History Headscratchers / Dune

** Great theory, and would be perfectly plausible except for one thing — Ghanima. Ghanima also was able to hear the voice of the Baron and if I recall correctly, she also mentioned having Paul's memories of his gom jabbar trial. You could argue that she was also a XY female, but women with that condition are sterile. Now Alia, despite having been married for nine years and carrying on countless affairs, never became pregnant. Ghanima on the other hand without a doubt had children, because the main characters in the subsequent books are her descendants.

naive

* The Fremen are supernaturally good warriors though, as they've been living in a spice rich enviroment for generations. And Paul instils the discipline they need to win and use the tribal cohesion they have as an advantage. They still logically should have massive issues with shielded opponents though. And we see with Paul that a well trained individual can beat a Fremen. So...*shrug* No point using real world examples though as the situation, both the powers of the humans involved and the nature of the combat are pure fantasy.

All three adaptations seem to dance around placing the accent on different syllables, especially the name "Harkonnen" ("Har-kone-in" vs "Harkening" with the "g" removed). The 2021 film now gives us another pronunciation of "Padishah" which is again, just placing the accent on a different syllable (This time, the herald pronounces it "Puh-dee-shuh" instead of "Pah-di-shah").

In one of Irulan's epigraphs in the final chapters of the first book, she recalls an anecdote about her father at a time when he was 72 years old (but looked about 35). This would have been at some point prior to Shaddam being deposed as Emperor (circa 10,196) as Irulan mentioned that she was a young girl at the time. However, Shaddam is said (in the The Almanak en-Ashraf) to have died at the age of 68 in the year 10,202. So is there a retcon here? And if the Almanak is indeed incorrect, then when did Shaddam die?

Irulan is the first born of an Emperor who looks decades younger than he actually is. Given that producing an heir is the first priority upon obtaining the throne (along with marrying off daughters to secure political relations), it's also strange that Irulan is not much older than Paul was. A male ruler generally makes it a priority to start siring heirs when young, even while still only a crown prince. The PlotHole in the ''Children of Dune'' miniseries with a much older Wensicia is solely due to the casting of Susan Sarandon who is much older than Irulan's actor Julie Cox. Whom exactly was Shaddam saving Irulan for, if not the worthy Atreides whom he instead wanted to get rid of? Surely not Feyd, as he probably considered the Harkonnens as useful for his dirty work, but not worthy of marrying his daughter.

Irulan is the first born of an Emperor who looks decades older than he is. Given that producing an heir is the first priority upon obtaining the throne, it's also strange that Irulan is not much older than Paul was. The PlotHole in the ''Children of Dune'' miniseries with a much older Wensicia is solely due to the casting of Susan Sarandon who is much older than Irulan's actor Julie Cox. Whom exactly was Shaddam saving Irulan for, if not the worthy Atreides whom he instead wanted to get rid of? Surely not Feyd, as he probably considered the Harkonnens as useful for his dirty work, but not worthy of marrying his daughter.

** Great theory, and would be perfectly plausible except for one thing — Ghanima. Ghanima also was able to hear the voice of the Baron and if I recall correctly, she also mentioned having Paul's memories of his gom jabbar trial. You could argue that she was also a XY female, but women with that condition are sterile. Now Alia, despite having been married for nine years and carrying on countless affairs, never became pregnant. Ghanima on the other hand without a doubt had children, because the main characters in the subsequent books are her descendants.

Irulan once wrote of her father at a time when he was 72 years old (but looked about 35) This would have been at some point prior to Shaddam being deposed as Emperor (circa 10,196) as Irulan mentioned that she was a young girl at the time. However, he is said (in the The Almanak en-Ashraf) to have died at the age of 68 in the year 10,202. So is there a retcon here? And if the Almanak is indeed incorrect, then when did Shaddam die?

All three adaptations seem to dance around placing the accent on different syllables, especially the name "Harkonnen" ("Har-kone-in" vs "Harkening" with the "g" removed). The 2021 film now gives us another pronunciation of "Padishah" which is again, just placing the accent on a different syllable (This time, the herald pronounces it "Puh-dee-shuh" instad of "Pah-di-shah").

** Because you've fallen into the trap of assuming Paul is a hero. He's not: he's a villain who knows he's a villain and doesn't want to be. By the time of the second book, he has become the figurehead of arguably the most genocidal regime in known human history (even comparing himself to Hitler at one point, in a very bitter tone), knows that [[spoiler: Chani is going to die]], and is also aware that, if he is to actually follow through on a path that will lead to the betterment of humanity (and its survival), he will have to become even worse than he is now (essentially, becoming what Leto II became). He's broken by end of the novel, because he's had to do and endure more than anything he was ever prepared to face.

** Holtzman drive and AI navigators. Then a little inconvenience called the Battlerian Jihad happened...

** The construction of the stillsuit is actually noted by Paul (pre-Maudhib) as evidence that the Fremen have access to very advanced technology, considering that the construction of it is incredibly complex and technologically brilliant. That {{handwave}} is pretty much all we're going to get on the matter, I'm afraid.

*** I would also add, that Mohaim points out the Imperium works as a political tripod. The Emperor and his Sardaukar have the military power to police any individual House. The Landsraad has the ability to combine forces against a tyrannical Emperor, nor does the Emperor have the capability to directly govern all of the various worlds without the Great Houses. The Guild has a monopoly on travel and so must be obeyed, but because the Emperor and his designated Great House control the Spice, attempting to overplay their hand would lead to a stalemate where the Guild would lock off travel, but the Emperor/Great Houses would cut off Spice flow, eventually killing the Navigators. Mohaim notes how unstable this is, and that last scenario does almost play out at the end of the novel until The Guild acquiesces to Paul's demands.

*** And, of course, the Emperor gave House Atreides the 'fief-complete' of Arrakis for the sole purpose of getting them off their secure base from Caladan and onto ground where he could arrange for their destruction at the apparent hands of House Harkonnen, which explains the violation of normal policy re: not letting any Great House actually own Arrakis.

* Paul is grateful to Irulan for spiking Chani's food with contraceptives, because he knows that Chani will die in childbirth, and so feels Irulan has bought them more time together. However, the contraceptives have harmed Chani, and also led her to try the high-spice diet. Isn't it possible that she could have born healthy children if she hadn't spent all those years getting her food spiked?
* Also, how come this world can travel the stars but can't perform a basic caesarian procedure?

*** Great theory, and would be perfectly plausible except for one thing — Ghanima. Ghanima also was able to hear the voice of the Baron and if I recall correctly, she also mentioned having Paul's memories of his gom jabbar trial. You could argue that she was also a XY female, but women with that condition are sterile. Now Alia, despite having been married for nine years and carrying on countless affairs, never became pregnant. Ghanima on the other hand without a doubt had children, because the main characters in the subsequent books are her descendants.
*** So maybe the ''Baron'' was intersex. There are some intersex conditions in which fertility as a male is possible, and the Baron's lack of a direct heir (that he knew about) could be as much a result of veiled genetic issues as his more obvious mental ones.
*** The issue isn't the sex...it's the age at which the individual receives the Water of Life (in this case, as fetuses). Alia was exposed to it during a ceremony where her mother consumed the Water of Life to become a Reverend Mother, whereas the twins were exposed in a similar manner due to massive spice ingestion by their mother, which created a similar exposure. And the issue is not that woman CAN'T look down male genetic lines...it's that it's TERRIFYING to them. It's never made clear, but it's stated that the women of the Bene Gesserit refuse to follow the rabbit hole of memories down male lines. It's possible that, as it is necessary to undergo a lifetime of severe and extensive training just to prepare for the chance to become a Reverend Mother, it is simply easier to prepare people to receive a chorus of memories and voices from similar voices and mindsets. This would allow them to corral the noise easier and avoid being taken over like Alia. Part of this is simply plot hole, in the sense that Frank Herbert (for writing a very progressive science fiction story) still expressed some 'antiquated' views regarding gender norms (though it must be pointed out this is in light of all the other tropes he avoided). In story, however, I would chalk it up to the Bene Gesserit simply getting lazy (which it's shown they did regarding how to handle Paul). Until Ghanima, they may have assumed (based on a few very bad experiences) that it was something women simply could not do. And, considering how important their secrecy was to them, it was probably not worth the risk to attempt and experiment with looking down 'male lines' if it could produce someone that would expose them.
* Unexplained is why the memory of Baron Harkonnen is the obese monster we know from the books; when he sired Jessica he was a slender, attractive young man.

*** The only person in the Universe who knew Fenring was a 'failed Kwisatz Haderach' was Paul, due to his powers - for the Bene Gesserit, he was just another power-hungry nobleman and also sterile.

*** The book internal coherence suggests that it's the south of the northern polar region that is forbidden, not the south pole.
*** The southern hemisphere isn't forbidden, but Fremen propaganda and misinformation has caused the common belief that they're uninhabitable due to greater concentration of Coriolis storms and lack of major geographic shelters such as the Shield Wall. The Fremen keep it this way by bribing the Guild to keep the price of their orbital topographical surveys at absurdly high levels, to the point that no House-quasi-fief has had the budget to afford it. (It probably helped that the Emperor's official planetologists, Pardot Kynes and his son Liet, were in thick with the Fremen and therefore probably lied to the Emperor as well.)
*** That explanation does not work after the end of the first book.
*** That's where the map is, isn't it?

*** I did, but I just got really really bored with it. The first one was good. The second was annoying (thank god it was short), the third one was almost as good as the third, the fourth was the best (except for the StrangledByTheRedString), the fifth was overly drawn out, and the sixth was a disappointment. The biggest, most awesome events in human history, and all we get to see is an old crone thinking about her childhood.
*** Because you've fallen into the trap of assuming Paul is a hero. He's not: he's a villain who knows he's a villain and doesn't want to be. By the time of the second book, he has become the figurehead of arguably the most genocidal regime in known human history (even comparing himself to Hitler at one point, in a very bitter tone), knows that [[spoiler: Chani is going to die]], and is also aware that, if he is to actually follow through on a path that will lead to the betterment of humanity (and its survival), he will have to become even worse than he is now (essentially, becoming what Leto II became). He's broken by end of the novel, because he's had to do and endure more than anything he was ever prepared to face.

*** My thoughts was that Hawat was trying to get revenge against the Baron by playing him and his beloved na-Baron against each other. I believed that he had attempted to get the na-Baron killed in the Arena and, at the same time, have the Baron killed by the pleasure slave with the poisoned needle. Just my interpretation.
*** I'm with you on the first interpretation, but how is the poison needle Hawat's work? While the Baron gloats over Feyd's failure to assassinate him, he's honest enough to admit in his own thoughts that the poison needle trick would have succeeded, if Hawat hadn't warned him.
*** Mentats aren't quite super-duper geniuses; they're intelligent humans with a very tightly defined set of mental skills useful to the Imperium. Hawat gets sidelined because the Harkonnens make a dedicated effort to play to his weaknesses. And he isn't the only one not to suspect Yueh on account of his conditioning; it's implied that the Emperor will destroy the Harkonnens out of hand if he finds out they've suborned the only trusted medical school in the universe.
*** The Mentats aren't even trying to be Chessmasters - they're human computers. They are good at putting two and two together, but in the face of insufficient evidence (or sufficient madness) they fail spectacularly. Why do you think Leto II was able to conquer all the Mentats, and the Bene Gesserit, and the Spacing Guild?
*** But that's the point. There is very plainly a point being made about love and loyalty. Hawat isn't a superhero like Paul is, and even super awesome magical conditioning isn't as strong as his love is. Leto II talks about that, and Herbert himself does in the epilogue to Chapterhouse. Gender and relationship commentary is all over that series, and the Bene Gesserit, Bene Tleilax, and Honored Matres are all anvils referential not to politics or anything impersonal, but the breakdown of the personal by the impersonal. Leto II talks about that, too.

*** Exactly. I asked the question about Thufirs angle in the first place, the reason I'm wondering is: after he proposes to the Baron to make Arrakis a Prison Planet just like Salusa Secundus, Thufir asks himself if his victory over the Harkonnen will be as complete as the victory over the Atreides had been. So how did he want to do it? I now suspect that he wanted to raise the Emperors anger against the Harkonnen, just as the Emperor did not want to let the Atreides Army get as good as his own Sardaukar.
*** Precisely. The Baron thought he was manipulating Thufir by exploiting his hatred of the Harkonnens, dangling the possibility of undermining the House in front of him and luring from him the service required to get close enough to do real damage. Thufir knew this, of course, but the Baron was convinced he understood Thufir's emotional weaknesses well enough to spot and head off his inevitable betrayal. What Thufir didn't know was that he had been given a residual poison that would kill him without the antidote hidden in his food. What the Baron didn't realize is that Thufir was plotting to destroy the Harkonnens by making them so successful that the Emperor would become fearful of their rise.

*** ''Dune'' explored the consequences of the superhuman; the implications of prescience; the idea of genetic memory and race consciousness; and the manner in which tough environment and religious conditioning can be exploited.
*** ''Dune Messiah'' is effectively [[ScryVsScry Scry vs. Scry]] and introduces the notion of gholas and whether or not they can reclaim memories of previous lives.
*** ''Children of Dune'' explores the early life of Leto II and the manner in which the pre-born must adjust to the imposition of Other Memory without a lifetime of experience to contextualize these experiences ([[spoiler: Alia fails to do so and is possessed by her ancestor, the Baron Harkonnen; Ghanima unintentionally silences her Other Memory with self-hypnosis; and Leto II achieves a partnership with an ancestor named Harum who has the capabilities necessary to act as God Emperor, in the process ceasing to be either Leto II or Harum]]). There is also an element of [[ScryVsScry Scry vs. Scry]] afoot in ''Children of Dune'' in the sense that [[spoiler: Leto II's prescient visions oppose those of his father.]]
*** ''God Emperor of Dune'' is basically about Leto II using prescience and absolute control of the spice to become a super-predator who acts on the human population to select for methods of defying prescience (specifically: [[spoiler: the Siona gene and the no-room]]) and reducing dependency on spice and human specialists ([[spoiler: the Ixian machine that can replicate the functions of a Guild navigator without the spice; also, the Tleilaxu production of spice in their axlotl tanks]]). These capabilities combine with the pressures Leto has deliberately fermented in his empire. Basically: Frank Herbert theorized that people, when presented with someone vulnerable, will always be urged to victimize the vulnerable person; by creating universal tranquility, Leto created a bunch of potential victims whom [[ARealManisaKiller all red-blooded people]] are tempted to exploit -- but Leto also uses his Fish Speakers, prescience, and control of the spice to prevent people from from exploiting the potential victims he created, which leads to resentment. When [[spoiler: Leto dies]] and the aforementioned developments ([[spoiler: the Siona gene; the no-room; the Tleilaxu spice; the Ixian navigation machines]]) proliferate, the resentment Leto created explodes in [[spoiler: the Scattering]]. The canon motives for Leto II's actions are contradictory: in ''God Emperor of Dune'', Leto tells Hwi Noree that he predicted that the Ixians would create a prescient hunter-seeker that would eventually kill all humans. In ''Heretics of Dune'', [[spoiler: Odrade reveals that prescient abilities do not PREDICT futures, they CREATE them; Leto II's Golden Path was actually a plan to liberate humanity from prescience]].
*** ''Heretics of Dune'' returns to the idea of a race consciousness: [[spoiler: the Honored Matres are a threat because they use sexual pleasure to enslave men]], thereby meddling with what Frank Herbert considered one of the fundamental motives of humanity (mingling genes). In addition, Taraza manipulates events such that [[spoiler: the Honored Matres sterilize Arrakis, killing off all the worms that contained the pearls of Leto's awareness. These pearls of awareness represented "an oracular force that held us in bondage" (remember, prescience doesn't predict, it creates), so Taraza used the Honored Matres to kill the worms, removing the prescient force holding humanity prisoner. The remaining worm will eventually reproduce on Chapterhouse, but by then, humanity will have produced too many countermeasures to prescience to be held prisoner by prescient abilities.]]
*** ''Chapterhouse: Dune'' progresses primarily along three narrative axes. The first axis is the juxtaposition of an Other-Memory-mediated-jury-monitored-democracy (the Bene Gesserit) in which everyone automatically knows their place and knows what to do (because Other Memory) and everyone constantly monitors everyone else for signs of deviance (which they can automatically detect, because Other Memory) with a runaway entrenched bureaucracy (the Honored Matres) in which the military and the civil service have joined hands, full of sloppy, undisciplined leaders who can't make decisions and look for scapegoats. The second axis of ''Chapterhouse'' is an evolutionary arms race of sorts: [[spoiler: Sheeana's immunity to the Honored Matres' sexual bonding, Teg's ability to see no-ships (a new form of prescience), and Duncan's ability to reach outside of Time for information (including the memories of Duncan Idaho gholas whose cells DID NOT go into his making)]] are all new traits that will give humans who possess them an evolutionary advantage against humans who do not possess them. In short, creation never stops; the human form is unfixed. The third narrative axis by which ''Chapterhouse'' can be interpreted is [[spoiler: the influence of the advanced Face Dancers (represented by Marty and Daniel)]] who drove the Honored Matres back into the Old Empire. Advanced Face Dancers are complete prana-bindu mimics who can acquire memories from multiple people over time. These Face Dancers eventually acquire enough memories to become independent of Tleilaxu Masters and, somehow, exert control over the destination of a no-ship (perhaps because they, like Teg, can see no-ships). Duncan is only able to circumvent their control by erasing his no-ship's data and forcing it to make a [[BlindJump ''random'' space-fold: unpredictable and therefore uncontrollable]].
*** In general, the ''Dune'' franchise acts as an apologia for Frank Herbert's beliefs. For instance: Face Dancers are framed as antagonists because Face Dancers are sterile -- like Count Fenring (a potential Kwisatz Haderach who is considered a failure because he is sterile), this makes them failures because they have no ability to mingle their genes and therefore any egoism they have is ultimately untrustworthy. To quote ''Heretics of Dune'', "(Face Dancers) have no self-image. Without a sense of self, they go beyond amorality. Nothing they say or do can be trusted." Frank Herbert is fairly consistent in his belief that proper morals extend from the need to facilitate human survival and reproduction; from Frank Herbert's perspective, hedonism is immoral. For instance, Frank Herbert frames the obesity and homosexuality of the Baron Harkonnen in a negative light and ascribes these traits to hedonism. To quote Moneo in ''God Emperor of Dune'', "The Baron was a seeker after sensations. The fat was a side-effect, then perhaps something to experience for itself because it offended people and he enjoyed offending." Likewise, in ''Chapterhouse: Dune,'' Sheeana comments, "Life was always a reaction to pressures. Some gave in to easy distractions and were shaped by them: pores bloated and reddened by excesses. Bacchus leering at them. Lust fixing its shape on their features." Note that I don't subscribe to this particular argument; I merely analyze and report.

*** Knowing in his mind and being sure without a doubt are two different things. He does say that he knows she's likely dead but works on the off chance that she might not be.
*** This troper understood the leverage to be a result of whatever loyalties his Bene Gesserit wife would have used to bond him to her - given how they seem to like ensuring things go their way Wanna would have Yueh wrapped around her little finger - which would be more powerful than anything the Imperial Conditioning was designed to counter.

*** Not quite a briefcase: the actual quote was that the price of a planet could be carried in your ''hand luggage''. (Imagine a large suitcase full of cayenne pepper or turmeric.) ''Dune'' portrays a feudal society, so nobody outside the nobility and their closest advisers will ever get anywhere near the spice. (The ''Dune Encyclopedia'' says that there were about a hundred Great Houses and at most one million Houses Minor, probably less, so the total market for spice might have been on the order of ten million people throughout the Imperium.)
*** It says in the appendix of the first novel geriatric and immunity boosting properties of the Spice (the reason most people would consume it in the first place) need only a very small dose to be consumed periodically, like a 20th century medical drug. The only consumer big enough to matter is the Guild, whose Navigators practically ''eat, drink and breathe'' Spice derivatives only.
* Who says they supply billions upon billions? This shortage could be used as a political leverage to an unfathomable degree: you set an interval and by each turn evaluate the value of different planets, their loyalty and other factors, and then decide who receives the spice and who is to sit back and wait. If they decide to revolt, you just cut them off, then wait a bit and come back later, seizing what remains after their societal collapse, viewed as a saviour (and backed by propaganda).

*** Jessica was deeply in love with Duke Leto. It's made clear that the Bene Gesserit are shocked by this; that sort of thing just isn't supposed to happen. Duke Leto was deeply in love with Jessica. Nobody is remotely surprised by this; Bene Gesserit girls are apparently ''just that good.'' (And not merely on a physical level: they are trained to understand politics to an almost superhuman degree. Their desirability to an ambitious/ horny nobleman is overdetermined.)

*** In the first book, Jessica uses the Voice on Thufir Hawat as a way of making a point to him -- that she ''could'' control everyone in House Atreides by herself, but she ''doesn't want to'', as it would be completely counterproductive and a betrayal of trust.

*** Presumably the plan was for the Atreides daughter to be raised as a loyal Bene Gesserit. She'd willingly seduce Feyd-Rautha much as Lady Fenring did. Leto might have an "unfortunate accident" so his daughter (read: the Bene Gesserit) could take over the house.
*** Would the Imperium tolerate a Bene Gesserit in charge of a noble house? I actually don't recall reading about any house ruled by a woman implying a heavily patriarchal system.

*** The Baron could be bisexual and just lean more towards liking men than women.
*** With the technologies at their disposal they could do an artificial insemination.
* Is there a particular reason why the Bene Gesserit only care about noble genes? Are they naive enough to assume that authority equals good genetics? It's also surprising that their breeding program has lasted this long, given how many houses don't shy from sending assassins against the others.

*** Given that the nobles are likely to have fewer children than the commoners, there is still a high likelihood of an entire family line being wiped out by a successful assassination attempt. The Bene Gesserit don't exactly try to prevent these from occurring.
*** No, but they have been shown to attempt to "save" bloodlines in danger of loss, especially when it's a key gene in their breeding program.

*** And there are fewer of them (as noted in one of the above entries, there are probably only about a 100 million nobles or so. That's hard enough to make plans with, but compared to trying to take into account the genes of ''trillions'' of people...). Plus, it's a self-strengthening process -- after centuries of Bene Gesserit meddling, authority may well be fairly close to equalling good genetics, because the people in (feudal, inherited) authority are the people the Bene Gesserit have focused their breeding plans on.
*** This. You become a noble ''because'' Bene Gesserits have bred you specifically for ruling. They were, after all, formed to do politics in the same way the Guild does mathematics.
*** The history of the universe for ''the last ten millenia'' said only people with best of the best talents (scientists, generals, politicians, spies) raised themselves to nobility and power after the Butlerian Jihad. FromACertainPointOfView, each scion of a Great House was more or less a potential superhero.

*** It's also worth noting that the Bene Gesserit had manipulated bloodlines for thousands of years up to this point. This is a rare case of nobility actually being born to rule being justified, as they were (possibly unknowingly) genetically manipulated by the Bene Gesserit in an attempt to create their superhuman.

*** In ''Dune Messiah'', a Fremen man recounts his time on a wetter planet and his awe at seeing an ocean for the first time. He gulped ocean water and immediately threw up, not understanding that salt water isn't drinkable like fresh water.

*** Okay it carries some risks, but from what I have seen it is pretty obvious that most of the major players are already aware that Guild depends on melange (only thing you need to do is to have someone review sales of melange and you probably find that guild is buying the most of it) and as for nav computer development, there are only few planets which have advanced enough R&D labs to even think of such a resarch (Ix and perhaps Riches) not to mention they would have to start it from the scratch (since all AI plans were undoubtedly destroyed)which would take years or decades, not to mention poor self sufficiency of most planets which means that supposedly many planets would be forced to either capitulate or starve.
*** Paul explicitly calls them out on this. Their limited presence has make them really, really risk adverse. They *could* have seized power at any time but could never figure out a way to do it with out any risk. His prescience sees the same problem as theirs, any attempt to seize control lead to a prophesy snarl that you can't predict your way out of. While they decided to just become parasites he gathered an unstoppable army, lured his enemies into one place, and then rolled the dice that it would work out. He could have died, but being "human" saw a calculated risk that ended in a total win or instant death as being a good gamble while the Guild Navigators were all too timid to try.

*** He also apparently hoped to instill humanity with an instinctive dislike of centralized government and enough prescience-invisibile humans to make sure no future Pauls or Letos could ever conquer everyone as he had.

* Duke Leto and Thufir Hawat were confident that they ''were'', even with the Emperor secretly allied with the Harkonnens. Their failure was to underestimate just how much their opponents were willing to spend to destroy them.

*** ''Dune Messiah'' never suggests that Paul tried to stop the carnage. He was resigned to Fremen atrocities, despite his immense sway over his followers. Even Chani observed that he could have commanded them to stop.

*** Herbert writes about Fremen discipline and community cohesion, but the behavior of several Fremen characters contradicts this. Jamis killed a fellow Fremen simply because he wanted Harah. When Paul and Jessica joined Stilgar's sietch, several Fremen men wanted to slay him (but were killed by Chani before they could challenge him). If anything, quite a few Fremen men are selfish, ill-tempered, and short-sighted, which are ''not'' qualities of disciplined warriors or resilient societies.
*** The ''appearance'' of being a BadassArmy may have helped the Fremen during the Jihad, as well -- this is the army that defeated the Sardaukar, and while the ''reader'' can see much of that was the decline of the Sardaukar and the Fremen's deep experience with fighting on Arrakis, that (especially the Sardaukar's decline) would not be as common knowledge in-universe -- so the Fremen would generally be facing forces demoralized by knowing they're facing the fighters who defeated what had been ''the'' BadassArmy of the Imperium.

*** Except that the fitness to survive does not equal the badassitude. Though they fanatically follow some distant offshot of hybrid between Zen Buddism and Sunni Islam, so the founders could add an artificial rule along the lines "Try to kill everyone, the desert will decide the rest".

*** That may explain why they were upset, but it doesn't really explain anything else, does it? Why did she wait so long after Paul's birth to have more children? Why did the Bene Gesserit do nothing about the danger of losing both bloodlines, which they were worried about?

*** If the Messiah gets the cold feet, he's killed, ahem, ascends to heavens alive, and now he doesn't get in the way while still being a leading symbol and a convenient excuse to commit said atrocities. More or less the whole point.

*** Why would they be any more unpredictable or harder to control than anyone else? Why would a person's ancestors be less predictable and controllable than the person himself?
*** Because Bene Gesserit typically don't get access to ancestral memory until after they've gone through tons of training and are mentally prepared to handle the Other Memory. Someone like Alia would have access to those memories from ''before birth''. Who knows what kind of effect that would have on a person's mind?
*** Well, the Bene Gesserit might know if they bothered to study the phenomenon. The only thing that seemed to go wrong for Alia was that she happened to get possessed by the memories of a particularly vile ancestor. If she had been possessed by Leto, things might have turned out much better.

*** That seems like circular reasoning, as what they were doing was trying to create the Kwisatz Haderach.
*** The Bene Gesserit see themselves as the protectors of humanity. They use their future-sight and ancestral memory to help shepherd the human race down the best path. They believed the Kwisatz Haderach would be a leader and guide, opening new and better avenues the Sisterhood hadn't been able to see before. Which is pretty much exactly what happened, except the Kwisatz Haderach they got wasn't under their control, and had no particular reason to keep them in power over human government.

*** I was under the impression that many germs are not killed by the cold, merely rendered dormant. So, they would go dormant at night only to become active during the day.

*** So do the bacteria. Presumably spice doesn't offer any benefit to prokaryotes, else Arrakis would be swarming with super-pathogens.

*** Yes, but what about all the time before then? The hundreds or thousands of years (I forget the actual number) that they've depended on the Spice up to this point. No one ever once questioned where this stuff came from?
*** Pardot Kynes went into the desert to take some measurements and came upon some House Harkonnen troops attacking and torturing some Fremen children. He killed the troops; the Fremen believed he had to die anyway because he had seen a crysknife but at the same time they owed him a water debt so instead they captured him and brought him to their sietch and put him under guard while the tribal leaders debated what to do with him. While he was being held, Pardot started lecturing the guards and anyone who would listen about water cycles and how to make Arrakis green -- which is literally the Fremen's notion of heaven. When the Naibs confronted him he was able to estimate, to a couple of percentage points, exactly how much water it would take; and when provided with details of Fremen population numbers and biology he even gave them an estimated timeline to within a generation. At any point in this process he should have died. He should have died facing trained House troops, he should have died being alone in the deep desert with Fremen, he should have died talking openly and frankly with the guards, he should have died when confronted by the tribal leaders. There's even a story about an assassin who comes to kill Pardot, listens to him give a lecture, and decides to die rather than destroy Arrakis's only hope for a green future. Any of those points could have killed an earlier ecologist and outside observers would have chalked it up to "Arrakis is a deadly planet." If all of this seems too unlikely and improbable, then remember that it is heavily implied that some force beyond the revealed timeline is influencing events. Some group or entity that we never meet in Frank Herbert's books wants the story to unfold like it does, and makes events fall out in such a way that it happens.

*** Presumably "the floating 'fat' man" wasn't the Baron for eternity; it could have been installed under the previous head of House Harkonnen. And if it's too dangerous to remove, the current Baron may have simply decided to keep it.

When Paul first tries to fight in the Fremen way he's at a disadvantage because his reflexes are trained to fight shielded opponents. Why don't the Fremen have the same problem in reverse when they become Paul's army and have to fight enemies who have shields? Note that the Fremen are baffled by Paul's fighting style, so they aren't even familiar with anti-shield techniques in theory. Even if Paul tries training them in anti-shield techniques, how much use is that going to be with no actual experience in using them?[[/folder]]

The Sardaukar weren't necessarily atrophying in their raw ability but specifically their warrior ethos was metastizing into arrogance in the absence of foes capable of reminding them that they too can be defeated. This arrogance, in its own way, made them vulnerable as they and their Emperor would never imagine that Paul would utilize atomics to break the shield wall, nor would they have suspected the Fremen ability to direct the worm's in battle.

As for the Harkonnen troops. It's repeatedly demonstrated that the Baron inspires no loyalty or love in his soldiers and such rulers are famous for 'coup proofing' their armies in ways that cripple their effectiveness. Ironically, one of the ways this is done is to supply the army with advanced technology, but limit the number of trained specialists who know how to operate it.

* It's presented like a very big deal, but actually involves just some pain, threats and lots of empty metaphors, with relatively low stakes. Even modern humans can tolerate the pain described with sufficient conditioning.
Animal in the trap actually loses the leg. It would be more appropriate if the box actually gnawed off the hand, and damaged the nerves in the process so that it cannot be easily restored. The participant is informed about losing the hand, but not about nerve damage, which would be able to be reversed only by Gesserites' secret technique (and worsened back, should you anger them). This way they would get test for self-control, resolve and loyalty, and fail-safe in form of dependence for the latter in one package, which would be handy in Jessica's case at least (unless her love was stronger, but still).

** Possibly a combination of a by-product perks of controlling said nobles and their politic decisions to a considerable extent, which is nice no matter how you slice it, and an acquired snobism - they view themselves as messengers on a holy mission, which sounds suspiciously similar to plain old clergy, who in turn preferred to rub elbows instead of unwashed masses.

* Because otherwise there would be no conflict and no point in the parable for which it is a plot device. In-universe: conspiracy. The Emperor is a glorified throne-warmer, with the realpolitiks happening in the shade of the throne (until he decides to fuck up everything and instigate that war between Harkonnens and Atreides without asking the grown-ups first), and everyone of ''real'' importance is already informed. That would also explain why he stopped after the first scientist: "Now, baby, put the planet back where you got it, put the scientists back into the box, and go wash your hands until the soup is still hot".

** Think about the phrase "He who controls the spice, controls the universe." Acquiring the resources for a universe-wide jihad wouldn't have been a problem for someone who could bargin with literally the most valuable commodity known to man.[[/folder]]

* Duke Leto and Thufir Hawat were confident that they ''were,'' even with the Emperor secretly allied with the Harkonnens. Their failure was to underestimate just how much their opponents were willing to spend to destroy them.

** They thought they needed another genetic composition in their Kwizatz Haderach, like a a quarter Atreides and three quarters Harkonnen. They are not infallible too, as Hasimir Fenring existence shows. Paul was unexpected for his gender, his genetics, his training his knowledge and finally by his contact with the Fremen that made possible for him to face the agony and survive it.

[[folder: Why were the Bene Gessiert upset at Jessica?]]