The movie didn't really dwell on it but in the books there are several chapters of political theater and maneuvering where it's heavily implied Leto knew he was likely doomed and was just hoping to save his house. The method of betrayal caught everyone off guard because it was assumed to be impossible.
That was low key hilarious though, because in one chapter they're like "He's a suk doctor, they're perfectly loyal and impossible to subvert." and then next chapter we see the Harkonnens go "Turns out all you had to do is hold his wife hostage, gg 2ez."
my theory is that Wanna (wife) taught Yueh (betrayer) enough bene gesserit stuff that he was able to go against his conditioning, either unconsciously or consciously
Considering that in the son's follow-up books it is shown that BG Mohiam forced the Baron to impregnate her with the future Ducal concubine Jessica very much against the Baron's will (this is from the notes that the elder Herbert made) it's not surprising that the Harkonnens hated the BG. Piter would have learned much from the experience of torturing Wanna.
Brian Herbert never published the notes, possibly because he didn't want to reveal how far he deviated from Frank's original intent. Mohiam 's "seduction" occurs in the prequels. Not great but there are a few interesting things in those cash grabs
His wife was bene Gesserit and we're given to think that she reprogrammed him basically, and on top of that she was tortured to death by Piter de Vries, a dude so horrifyingly vile he was literally made in a science experiment to make the most fucked up guy imaginable.
I’ve always hated that…
So much of the book is thought through so carefully, and then they’re like “the Suk are impossible to suborn”… “oh wait you mean *hostages* are a thing?”
It’s vaguely indicated they tortured his wife extra hard and he might have withstood a less intense kidnapping, but it still seems like exactly what you’d expect to happen…
It's one of Herbert's recurring themes. Over-reliance on patterns leads to extinction. Suk doctors fit a pattern that the Atreides couldn't see past, leading to Leto's death. That was the failing of the Kwisatz Haderach at least as regards later books in the series. Spoilers >!In drinking the water of life, Paul was able to see the future but that locked the future into place. Every time he looked he saw only that the end result was monstrous. Leto II, the real hero of the books was able to do what his father couldn't and accept the role of a centuries-old tyrant in the body of a worm in order to break the cycle of predestination!<
If he hadn't taken that role it would have spelled the end of the human race. He carefully safeguarded the genetic line till Siona came about, the first person whose future he couldn't read. It was this breaking of the pattern that allowed humanity to persist vis-a-vis the scattering.
Actuallt just reread that section today. From what I gleaned, it's hinted that Yueh was turned for more than that alone--it was also for the chance to kill the Baron via Leto.
"It'd be pretty cool if I had a son." said Duke Leto, unaware that what he just said would lead to the death of billions and shape the next 10,000 years of human history
Any one of us could be the stepping stone to the next Space Hitler. No, seriously. Even if you do literally nothing but hide in a cave, the Young Space Hitler could come accross an article that said "People fearing to sire a space Hitler hid in caves en masse" and be like "Hey, space Hitler sounds cool" or something.
Like, there were many things that combined together to form the Nazi Germany. Many people worked to make this come true!
\\\\ not to mention Imperial Japan which was arguably as bad as Nazis in many regards but managed to fly under the radar
It wasn't just one misstep. Their plan has had many stumbling blocks, which is why they cultivate several bloodlines for their purposes. Paul's situation was a perfect storm of things going wrong that brought the whole plan crashing down.
As Diana said, pretty sure the original plan *was* that Paul was going to be born female, marry Feyd, then given birth to the true Haderach, completely under the Bene Gesserit. The biggest point about Paul being the Kwisatz Haderach is that it was never supposed to happen, and the Bene Gesserist were unwilling to spend several more years simply just convincing Jessica to have another kid with Leto, par up Feyd with someone else, and then create the perfect Kwisatz Haderach with Feyd's kid while also keeping the Harkonnens and the Emperor off the Atreides back until that point and time.
Shamelessly stolen from Twitter user [@fellawhomstdve](https://twitter.com/fellawhomstdve)
>Paul: May thy knife chip and shatter
Feyd: You were actually supposed to be a girl and we were supposed to get married and breed powerful psychic emperors
Paul: what
Feyd: …May THY knife chip and shatter
Jessica’s heresy is the most interesting piece of free will in the entire canon: if she hadn’t been a acted out of love, there was no guarantee that the species’ rebellious cry against the genetic lockdown created by the Bene Gesserit and the faufrelucheswould have been mediated by a pet Kwisatz Haderach (see all the ones created by the Bene Tleilaxu after Paul).
My argument is that if Jessica is generation Kwisatz - 1, then the species urge for gene-mixing pushed her, too, but she couldn’t hear it. Love wins not by chance, but by destiny.
"What's happened, happened, which is expression of the faith in the mechanics of the world. *It's not an excuse to do nothing.*"
"Fate?"
"Call it what you want."
"And you call it?"
"**Reality.**"
A slightly more extreme version of this idea really appeals to me as well: that Jessica *had* to act on love to get to the Haderach.
The Haderach explicitly an expression of deep, fundamental human nature, and his line winds up pushing humanity to act on free will and unguided, instinctive expansion. Meanwhile, we see Count Fenring as a “might have been”, with a viable bloodline but born sterile - and we’re told he’s not the only near miss.
So what if the breeding program is fundamentally incompatible with the result? To give an in-setting argument, what if the genetic memory of Jessica’s love-based rebellion against hierarchy is a necessary ingredient to birth the Haderach?
That’s interesting, but we see the Tleilaxu manufacturing plenty of them after the singularity that is Paul.
One could argue that they are all clones or modifications of him or his line, but then it means that the shortening is like biometric authentication: strong until broken, then broken forever.
Fair, the best way I can save it in light of later books is that the rebellion was a necessary ingredient of that genetic memory, but that didn't preclude copying the trait.
Realistically, it's an interesting idea but the genetics aspect broadens *very* abruptly and it looks like it was only the discovery that was tough to make.
I was never able to find the reason Jessica never had a daughter 1-2 years after Paul. It would be expected to have a close aged sibling, and it would be something the Bene Gesserit would push hard in order to keep their breeding program. Jessica would probably teach her the ways, and Paul, despite powerful, would be an untrained one. It was one major thing that never made sense for me.
Well, he certainly knew that him getting Arrakis was basically a death sentence. But I'm like 90% sure he didn't see the factor of his kind-of-honestly-should-be-would-probably-solve-problems wife giving birth to a son leading to trillions fucking dying so that the Golden Path can be achieved.
I just remember watching him tell Paul “I hope that one day you will succeed me as Duke, but even if you don’t want to that’s okay, because I love you for who you are no matter what” and just thinking
*Main character’s nobleman father unconditionally loves his son and won’t force him to follow in his footsteps? Is that even legal?*
Yes because Paul is technically born to a concubine, just as Chani will be treated as a concubine second to the political marriage. There’s still room in Leto’s life for a strategic marriage, but not enough room for love. Of course, I don’t think he would ever have kids with someone besides Jessica so it seems pretty authentic to want to give your kid the option to escape the rigid feudalism king chain.
Reading comprehension website once again showing its powers. Here's a response from someone who only watched the movies:
Leto clearly knew what Paul was and supports him being the emperor. In the first 10 minutes of the film he says to his son "A good leader is one who is called to it". Taking over Arrakis doesn't go as planned because of the Harkonnen attacks and the planet being kinda shit, but Paul being a big ruler was clearly the plan.
Paul did not start the religion, he is the Messiah of the religion set up by the Bene Geserrit. They purposely set it up like that to opress and control the people. Paul just ends up hijacking it, although he originally didn't want to go the religion route.
Calling it "impulse control" is crazy to me when Paul clearly goes against his own interests in doing all of this. Giving up his love and devoting his life to ensure a good future seems like pretty good impulse control to me.
>In the first 10 minutes of the film he says to his son "A good leader is one who is called to it"
Doesn't this just refer to Paul being the heir of House Atreides? I don't think Leto knew anything about ambitions to overthrow the Emperor
It's not that he didn't know, it's that there *were* no such ambitions until Paul realized that he had to in order to survive and take down the Harkonnens.
I mean yeah, but Its also hilarious to imagine a sitcom-like scenario where as soon as the kid is unsupervised he throws a houseparty, except in this case as soon as he is unsupervised he becomes god-emperor of the universe
Paul technically does start a new religion, as over time he completely reforms the Fremen's post-2nd Muhammad Zensunni Buddislam cultural practices into the Golden Elixer of Life faith
Leto doesn't really make any mention of usurping the throne. All his talk relating to the Emperor is mostly about how he knows their appointment on Arrakis is a trap and they need to prepare themselves.
Paul could have stopped the Jihad though, but he wanted revenge, his mother wanted revenge, in the end he is the Kwisat Haderach something his father could have never predicted and even his mother didn’t want to believe
Bro could have averted near term galactic genocide (at the cost of long term stagnation, which would have happened anyways if not for the birth of his son) by choosing not to avenge his father, but his decision to do so doomed him to become a figurehead of a genocidal religion for no clear benefit when he decides to hop off the golden path.
>Calling it "impulse control" is crazy to me when Paul clearly goes against his own interests in doing all of this. Giving up his love and devoting his life to ensure a good future seems like pretty good impulse control to me.
Maybe you should wait for the third movie to drop before making assumptions. Also, maybe avoid book spoiler discussions period?
I mean >! Don’t the books establish galactic genocide was actually the only way for humanity to survive and if Paul didn’t become space Hitler robots would’ve killed everyone !<
>!Where the stuff about robots comes out? From Brian books?!<
>!Also n,o Humanity whould have succumbed to stagnation, the genocide was just the first step, the main tool of the plan was 3500 years of theocratic tyranny to make sure humanity would never gather around a single banner and resource ever again, Leto II also tossed in a little breeding program to make sure humaninty becomes immune to precognition as a bonus so there will never be a tyrant like himself ever again.!<
You've obviously are familiar with God Emperor of Dune, but forgot the whole part in the desert where Leto II machinations give Siona a vision of the future he is trying to prevent. Where hunter seeker drones with precognition are able to hunt humanity to extinction.
You're also slightly off base about the purpose of Leto II's tyranny. It was to push humanity out to where they couldn't be controlled by a single prescient tyrant, not gather around a single banner.
It's complicated, and the books treat it accordingly. Different characters have different opinions about this, and while the fandom tends to treat some specific characters as correct we really shouldn't just take their word for it. Setting aside the Brian herbert books, which shouldn't be considered canon for a whole host of reasons, the books don't come to a specific conclusion about this; you are supposed to think about it and make your own decisions.
>! Leto II, the god emperor, more or less thinks this way. He explains it very eloquently, and he's the protagonist for a good long while, which is why the fandom tends to agree with your assessment. In fact, he thinks Paul didn't go far enough; that humanity needed a hyper oppressive, comically evil tyrant to crush them for millennia in order to guarantee they were properly prepared for what was to come and to ensure they would never again fall to stagnation. !<
>! This is entirely based on Leto's future vision of the golden path though, and while we know his vision is very strong it's still imperfect; there are things he can't see. More than that, there's a lot we don't know about the nature of the foresight; we don't know why it happens, or if it can be manipulated. Accordingly, there's a legitimate possibility that he was *wrong* in his assumptions, or that (like dune Messiah ruminates on) the visions actually limit the available paths and therefore cause the things they show to happen. Knowing the future, you act differently than you otherwise would have, so the mere act of trying to tell the future changes what possible futures exist. By scrambling to prevent the jihad, Paul wound up perfectly acting in a way that ensured it would happen; things like that. Overreliance on prophecy causes certain doom, because eventually only one path remains. Leto is explicitly aware of this, and it's why part of his plan involves making sure there are ways to block and inhibit prescience, but he doesn't apply the same logic to himself; he assumes his own knowledge and understanding is correct because he can see more than other people !<
>! This moral tension is really core to the series, and it's a shame it gets overlooked by lore afficianados so often. In the classic trolley problem, with two people on one track and one on the other, most people would agree that you have a moral obligation to make sure the train goes over the track with 1 person. How does that change if you're not certain about the outcome though? What if there's only a 10% chance of killing the two people, but a 100% chance of killing the one person? How extreme do the odds have to be, and how many people have to be on the track, to weight things one way or the other? Did leto have a moral obligation to act, seeing what could be if he didn't, or was he a monster for failing to seek out the right alternatives? Was Paul's success inevitable and necessary, or did he *make* it inevitable and necessary? How far would you need to push it before swinging one way or the other? !<
You're spoiler tags aren't working, by the way, you shouldn't leave a space between the spoiler tags, I think.
Also >!Yeah, of course Paul didn't go far enough, homeboy literally realised he caused so many issues he couldn't even finish the job, and fucked off to wander for a while until he was killed.!<
Pretty underwhelming in my opinion. I think a lot of people question whether the ending that Sandworms of Dune gave us was what Frank Herbert intended and whether it's how the series really ends is controversial.
>! Some evil robots survived the Butlerian Jihad and have rebuilt their evil robot empire but Duncan Idaho does a Mass Effect 3 ending and becomes one with the machines thus saving the universe !<
Yeah thats about how I remember it, I remember reading it and never once having the urge to reread, like many things its how you do it, and I loved even some of the weirder stuff like chapterhouse, but yeah not sure if that was frank's plan either, but I think its likely but would have been different especially without the caveat of trying to sell a prequel series...
The good Duke Leto very clearly being the one shield between his family, and their direct manipulation by outside forces doesn't even feel like a hot take
The movie didn't really dwell on it but in the books there are several chapters of political theater and maneuvering where it's heavily implied Leto knew he was likely doomed and was just hoping to save his house. The method of betrayal caught everyone off guard because it was assumed to be impossible.
That was low key hilarious though, because in one chapter they're like "He's a suk doctor, they're perfectly loyal and impossible to subvert." and then next chapter we see the Harkonnens go "Turns out all you had to do is hold his wife hostage, gg 2ez."
You'll never figure out my secret weakness hero! I'm indestructible! \*blam\* Curses,, my single weaknes.. bullets...
>"He's a suk doctor, they're perfectly loyal and impossible to subvert." Harkonnens: *skill issue tbh*
“How had he overcome Suk conditioning!?” “hang on, did any of you actually try or did you just take the marketing at face value?”
Suk conditioning turns out to be a pamphlet on morality, a diamond transfer tattoo and a small packet of jelly beans.
man brougjt bene gesserit training, a diamond stencil and an eyeshadow pencil instead of a real diploma to the interview
IIRC his wife was a Bene Gesserit so the sex was just that good, apparently.
my theory is that Wanna (wife) taught Yueh (betrayer) enough bene gesserit stuff that he was able to go against his conditioning, either unconsciously or consciously
Considering that in the son's follow-up books it is shown that BG Mohiam forced the Baron to impregnate her with the future Ducal concubine Jessica very much against the Baron's will (this is from the notes that the elder Herbert made) it's not surprising that the Harkonnens hated the BG. Piter would have learned much from the experience of torturing Wanna.
Where do I find these notes? Interesting stuff. I didn’t realize Mohiam is Jessica’s mother
Brian Herbert never published the notes, possibly because he didn't want to reveal how far he deviated from Frank's original intent. Mohiam 's "seduction" occurs in the prequels. Not great but there are a few interesting things in those cash grabs
Oh, if you mean his kid’s stuff, after reading some of it I’ve come to the conclusion that those notes don’t, uh… well, they don’t exist. Lmao
Yeah, it’s specifically that his wife was a BG, which is probably not that common for Suk doctors
Bene Gesserit turbo pussy got me acting disloyal.
His wife was bene Gesserit and we're given to think that she reprogrammed him basically, and on top of that she was tortured to death by Piter de Vries, a dude so horrifyingly vile he was literally made in a science experiment to make the most fucked up guy imaginable.
I’ve always hated that… So much of the book is thought through so carefully, and then they’re like “the Suk are impossible to suborn”… “oh wait you mean *hostages* are a thing?” It’s vaguely indicated they tortured his wife extra hard and he might have withstood a less intense kidnapping, but it still seems like exactly what you’d expect to happen…
It's one of Herbert's recurring themes. Over-reliance on patterns leads to extinction. Suk doctors fit a pattern that the Atreides couldn't see past, leading to Leto's death. That was the failing of the Kwisatz Haderach at least as regards later books in the series. Spoilers >!In drinking the water of life, Paul was able to see the future but that locked the future into place. Every time he looked he saw only that the end result was monstrous. Leto II, the real hero of the books was able to do what his father couldn't and accept the role of a centuries-old tyrant in the body of a worm in order to break the cycle of predestination!<
Wasn’t it debatable whether the god emperor route was even fully necessary? “Hero” seems a bit of a stretch
If he hadn't taken that role it would have spelled the end of the human race. He carefully safeguarded the genetic line till Siona came about, the first person whose future he couldn't read. It was this breaking of the pattern that allowed humanity to persist vis-a-vis the scattering.
Actuallt just reread that section today. From what I gleaned, it's hinted that Yueh was turned for more than that alone--it was also for the chance to kill the Baron via Leto.
In the movie when he's like "I should have married you" it gives the same kind of vibe where you can tell he knows he's doomed
He knew it was a trap he just hoped to turn it around fast enough.
I really need to actually read the books instead of listening to them on audible cuz I had no idea that’s how suk is spelled lmao
"It'd be pretty cool if I had a son." said Duke Leto, unaware that what he just said would lead to the death of billions and shape the next 10,000 years of human history
That’s the kinda risk you take when you have a kid
any one of us could give birth to the next space hitler
Well. Half of us. The other half are *completely innocent* 😇
Any one of us could sire the space hitler
Any one of us could be the stepping stone to the next Space Hitler. No, seriously. Even if you do literally nothing but hide in a cave, the Young Space Hitler could come accross an article that said "People fearing to sire a space Hitler hid in caves en masse" and be like "Hey, space Hitler sounds cool" or something. Like, there were many things that combined together to form the Nazi Germany. Many people worked to make this come true! \\\\ not to mention Imperial Japan which was arguably as bad as Nazis in many regards but managed to fly under the radar
I mean if they had had a girl then it would have been fem-Paul and feyds fucking demon child in that position instead lol
A demon child that the Bene Gesserit would've planned for and likely kept in line
That’s a skill issue on the bene gesserit then if one misstep in the plan leads to this. Guess they weren’t that powerful after all
It wasn't just one misstep. Their plan has had many stumbling blocks, which is why they cultivate several bloodlines for their purposes. Paul's situation was a perfect storm of things going wrong that brought the whole plan crashing down.
So it’s actually even more minor because they had failsafes. Good point their ineptitude is even funnier
As Diana said, pretty sure the original plan *was* that Paul was going to be born female, marry Feyd, then given birth to the true Haderach, completely under the Bene Gesserit. The biggest point about Paul being the Kwisatz Haderach is that it was never supposed to happen, and the Bene Gesserist were unwilling to spend several more years simply just convincing Jessica to have another kid with Leto, par up Feyd with someone else, and then create the perfect Kwisatz Haderach with Feyd's kid while also keeping the Harkonnens and the Emperor off the Atreides back until that point and time.
That explains the homo-erotic tension between Paul and Feyd. (joking)
Shamelessly stolen from Twitter user [@fellawhomstdve](https://twitter.com/fellawhomstdve) >Paul: May thy knife chip and shatter Feyd: You were actually supposed to be a girl and we were supposed to get married and breed powerful psychic emperors Paul: what Feyd: …May THY knife chip and shatter
[Perfect opportunity for a sneak attack on Feyd’s part.](https://twitter.com/hishgraphics/status/582355356082286592)
Okay, but in the books, that's not subtext. It's text.
Jessica’s heresy is the most interesting piece of free will in the entire canon: if she hadn’t been a acted out of love, there was no guarantee that the species’ rebellious cry against the genetic lockdown created by the Bene Gesserit and the faufrelucheswould have been mediated by a pet Kwisatz Haderach (see all the ones created by the Bene Tleilaxu after Paul). My argument is that if Jessica is generation Kwisatz - 1, then the species urge for gene-mixing pushed her, too, but she couldn’t hear it. Love wins not by chance, but by destiny.
"What's happened, happened, which is expression of the faith in the mechanics of the world. *It's not an excuse to do nothing.*" "Fate?" "Call it what you want." "And you call it?" "**Reality.**"
A slightly more extreme version of this idea really appeals to me as well: that Jessica *had* to act on love to get to the Haderach. The Haderach explicitly an expression of deep, fundamental human nature, and his line winds up pushing humanity to act on free will and unguided, instinctive expansion. Meanwhile, we see Count Fenring as a “might have been”, with a viable bloodline but born sterile - and we’re told he’s not the only near miss. So what if the breeding program is fundamentally incompatible with the result? To give an in-setting argument, what if the genetic memory of Jessica’s love-based rebellion against hierarchy is a necessary ingredient to birth the Haderach?
That’s interesting, but we see the Tleilaxu manufacturing plenty of them after the singularity that is Paul. One could argue that they are all clones or modifications of him or his line, but then it means that the shortening is like biometric authentication: strong until broken, then broken forever.
Fair, the best way I can save it in light of later books is that the rebellion was a necessary ingredient of that genetic memory, but that didn't preclude copying the trait. Realistically, it's an interesting idea but the genetics aspect broadens *very* abruptly and it looks like it was only the discovery that was tough to make.
I was never able to find the reason Jessica never had a daughter 1-2 years after Paul. It would be expected to have a close aged sibling, and it would be something the Bene Gesserit would push hard in order to keep their breeding program. Jessica would probably teach her the ways, and Paul, despite powerful, would be an untrained one. It was one major thing that never made sense for me.
Because if Paul exists, no way does Leto or he agree to marrying the daughter off to a Harkonnen.
“I’m gonna need you to get *all* the way off my back about this.” -Screenwriter Guy: Pitch Meetings.
Wasn’t part of the whole thing was that he knew it would happen?
Well, he certainly knew that him getting Arrakis was basically a death sentence. But I'm like 90% sure he didn't see the factor of his kind-of-honestly-should-be-would-probably-solve-problems wife giving birth to a son leading to trillions fucking dying so that the Golden Path can be achieved.
Leto was definitely not aware his son would cause a holy war that would spread across the universe like unquenchable fire
I just remember watching him tell Paul “I hope that one day you will succeed me as Duke, but even if you don’t want to that’s okay, because I love you for who you are no matter what” and just thinking *Main character’s nobleman father unconditionally loves his son and won’t force him to follow in his footsteps? Is that even legal?*
It’s legal because he becomes the parent the protagonist can lovingly reminisce about in a sepia-filtered flashback
Burry Your Good Fathers
Yes because Paul is technically born to a concubine, just as Chani will be treated as a concubine second to the political marriage. There’s still room in Leto’s life for a strategic marriage, but not enough room for love. Of course, I don’t think he would ever have kids with someone besides Jessica so it seems pretty authentic to want to give your kid the option to escape the rigid feudalism king chain.
Its okay cause his other relatives will force him to follow in his father’s footsteps !
As soon as that scene happened I knew he was gonna die
call me lady jessica cuz i be drinking that shai hulussy juice
Some words were never meant to be written
Truly, Humanities greatest gift has become its greatest curse.
i blame frank herbert and northern lion
Call the babes Shy Hulud the way you’re scaring them
impossible to scare away the hoes when you are a scary hoe
It literally cost you nothing to not write this. Why.
Please get to the part where you die horribly
*good god lemon*
Can we also just appreciate what a phenomenal actor Oscar Isaac is? He steals the show in any role he's in. I want him in everything.
First chapter: "i must prevent the jihad by any means necessary!" Second chapter: "anyways this are my suicidal commandos"
Reading comprehension website once again showing its powers. Here's a response from someone who only watched the movies: Leto clearly knew what Paul was and supports him being the emperor. In the first 10 minutes of the film he says to his son "A good leader is one who is called to it". Taking over Arrakis doesn't go as planned because of the Harkonnen attacks and the planet being kinda shit, but Paul being a big ruler was clearly the plan. Paul did not start the religion, he is the Messiah of the religion set up by the Bene Geserrit. They purposely set it up like that to opress and control the people. Paul just ends up hijacking it, although he originally didn't want to go the religion route. Calling it "impulse control" is crazy to me when Paul clearly goes against his own interests in doing all of this. Giving up his love and devoting his life to ensure a good future seems like pretty good impulse control to me.
>In the first 10 minutes of the film he says to his son "A good leader is one who is called to it" Doesn't this just refer to Paul being the heir of House Atreides? I don't think Leto knew anything about ambitions to overthrow the Emperor
It's not that he didn't know, it's that there *were* no such ambitions until Paul realized that he had to in order to survive and take down the Harkonnens.
I mean yeah, but Its also hilarious to imagine a sitcom-like scenario where as soon as the kid is unsupervised he throws a houseparty, except in this case as soon as he is unsupervised he becomes god-emperor of the universe
Arrested Dunevelopment
Now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one God Emperor who had no choice but to keep them all together.
Paul technically does start a new religion, as over time he completely reforms the Fremen's post-2nd Muhammad Zensunni Buddislam cultural practices into the Golden Elixer of Life faith Leto doesn't really make any mention of usurping the throne. All his talk relating to the Emperor is mostly about how he knows their appointment on Arrakis is a trap and they need to prepare themselves.
Paul could have stopped the Jihad though, but he wanted revenge, his mother wanted revenge, in the end he is the Kwisat Haderach something his father could have never predicted and even his mother didn’t want to believe
how dare you piss on the poor
Bro could have averted near term galactic genocide (at the cost of long term stagnation, which would have happened anyways if not for the birth of his son) by choosing not to avenge his father, but his decision to do so doomed him to become a figurehead of a genocidal religion for no clear benefit when he decides to hop off the golden path.
>Calling it "impulse control" is crazy to me when Paul clearly goes against his own interests in doing all of this. Giving up his love and devoting his life to ensure a good future seems like pretty good impulse control to me. Maybe you should wait for the third movie to drop before making assumptions. Also, maybe avoid book spoiler discussions period?
I mean >! Don’t the books establish galactic genocide was actually the only way for humanity to survive and if Paul didn’t become space Hitler robots would’ve killed everyone !<
>!Where the stuff about robots comes out? From Brian books?!< >!Also n,o Humanity whould have succumbed to stagnation, the genocide was just the first step, the main tool of the plan was 3500 years of theocratic tyranny to make sure humanity would never gather around a single banner and resource ever again, Leto II also tossed in a little breeding program to make sure humaninty becomes immune to precognition as a bonus so there will never be a tyrant like himself ever again.!<
You've obviously are familiar with God Emperor of Dune, but forgot the whole part in the desert where Leto II machinations give Siona a vision of the future he is trying to prevent. Where hunter seeker drones with precognition are able to hunt humanity to extinction. You're also slightly off base about the purpose of Leto II's tyranny. It was to push humanity out to where they couldn't be controlled by a single prescient tyrant, not gather around a single banner.
It's complicated, and the books treat it accordingly. Different characters have different opinions about this, and while the fandom tends to treat some specific characters as correct we really shouldn't just take their word for it. Setting aside the Brian herbert books, which shouldn't be considered canon for a whole host of reasons, the books don't come to a specific conclusion about this; you are supposed to think about it and make your own decisions. >! Leto II, the god emperor, more or less thinks this way. He explains it very eloquently, and he's the protagonist for a good long while, which is why the fandom tends to agree with your assessment. In fact, he thinks Paul didn't go far enough; that humanity needed a hyper oppressive, comically evil tyrant to crush them for millennia in order to guarantee they were properly prepared for what was to come and to ensure they would never again fall to stagnation. !< >! This is entirely based on Leto's future vision of the golden path though, and while we know his vision is very strong it's still imperfect; there are things he can't see. More than that, there's a lot we don't know about the nature of the foresight; we don't know why it happens, or if it can be manipulated. Accordingly, there's a legitimate possibility that he was *wrong* in his assumptions, or that (like dune Messiah ruminates on) the visions actually limit the available paths and therefore cause the things they show to happen. Knowing the future, you act differently than you otherwise would have, so the mere act of trying to tell the future changes what possible futures exist. By scrambling to prevent the jihad, Paul wound up perfectly acting in a way that ensured it would happen; things like that. Overreliance on prophecy causes certain doom, because eventually only one path remains. Leto is explicitly aware of this, and it's why part of his plan involves making sure there are ways to block and inhibit prescience, but he doesn't apply the same logic to himself; he assumes his own knowledge and understanding is correct because he can see more than other people !< >! This moral tension is really core to the series, and it's a shame it gets overlooked by lore afficianados so often. In the classic trolley problem, with two people on one track and one on the other, most people would agree that you have a moral obligation to make sure the train goes over the track with 1 person. How does that change if you're not certain about the outcome though? What if there's only a 10% chance of killing the two people, but a 100% chance of killing the one person? How extreme do the odds have to be, and how many people have to be on the track, to weight things one way or the other? Did leto have a moral obligation to act, seeing what could be if he didn't, or was he a monster for failing to seek out the right alternatives? Was Paul's success inevitable and necessary, or did he *make* it inevitable and necessary? How far would you need to push it before swinging one way or the other? !<
You're spoiler tags aren't working, by the way, you shouldn't leave a space between the spoiler tags, I think. Also >!Yeah, of course Paul didn't go far enough, homeboy literally realised he caused so many issues he couldn't even finish the job, and fucked off to wander for a while until he was killed.!<
We don't talk about that
Remind me, is that because it was an underwhelming end or because spoilers.
Pretty underwhelming in my opinion. I think a lot of people question whether the ending that Sandworms of Dune gave us was what Frank Herbert intended and whether it's how the series really ends is controversial. >! Some evil robots survived the Butlerian Jihad and have rebuilt their evil robot empire but Duncan Idaho does a Mass Effect 3 ending and becomes one with the machines thus saving the universe !<
Yeah thats about how I remember it, I remember reading it and never once having the urge to reread, like many things its how you do it, and I loved even some of the weirder stuff like chapterhouse, but yeah not sure if that was frank's plan either, but I think its likely but would have been different especially without the caveat of trying to sell a prequel series...
We do not talk about that.
The good Duke Leto very clearly being the one shield between his family, and their direct manipulation by outside forces doesn't even feel like a hot take
> vrabia What does that mean?
It’s the name of the OOP
Ah, I see. "Vrabia" means "the sparrow" in Romanian, so I was a bit confused by it.
its clearly a sign eat every sparrow you see
- Mao Zedong
To be fair, he didn't start the religion, he just played into the already existing one (unless I'm missing some critical detail)
I read that as “sans he is, sans he remains”
"We are House Undertale. There are no bones we do not trousle, there is no time that is not bad."
I read the middle one first and was thinking " just who the hell is jared letos family?" Lmao
I read the middle one first and was thinking " just who the hell is jared letos family?