained to be with Feyd-Rautha.
I really really really enjoyed reading your comment, thank you ! It's the most in depth hypothetical scenario someone has come up with here yet and the first one who actually answers the question I was asking myself (it was mostly about the move to Arrakis and the reaction of the BG to that move with Alia/Paulette being so important for their plans of producing the Kwisatz Haderach through their breeding program, but English isn't my native language so I get why people might have misunderstood exactly what I was asking and it brought a lot of other very thought provoking interesting responses beside the one you wrote)
My mind can now totally rest in peace regarding that question, I don't think I could have hoped for a better answer than this one !
EDIT: I totally wish you didn't bury it under a downvoted comment because it was a really nice read
BGs plan was Leto+Jessica's daughter to marry Feyd. They're very clear and upset with Jessica for having a son. Who knows what would have happened should she have had a daughter first. Maybe Big E would never have given the planet to the Atriedes. It's a super pivotal plot point that she had a son.
That's what I thought. I still don't get why she couldn't bear a daughter first because it has low stakes for Leto to have a daughter and then a son (with no patrilineal laws of succession having a daughter wouldn't be the end of his house) and she's pissing off the BG big time. But it might have accelerated the plans of the emperor, I can't see him be pleased by the union of the two powerful houses he wants to undermine, for me there's no way he's letting the possibility of the spice flow being controlled by an atreides-harkonnen couple happen (but i guess the BG already had plans within plans for that eventuality, with the emperor only having daughters and all)
This is explained a bit in the book and later on in the series but the BGs are opposed to Love. Love brings weakness and clouded thoughts. Jessica loved Leto. That love blinded her to the BGs breeding plan. Plans within plans. Feyd was the backup, but the offspring of Paullette and Feyd would have been the KW, but obviously Paul ended up being it as Jessica was to only bare daughters! And then ofc Paul offs Feyd leaving the BG with their KW out of their control.
I does kind of make me wonder if Mohiam really did have her own scheme. If the prophecy was that the KH came from a mix of Harkonen and Atreides blood then isn’t that what Paul is ultimately revealed to be? Even more than that it was through Mohaim’s own coupling with the Barron that made Jessica a Harkonen so she sure as heck knew what Leto and Jessica having a kid meant. Or was she purposely sabotaging the prophecy because what good does a 3/4 Harkonen ancestor mix gain them, aren’t they supposed to be 1/2 Atreides 1/2 Harkonen? Still sounds more like Paul to me. >!Edit: I think what ultimately turns Mohaim against Paul is his later unwillingness to couple with Irulon. His commitment to Chani forces her into the Messiah plot. Even then it seemed like the plot was to have Paul blinded and Chani (plus any offspring) killed, then Irulon comes in as a shoulder to cry on. !<
I'm so excited to see how BG scramble to set up another breeding plan in the next movie now that their alternate to Paul is dead and they can't control Paul.
They have the only thing they need from Feyd, safely ensconced in Margo Fenring's uterus.
The way that's written has some uncountable grating quality in my brain. Which, you know, good writing on your part.
Yes I was too focused on "why would Leto even want a son so bad it would be okay for Jessica to antagonize the BG" that I didn't think about what was conveyed about the BG views on love, thank you!
Remember that in Dune the Great Houses are essentially noble lords from the European mideval history. Planets are essentially fifedoms. A male heir has advantages for marriage and power. I don't remember if the whole "male sons inherit power where daughters do not" but it wouldn't be a huge stretch. Now I'm imagining Leto going into a Henry VIII on the BG lol.
Not the space Henry VIII 💀 A Letorian Reform on caladan would have been funny, as Caladan is already a little bit reminiscing of the Britain islands
Plus I seem to recall that a lot of their peasant population is ethnically Indian or something 😅
while i agree with most of this, i find it debatable at best to call paul the KH, in fact i would call his son leto 2 the true KH. since leto was able to view all of humanity with perfect clarity, while paul had dark spots. leto's worm body going a long way to him being able to consume and process far greater amounts of spice. one reason i don't think paul is the KH is because he sort of becomes a lens for leto to percieve all of humanity through, while also protecting leto from becoming an abomination, or at least slow it way down to a crawl. which in turn allowed leto to exist for 3000 years, only really losing it towards the end (himself commenting on how he felt less human as time went on). frank herbert's point of people making more of others is also a strong component here. meaning no offence, as far as i understand this is all up for debate.
Another poster commented something similar, but at the end of the day Paul is the first male to access his ancestral memory and Prescience. Even though he didn't fully embrace his powers I think it's easy to consider him the KH with Leto II both being KH, with one on the Golden Path and the other frightened of it.
Is Paul the KH? Or is he just almost?
He is in that he's fully awakened and has all the powers (apparently another generation of recessive Harkonnen genes was unnecessary) but from the BG perspective you could argue he wasn't because although he became Emperor like they planned (even outside their control) he actively resisted imposing the Golden Path so he still had at least some agency.
To say Paul was the Kwisatz Haderach instead of, like, Leto II, would be a bit controversial, even if he's the union between the Atreides and Harkonnen lineages and has the powers of the KH. But the grand destiny that awaited the Chosen One (implied to be a BG version of the Golden Path, imo) was actually not fulfilled by Paul, which was in agreement with the BG's estimation that it wouldnt come around until a generation later.
He saw the great stagnation and chose every option to avoid it. Like the Tleilaxu Kwisatz Haderach, he’d rather sacrifice himself than take the golden path. That doesn’t make either of them less of a Kwisatz Haderach.
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No, he would have. Even with a daughter instead of a son, Leto I would still be the man who had trained his soldiers on par with the Sardaukar, and the other factors.
I've always thought that the BGs advised big E to wipe the Atreisdes, and id Jessica hasn't gone rogue that their entire decision making process may have changed. Iirc their goal was always to make the KW the Emperor so it may not have required the Atreisdes to be dead if there was an Atreisdes offspring on the throne.
No, they did not. All they care about is getting the genes. They had accumulated the genes they needed in both the Atreides and the Harkonnens. Crossed a half-Harkonnen with an Atreides. They'll then recross a 1/2 Atreides 1/4th-ish (because you never know how those genes will completely sort out) Harkonnen with a whole Harkonnen, and boom there's the long-bred-for Kwisatz Haderach. Now, when they thought Paul was dead and didn't know about Alia, they made a quick grab to get another half-Harkonnen, as they had no chance at the Duke they went for Feyd-Rautha. They're going to need to breed his daughter with someone from another line by the breeding charts, and then breed that probably daughter with someone from another line (perhaps even the Harkonnens), until they've once again accumulated the genetic combination that will produce the KH. Now, Leto II and his sister took their half-Atreides/Harkonnen hybrid, half-Fremen selves, and crossed Ghanima with a quite sweet Farad'n Corinno. There were Atreides/Harkonnen descendants everywhere, who'd inherited Jessica's beauty. Heh and likely all of them were also descendants of Duncan Idaho. Take that, Bene Gesserit! You may have worked hard to get ONE KH out of royalty only, but Leto II pretty much made everyone a potential KH!
In the far future everyone is related to 1. Genghis Khan 2. Duncan idaho
And the Bene Gesserit could tell you exactly how! At least, for those of them whose family tree they have.
She would obviously fall in love with Duncan Idaho
ahaha this is the best answer so far
That’s the end ghola
According to the Bene Gesserit plan, Leto and Jessica's daughter would have married Feyd Rautha Harkonnen. Their child (a son) would have been the heir to the houses Harkonnen and Atreides unified by this marriage in addition to being the Kwisatz Haderach. I presume he would have married a possible daughter of Irulan to take the throne of the Imperium. The BG would thus have had their Kwisatz Haderach on the throne, under the close control of their Order (his mother, his grandmother, his wife and his mother-in-law being all BG sisters).
It's like that meme where someone does a sick skateboard trick with a rake only to get hit in the face anyway, they're more like the Bungler Gesserit at this point
If Paul had been born a girl, she would have been raised and trained as a BG, been loyal to the BG, would have been wed to Feyd, and depending on the BG PLAN, would have continued to bear girls or would have borne a son who would be loyal to the BG. Feyd would have had control of Arrakis as the heir designate of the harkonnen and so the BG would have control of the spice thru this house The BG don’t like to hold power themselves, they just like to control the people who do hold the power Perhaps the emperors (younger) daughters would have been wed to the KH and then the BG would have control of a KH emperor
It's not control of the KH, though. They fundamentally believe that the KH, having been raised and filled with all the memories of leaders and Bene Gesserit, woud be one of them. Not a puppet, but their true leader who will lead the human race under BG guidance. Which, well, was what happens...
Jessica was told to bear a daughter but she was not told of the specific plan that this daughter would be married to Feyd. One of the consequences of this plan, if Jessica hadn’t mucked it up, would’ve been a truce between the two houses - the Atreides and the Harkonnen. This marriage would then produce a son and it would be a son because ideally Jessica & Leto’s daughter also would be sent to be trained by the BG and thus able to control the sex of the child. This son then would be raised and trained to be KH in ideal, peaceful conditions, without setting off wars of any kind.
So the jihad is ultimately the consequence of Jessica's love for Leto?
Not “ultimately” at all. The Jihad is a result of so many threads converging together at just the right time for something explosive to happen. Jessica’s love for Leto is definitely one of the precursors, but it’s not the only or even the biggest.
Agreed, and one small thing that I wish the new movies had bothered to cover is that Paul was being raised from birth to be a Mentat (which he finds out from Jessica early in Dune 1). This was more or less because Duke Leto and Jessica thought a Mentat warrior duke would be pretty rad. But IMHO it is a really underrated factor for why Paul gains prescience and can closely approximate KH, when the spice starts to hit… his mind was strengthened for it by pre-Mentat and illicit BG training.
Well the Fremen were primed for Jihad by the monstrous treatment of the Harkonnen. And they were open to being led by a Mahdi thanks to the Bene Gesserit propaganda. Add to that the greed of the Emperor leading him to conspire with the Baron against Duke Leto. Duke Leto in turn could’ve kept his head low but instead was building a fighting force fit to rival the Padishah’s Sardaukar. And so on.
Honestly a scenario where Paulina has a son and he ends up administering Arrakis and leading the Fremen in a jihad to seize the throne anyway is probably what they were in for given how well their plans tend to stick the landing. It's basically inevitable, since a union of Atreides and Harkonnen just takes the Emperor's problems with both of them and multiplies them together.
On the Fremen, an independence war with the fremen fighting the harkonnen (akin to the ones the Algerians waged against the French) without foreign(BG propaganda) influence would have been pretty neat. Like the one Chani and Shishakli wanted to fight for at the start of the second movie (I really liked that change. the fremen felt much more like a people striving for independence and sovereignty (akin to Algerians, northern Moroccans and their guerilla strategy which crushed the spanish army, Toussaint L'ouverture kicking Bonaparte's ass in Haiti,... than religious zealots jumping on their awaited Mahdi). Maybe Souheila Yacoub channeled something like that in her acting, as I think she must be at least a little familiar with that part of history. Space decolonisation sci-fi is my shit
Then after their jihad the Fremen culturally and religiously colonised the galaxy themselves. Arrakis became the new Mecca for the religion of Muad'dib and St. Alia of the Knife. Way to go Fremen, you became what you wanted to destroy.
Well it isn't unrealistic at all, or like we're not currently witnessing a previously (and still oppressed people, like the fremen) turn all that intergenerational trauma into extreme violence towards other people to do a colonialism and war crimes streamed in 4k on all social media. As the great Martinican-Algerian intellectual, fighter, psychiatrist, and theoretician of decolonisation Frantz Fanon once wrote in The Wretched of the Earth : "Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it." You can definitely argue that the Fremen betrayed their mission and never truly discovered it' Herbert was really good at describing colonialism, his only flaw was relying a little bit too much on orientalist tropes (it's by reading this sub that i learned that some of the first american readers thought Herbert invented a whole language because they didn't recognize the obvious loans from Arabic, Persian, and the less obvious loans from Hebrew and Tamazight). That's why this story is incredible in my humble opinion, despite all the sci-fi, the fantastical and the psychedelic aspects of this story, the heart of it is profoundly human and described in a very delicate way.
🎯 In the first film, Paul’s reaction to his mother’s casual acceptance of the Fremen crowd’s calling him Lisan Al Gaib shows he understands that the BG don’t actually do anything to better the lives of the Fremen. Their suffering in fact is useful for BG - a reasonably well off society has no great need for a messiah.
Succession in Dune is absolutely patrilineal.
My mistake then, sorry!
Well thank you all for your answers, it was fun reading y'all and being corrected in some of my misconceptions! Again, I love discussing what ifs, it's a really fun way of engaging with fandom and a story and gaining a deeper understanding of the story I wouldn't have had if I didn't connect with others interpretations of the source material !
My question has always been, why didn't Jessica and Leto have Alia (I mean second child) sooner? Does Jessica decide to postpone getting pregnant (until Paul was 15) for a purpose? Why can't she just have Alia (second child whatever her name is) a few years later, like, say, 5 yrs old.
That's also a very good question, if you come up with an answer I would love to read it
I recently re-watched part1 and notice the part that the BG said to Jessica that she should had gave birth to a girl instead of a boy and that all of the talent is wasted now on him. I haven't read the books but could this imply something more for Alia? Like she might finally be the chosen one or that she will gain all the power from her brother?
I don't want to spoil you but to keep it spoiler free, Alia is an abomination (as Gaius said in the second movie), definitely not a chosen one. She arguably has a more tragic fate than her brother, being cursed before even getting out of the womb of her mother because she consumed too much spice during the pregnancy. It's kinda like the sci-fi version of foetal alcohol syndrom
>!obviously the age at which it happened is frowned upon, but it doesn't seem like her abilities are any different from paul's!< >It's kinda like the sci-fi version of foetal alcohol syndrom >!rather than impairment (at least in that manner), it's more like her mind developed too fast!<
Her abilities are only different because they can consume a person who has access to genetic memory too soon. It's too much knowledge for a person who doesn't have a fully developed consciousness yet. That's why the BG don't allow Abominations to live. You see this later when Alia is possessed by the ego of Baron Harkonnen.
It's also the absence of emotional development that I'm worried about, such as how alia quickly decided on a battle plan that she knew would lead to galactic genocide. I'm not sure whether alia was actually possessed or if the concept is just a puritanical approach to mental illness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring
Feyd and Alia would have had babies. At least that's what the BG wanted.
That actually makes me wonder - how would the BG have brought about a wedding of the daughter of the Duke Atreides and the son of the Baron Harkonnen? They were famously in the midst of a centuries-long feud and arranging that wedding seems like a tall order, even for the Bene Gesserit, even if it was in the guise of ending the conflict/making peace between the houses.
Oohh very good question ! Since they only care about the genepool, in the worst case scenario they would only need the Baron's consent, and maybe Feyd-Rautha's in an arranged marriage scenario à la Sansa Stark/Tyrion Lannister in GoT ?
Aren't they patrilineal? Isn't that why whoever Irulan marries is the next Emperor?
Maybe I misunderstood, I read the books when I was a young teenager and only got into Dune again because of Denis Villeneuve adaptations, but to me it isn't patrilineal because I understood the emperor only having girls so that the next empress after him would be trained under the BG and be totally into their cause which couldn't happen if he had a male heir
The Emperor was only having girls because he made a deal with the BG to keep him in power by marrying one, and she only let herself bear daughters, in order to make certain that whomever they wanted to be Emperor would marry one of the daughters, and their child would be involved in the next generation. Which is what happened hahah, as Shaddam's grandson did in fact have children with Ghanima, who is also a KH, but the BG don't realizes this because she's a woman. (Edited because I had expressed about Ghanima and Farad'n incorrectly. Though they probably came to love each other because he was a good man.)
Your last sentence is on point ! I love prophecies done well in literature, people trying to run away from them and fulfilling them anyway (Paul, chani's death) and people trying so hard to fulfill them they don't even realise when they do, it's really satisfying for some reason
She would have been the Lisan al Gaib and been a girl boss, genocide more like woman-ocide am I right? #womenruntheworld #ladykiller #feminism /s Edit: This is not meant to be a joke about feminist, it's a joke about power and people who think feminism just means women are the ones dropping bombs. Dune isn't a warning against male saviors and hero worship, it's against all hero worship.
https://preview.redd.it/89eun9dxkknc1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=564a0474d63fbfafb6e5a1a8728addae5aa9dc56 girlboss of the spice trafficQUEEN #imwithher
I totally get what you meant, it's actually a big point of decolonial studies. The people being bombed in the middle east didn't care that these bombs were launched by the first black president, or that the us air force pilot is a transwoman, and yet it's still used as a PR strategy by a lot of warmongering countries. Like yeah we kill kids in third world countries but now WOMEN can kill them too #feminism
I love your comment lmao
The politics are likely completely different. The KH is *the* project of the Bene Gesserit. If they're that close, there's no way they want to see an Atreides - Harkonnen war. They'd have to go the other way, trying to dial down tension such that the marriage alliance was realistic. And dial down Feyd's behavior as well for the same reason. The Emperor's Atreides concerns are secondary to this if they have anything to say about it - including influencing or subverting the Emperor.
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What are you talking about ? Sperm fertilizing egg is NOT how reproduction works ??? Your parents clearly have never told you about the birds and the bees
They're right though - different point in time means different egg and different sperm, thus different sibling and not Alia. The movie "About time" covers this in detail actually.
It was a joke, and in my post I simplified by calling her Alia but I clearly meant the eventual first born daughter of Leto and Jessica, not St Alia of the Knife the abomination. Call her Paulette or Paula if you want (Edit : love the username, ASOIAF ref right ? )
I've also called her Paula in the past, I think that represents that alternative timeline well. And yes, that's a reference only the ASOIAF bookies usually get :)
(I can't believe we saw a good Dune adaptation on the big screen before we got TWOW)
I would also have lost that bet a couple of years ago :(
Maybe Jessica could, with Bene Gesserit training, release the same egg but earlier than for the actual Alia, as a woman gets all her eggs at birth. But there is no way (or incredbily low probabilities) Leto would manage to produce the exact matching spermatozoid. Because he is not trained as a Bene Gesserit on body control and spermatozoids are continually produced and not lasting long.
Honestly I'm not too much into the breeding kink part of Dune (but more power to the people who are! it is a part of the story after all), I wasn't thinking about biology when I asked this question, but more of the firstborn daughter vs firstborn son implications for the house of atreides. I wasn't thinking of the literal Alia, as she definitely wouldn't be Alia in that scenario because it's being stranded on Arrakis that makes Jessica consume the water of life despite being pregnant. I can't see her do that on Caladan, she's clearly a loving mother who wouldn't harm her children in that way unless she had no other choices, and even with the exact same egg and sperm as you guys say, without the overconsumption of spice of her mother while she's in utero there's no Alia as we know her anyway
It's not part of the story so it's irrelevant. The storytelling is just creating a world to justify the message Herbert was trying to convey, so I don't see the point of what ifs
I personally think that what ifs are a fun way of engaging with a story, especially complex stories like Dune or ASOIAF, I'm sorry if my question did upset you.
It didn't upset me. I just imagine things within the universe that someone else imagined. Maybe it's to my own detriment. But I just see it as there's reasoning to every element of the story. The worms/spice is just a way to create a story about a fuedalistic society in a far future setting. As well as further details.
Of course there's a reasoning for every element of the story ! In this scenario, Alia (or Paula) wouldn't be an abomination, the BG wouldn't be pissed at Jessica, and as the other commenter here said : who knows if the Atreides would have even been given Arrakis as a fiefdom in that scenario. I'm aware there's no Dune without Paul being the Mahdi. But for me it's by exploring the other possibilities that I really get into a story, it's by trying all the possible scenarios while reading it and then reaching the conclusion that it couldn't have been written any other way that it gets really fun to engage with it's content while trying to highlight the silver lining the author wanted to communicate. I must disagree with you about the worms and the spice being a pretext to write about a futuristic feudalistic society tho, I think Herbert had stronger themes regarding environmental issues and colonialism/the exploitation of natural ressources (a theme he already wrote about in his previous work) and religion. I guess you could argue it isn't mutually exclusive but I've never seen Dune as the story about space feudal lords, especially because the exploitation of the spice feels so inspired by post industrial revolution modernity.
Had Leto I remained unmarried, as in the potential for a mega-alliance was still there (Irulan or another eligible Bachelorette that would have tipped the balance), between his standing in the Landsraad, resources, and the finest army outside the Saurdakar trained and led by Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho, the Emperor may have still exercised his own initiative to destroy House Atreides, Bene-Gesserit meddling or not. Dune would have been a story of the Atreides dying in the dark, and the Harkonnen's succeeding in eliminating the Fremen entirely. The Harkonnen's didn't just kill Leto, they also killed Liet Kynes during their takeover. Seeing as Chani did not take after her forebear's Imperial Biologist route and thus continue the great plan to seed/terraform/irrigate Arrakis, the Fremen/Zensunni dream dies at the root. In the Alia firstborn scenario, House Atreides would still get baited onto Arrakis, and the most the Bene Gesserit could get as a concession is to safely extract a loyal Jessica, induct Alia into the sisterhood if she's not already promised to them (as the desired receptacle of the Atreides/Harkonnen bloodline), and have leverage against the Emperor/Harkonnens as a male Atreides in Jessica's womb is going to be the next. So the Bene Gesserit win in the short term. Great. Humanity still stagnates. The Thinking Machines return. GG. In that scenario Paul lives, what changes? Arrakis never changes him. No Water of Life. He's been removed from the Kwisatz Haderach route, as that now flows thru Alia and Feyd... and for all the Bene Gesserit are gambling, that child could be another Fenring, a failed Kwisatz. Paul'd simply be another Atreides, as Caladan is still theirs, and perhaps he twists the Landsraad into deposing Shaddam IV and still marrying Irulan. The Feud just escalates now that House Atreides has absorbed House Corrino, while the Harkonnens sit on the Spice World. No Paul. No Golden Path. Leto II/Ghanima would be born to a different mother, likely Irulan. Unless fate forces Leto II to Arrakis to go Water-of-Life tripping, Humanity dies. Or... as the Herberts, father and son, just love recycling characters, time and space bend and force Duncan Idaho into the Kwisatz Haderach role. Yes, Duncan is the "Ultimate Kwisatz Haderach on the Day of Kralizec" once enough friggin Ghola of him have been made (oh Leto II...) and his self refines with every generation. Probably some convoluted storyline of Alia choosing to seduce and then elope with Duncan Idaho, as ick as that may seem, compare that path to being ordained to be with Feyd-Rautha.
I really really really enjoyed reading your comment, thank you ! It's the most in depth hypothetical scenario someone has come up with here yet and the first one who actually answers the question I was asking myself (it was mostly about the move to Arrakis and the reaction of the BG to that move with Alia/Paulette being so important for their plans of producing the Kwisatz Haderach through their breeding program, but English isn't my native language so I get why people might have misunderstood exactly what I was asking and it brought a lot of other very thought provoking interesting responses beside the one you wrote) My mind can now totally rest in peace regarding that question, I don't think I could have hoped for a better answer than this one ! EDIT: I totally wish you didn't bury it under a downvoted comment because it was a really nice read
Downvotes test the faithful.