ERIS. a dune sideblog. SEMI-HIATUS.ask me about my alia x marie agenda. analysisabout/tagsmetaaskboxhome
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Latest Posts by mariefenring - Page 4
girldad!Feyd Headcanons
— WARNINGS: angst, but also fluff — A/N: In the canon, Feyd’s daughter with Margot was named Marie Fenring, and she dies a tragic death at quite a young age. This is going to be a completely self-indulgent fix-it. Enjoy ✨
Sure, he’s the most violent and unhinged madman this side of Gamma Waiping, but even Feyd knows there’s a time and place for everything.
The time being when the Atreides are defeated and the Emperor rewards him and he’s free to go after the Fenrings with his Harkonnen troops.
First, they find Count Hasimir, a frail little man with rodent-like features and thin greying hair. The Emperor’s oldest friend, and the best assassin in the known universe. Feyd knows better than to take him on in single combat, so he has his men deal with him while he goes after Margot.
He finds her in the furthest room of their castle past a cadre of guards that he makes short work of. She’s holding a little girl’s hand… Small and pale with thick dark ringlets, she looks just like he did as a child. He can tell even past the thick visor of the helm he wears — something made to not only protect but also block out sound. Margot knows it’s him just by his gait. She speaks, but it doesn’t matter. Her voice has no effect this time.
He sees the flash of a laser on the wall as his men join him and block the only exit. Feyd walks over to Margot, uncoils the little girl’s hand from hers, and takes her away. Lady Fenring will be brought to Kaitain to answer for her crimes against the once-young na-Baron. The Bene Gesserits, humbled after their near defeat on Arrakis, will not defend her actions — she has already served her purpose anyway.
The little girl looks up at him as they walk away with an unsettling and knowing light in her dark eyes. Feyd gazes down at her and, although she could not see his face, it was as if they’d always known each other.
But he also notices her little legs can hardly keep up with his stride. Oh, that’s right, children are smaller… He stops, kneels, and lifts her up into his arms as he carries her back to the ship.
He was actually nervous about taking off his helmet in front of her. What would she think of seeing a Harkonnen for the first time? They were so different from the soft and sunkissed people of the planet she was raised on…
But she had an eery calm to her even at the age of seven standard years. She regards him no differently than before and also does not acknowledge any need for reverence, even when he tells her who he is.
“Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen.” “Hello.” “And what’s your name?” “Marie.”
He found himself genuinely shy when he informed her he was her father, and was all the more surprised to find an impish smile grow on her face. “I know.” Margot must have told her after all…
She doesn’t cry, she doesn’t seem afraid, but Feyd comforts her the whole way to their home planet. He pets her dark crown of curls as she sits beside him on the ship, supports her back when she drinks, and makes out of galactic maps the most unusual of toys to distract her with on the long journey back. None of it comes naturally to him and for the first time he has to think before he acts. It leaves his nerves rattled, but every time she looks up into his eyes and smiles so innocently he gains his calm again.
Giedi Prime was not the first place he had in mind for raising a child, but the other planets he could lay claim to — Lankiveil and Arrakis — were not great choices either. Now that he was Baron, this was where he had to be — at least until the Emperor decided who should govern Arrakis following the trouble with the Fremen. The Corrinos left a cadre of Mentats in charge to oversee the change for now.
She hates the planet at first, scrunching up her little face at the stark white light during the day, at the poisonous smoke, at the vast black wastes filled with petrol. Feyd engages an ecologist the first week Marie is there and plans a series of greenhouses for her with the best water filtration systems spice can buy.
“Why can’t the whole planet be like this?” she asks when he first shows it to her. They walk through young trees, Feyd dodging thin branches of raw red and green while his daughter skips ahead like a lamb. “Because it just can’t,” he mutters. “But why?” “Because it would cost too much.” “How much?” “I don’t know.” “Why not?”
A secret communication arrives to the Emperor inquiring whether he has room in his court for a new assassin now that Hasimir Fenring is gone.
His days are split between official duties, training in the arena, and playing with Marie. He discovers a part of himself again when he is with her — that innocent part that had been lost or buried when he first got to Giedi Prime. There is a satisfaction in making it for her a less brutal arrival, even a pleasant one.
He finds her laughing as she runs through the long halls, tugging on the lances of the guards — who look horrified at the sight of a playful child for the first time, but stay obediently still — and throwing rocks into the oil pools outside the palace to gawk at the pretty rainbow colours.
She loves the vaporous transparent gowns the servants wear, and the servants love her too. They dote on her, fearfully at first but more boldly when they notice Feyd’s approval. The retention rate goes up starkly at the palace, as does the average longevity.
Everyone is puzzled about what to do with her hair, but Marie teaches Feyd to braid it the way her mother did. She’s not shy about berating him either whenever he gets it wrong.
And most nights he falls asleep with her in one arm and a holographic storyreel in the other. He wants to be the sort of parent he only briefly had, the kind he vaguely remembers from his years on Lankiveil.
He dreams of his mother now more than he ever did, and wakes up feeling sorry for how much he falls short. He has no idea how to care for a child, no idea of how to raise her, but he knows he wants to try. Wants to succeed, for her. Marie might not have been an intended child, the way he was, but she was his own flesh and blood and he’d be damned before he made her feel unwanted.
His harpies love her, of course. But he fears they do a bit too much and dismisses them not one month after Marie arrives on the planet. While he’s never indulged, he can only imagine with a frightful shiver how sweet and tender a child’s flesh is.
To the consternation of his people, he flies in tutors from other planets for her. Philosophers from Ecaz, musicians from Chusuk, biologists from Lernaeus, and even a historian from Kaitain itself. She has a Mentat but no Bene Gesserit to serve in her education. His uncle had been wrong about a lot of things, but the scheming of witches was not one of them.
Her bedroom — more white and pale blue than the standard inky black, and decorated with pink ribbons — has a court of dollies on one side and toy swords on the other. Feyd’s love of weaponry does not escape her and, in her childish innocence, she’s fascinated by it all. He takes delight in this, of course, but worries too. Imagining his little child with blood on her hands scares him, and it makes him wonder what sort of person his uncle was to encourage it in him.
In loving her, Feyd’s never felt more unloved himself. Sure, he had his mother and father at one point, but all of that was taken from him when he was Marie’s age. Since then, nobody had cared about him, nobody had even wanted him unless it was to fulfil a purpose. Not his uncle, not his brother, not even Margot…
He comforted himself now that he’d spared Marie of such a fate. His little girl would not become a glorified breeding horse for the Bene Gesserits nor a pawn in the Emperor’s games. He would fill her life with all the things he never had.
Marie grows as the gardens grow, and Feyd begins to speak with the professor from Lernaeus and a retired planetologist from Acline about plans for terraforming Giedi Prime, and one day putting Marie in charge. Her lessons become more structured.
A fact to which she protests, but not for long. She is clever for her age, and understanding, and nobody can explain to her better than Feyd that, although learning can seem useless and boring compared to play, she needs to prepare for the years to come.
“You like the gardens, don’t you?” “Yes…” “And you like eating fruit, right?” “Yes, and smelling flowers.” “What if you could do that all the time, then? Not just in the greenhouses?”
She comes to like the skies of Giedi Prime as well, and the way fireworks look like ink blots. Her every birthday is marked with an array of black and white that make the sky a work of art.
Marie never asks to be the sort of Baroness that always lays around, because Feyd doesn’t do that either. As she grows older he starts to spend more time with her during the day, letting her sit in on meetings, and they debate for hours afterwards on what course the Barony should take. He finds she is more brave than he is, but more reckless too.
“No, little melon, we can’t just declare war on them.” “But why? You know they’re spying on us…” “Yes, but we have no proof.” “Of course we have proof. How would you know otherwise?” “Proof needs to be physical or recorded.” “Let’s record them spying, then.” “Well now they know that we know, so they will have a different approach.” “I still think war would end the problem faster. Or challenge them to a duel!” “I’m getting too old for this…”
They see more of the planet together too, venturing to the caves and crevices that run beneath the surface, taking samples of the native life bubbling in hot springs and collecting crystalline samples.
He takes her to Lankiveil for her fifteenth birthday and they sail together through its icy floes. She loves the sign of whales off in the distance and sounding the ship’s horn, although the local food leaves much to be desired.
“It smells weird.” “It’s fish.” “They stink…” “You want a salad instead?” “Yes, please…”
By the time she turns eighteen, the Emperor has decided to put Arrakis back into Harkonnen hands, and Feyd is terrified. As bad as Giedi Prime is, he wants to see her on Dune even less. Marie can tell this, observant as she is. She’s grown more quiet when she’s thinking and less rash with her decisions, but loud when she wants to be, and daring.
Feyd doesn’t know what to expect of Arrakis anymore and has mixed feelings about it, but he knows one thing for certain: anyone who’s a threat to his daughter there, dies.
“I’ll miss Giedi Prime,” she says as they’re approaching orbit. “It’s finally getting green in places, and rainclouds have begun to form…” “You can go back any time, you know,” says Feyd immediately. “I won’t keep you on this piece of hell…” “I’ll stay,” says Marie. She has the same strange determination she had in her eyes the day they met. “I heard it has old terraforming stations… I’ll want to visit them one day.”
It isn’t easy ruling a desert planet, even one that’s been subdued, but the new spice flow makes it worth it. Feyd keeps Marie close, teaches her everything, watches her grow, and soon she’s sent in delegations reporting to the Landsraad. She represents House Harkonnen better than her great uncle did — and, to Feyd’s pride, better than he ever could.
Rebecca Ferguson: Any scene with Jason Momoa makes me smile. He is the most kind, humble, warm and caring teddy bear.
Jason Momoa: Rebecca I love dearly and I think we all had a lot of fun that captures what’s like off set.
REBECCA FERGUSON and JASON MOMOA behind the scenes on set of “DUNE” (2021)
paintings that remind me of marie fenring:
portrait of a young lady, charles sillem lidderdale // study for a hundred years ago, william quiller orcharson // henriette au grand chapeau, henri evenepoel // the little foot-page, eleanor fortescue brickdale
I'm rereading Dune in honour of the movie, and I had genuinely forgotten how absolutely vicious Leto's wit can be. Two examples:
Halleck stirred, said: "I think what rankles, Sire, is that we've had no volunteers from the other Great Houses. They address you as "Leto the Just" and promise eternal friendship, but only as long as it doesn't cost them anything."
"They don't yet know who's going to win this exchange," the Duke said. "Most of the Houses have grown fat by taking few risks. One cannot truly blame them for this; one can only despise them."
Pretty sure some of the heads of other houses just woke up several planetary systems away in a cold sweat, with the vague feeling of just having been verbally flayed.
"This is a carryall," Hawat said. "It's essentially a large 'thopter, whose sole function is to deliver a factory to spice-rich sands, then to rescue the factory when a sand-worm appears. They always appear. Harvesting the spice is a process of getting in and getting out with as much as possible."
"Admirably suited to Harkonnen morality," the Duke said.
I think the Baron is beyond feeling someone else roasting him from a system away, as it happens far too often, but still.
Finally, a gentler example:
"Gurney, take care of that smuggler situation first."
" 'I shall go unto the rebellious that dwell in the dry land,' " Halleck intoned.
"Someday I'll catch that man without a quotation and he'll look undressed," the Duke said.
I wish we'd had time to see this in the movie, because even though a fair amount of this is him putting on a bit of a show for his men, it's still hilarious.
My father came, not for spice, not for the riches, but for the strength of your people. My road leads into the desert. I can see it. If you’ll have us, we will come. DUNE (2021) dir. Denis Villeneuve
“They’re not mad. They’re trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”
— Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
A Bene Gesserit and an assassin.
( AU!Marie Fenring )
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follow on insta: serenlas
The Films of David Lynch:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when my fear is gone I will turn and face fear’s path, and only I will remain.
Dune // 1984
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.
We’re Harkonnens. So this is how we’ll survive, by being Harkonnens.
Dune: Part Two (2024) dir. Denis Villeneuve
alia atreides & marie fenring.
hilda koe / yoshitaka amano / frederick cayley robinson / edvard munch / dolce & gabbana fw 2006 by steven maisel / arthur hacker / federico zendomeneghi / john collier / elizabeth nourse
Margot & Marie Fenring, mother and daughter.
Dune by Frank Herbert | Dune Part Two (2024) | Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn | Herodias and Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist by Mattia Preti, ca. 1640 | "Mother" by Danzig | Tristan + Isolde (2006) | Dune by Frank Herbert
