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we will make them see

Paul Atreides & Feyd Rautha in Dune: Part Two // Dune by Frank Hubert, Chapter 48

Finally got around to drawing them

dune chronicles — chani kynes.

“Think on it, Chani: the princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine - never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives.”

What is THE SON but  an extension of THE FATHER?

The real tragedy of Dune (which the movies did an excellent job of portraying) is that almost none of the characters we see have any real choice in what they do. The only choices they have are in how they do them.

Duke Leto must take House Atreides to Arrakis, or be declared a traitor to the Imperium and hunted down. He knows it's a trap and that the Emperor is, in the very best case scenario, setting him and his family up for a serious reversal of their fortunes (far more likely, he's outright scheming to get them killed). But he doesn't have a choice. He must go to Arrakis. He does go to Arrakis. He dies.

Paul and Jessica must flee into the desert or the Harkonnen soldiers will kill them both brutally. They must go to the Fremen for refuge or the desert will kill them. They go. They find that the Fremen have already begun to mythologise Paul. He's the Mahdi, the Lisan al-Gaib. There is no option for Paul to be a normal person here. He is either the messiah or he is a false prophet, and false prophets in a nation of true believers don't live for long.

So Paul fits himself into the mold of the myth. He becomes Muad'dib and leads the Fremen in war because they believe too much in him to let him be anything less. Is it manipulation? Yes. But because the Bene Gesserit have been manipulating the Fremen for centuries, Paul has no choice but to continue it if he wants to live.

He sees the holy war at the end of every timeline by glimpses and he fights to avoid it. To avoid it, he becomes the Kwizatz Haderach and gains the ability to fully see timelines, and thereby he makes himself that much more of the Fremen messiah and brings himself one step closer to the holy war. Every choice he makes is a choice for survival and an attempt to avoid that war, the war he cannot escape because every step he makes along the path to survival is one more step towards the war. He has no more choice in what he becomes than his father had in whether or not he went to Arrakis.

The only people who ever had a choice were the Emperor and Gaius Helen Mohiam. They made their choice, to exterminate House Atreides, and thereby they took everyone's choices away, including their own. Once they sent House Atreides to Arrakis, the entire plot was inevitable.

Dune Production illustrations 1983, Ron Miller

dune messiah // children of dune

“Dune” was originally published in Analog in several parts as “Dune World.”

I think people don't really understand why Baron was always supposed to be a ridiculous kind of villain and he was meant to die almost on accident, with no bang whatsoever.

There is a reason why Paul wasn't the one that killed him in the books. Baron was a shadow of a pawn and by the end of the story, Paul is so far above him, that he really couldn't care less. When he hears about his death, he doesn't give a single fuck.

He doesn't even care enough to kill Mohiam. He is beyond Guild's control, not to mention Emperor's or Jessica's.

They should all fear him. They can't do anything to stop him.

And Baron? This dude wouldn't even be able to bring down Leto, if it wasn't for Peter and him breaking an imperial conditioning for doctor Yueh.

What the movies fail greatly to present is how much the scale shifts over the story. What the message behind it all means. Because Harkonnes are the easiest kind of villains to spot, but in the end, maybe they are not the worst.

Maybe Paul himself is the worst.

Plans within plans don't exist in new Dune movies. It's as simple as that.

Even Feyd doesn't die because he's a Harkonnen. That's what Gurney thinks, that's what Fremen and even Emperor believe is happening. But Feyd dies because Feyd is almost Paul himself.

Baron is only as important as far Alia's story goes.

He was always her villain. Not Paul's.

The entire weight of her arc in Messiah shifts now, and I honestly hate it.