#cielago

A huge part of the Dune novel is about subtle workings of violence and resentment in the family. The way Jessica views Paul as her creature and posession and recoils in horror from the parts of him she can't control. The way Paul sees her as a source of both his strength and his deepest fears: She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy. And in all this they still love each other. It's not the lack of love. It's the idea that birth and nurturing are inherently violent for both sides.

Just like with Duke Leto and his father. Just like with Jessica and Alia. And we see the same thing mirrored in the Harkonnens. The Baron abusing Feyd-Rautha while raising him and preparing him as his successor?? Fully aware the boy's rise to power will be his own death. The Baron himself as the book's main villain is a giant grotesque baby. Parenthood as existential horror.

The theme continues with Messiah where the birth of Leto II and Ghanima erases their parents. In Children of Dune Paul offers himself as sacrifice to the son he tried to kill and Chani nearly returns from the dead by possessing her daughter. Leto II and Ghanima are eldritch horrors trapped in child bodies. But even they come off as less cruel than Jessica in her final abandonment of both Paul and Alia. Leto II returns in God Emperor to claim humanity as his children, becoming both a god and a tyrant. Meanwhile his whole dead family lives inside his head and has to be kept from overpowering him at all times.

There is so much weird horror surrounding parents and children in the Dune books.

Moneo and Leto II

Leto. baby. you think you're melancholy. you never got to see your son and grandson rule the known universe and whine about it to their recycled Duncan Idahos

the thing is I love this passage in Dune, I love Leto's meltdown in front of Paul. it's sad and raw: we see Leto fall apart and see what it does to Paul. for a moment Leto's cynicism and fear come crashing down and Paul who is still a child, who still calls his father sir, has to keep it together for both of them. Leto can't help it, Arrakis is getting to him, the lack of sleep and constant danger and he needs Paul, he needs someone he can show weakness with even if Paul can't understand him yet: "I have to have someone I can say these things to, Son."

and then the moment passes and they head out to their spice mining trip with Kynes. and Leto is Leto again. we see him in action, a sharp diplomat, a strong leader, the ruler of Arrakis.

we see who he is at his strongest right after having seen him at his weakest.

Leto's arc in Dune is so short but there is so much there: that dinner scene where he weirds out all his guests...his quiet rage after the hunter-seeker attack on Paul...the lonely moments of him staring out into the desert dawn wondering if the world he has taken his son to will ever become a home..

there is a reason Villeneuve's Emperor calls him a weak man and has to pay for it. that line is not in the book but it should be.

there is weakness in Leto's strength. there is a tenderness and awkwardness neither his father nor his years as Duke have driven out of him.

I feel it adds a lot to the Dune books if you take this route.

The books, at least up to God Emperor, keep it pretty vague. Paul and Leto II are prescient, we know that, but are they always right? Is the Golden Path real and are they the key to saving mankind?

You have to take the Atreides' word for it. And you want to...

But then you remember they could just be space despots with drug-induced psychosis.

There is this part in God Emperor where Leto II talks about Moneo's doubts: “Sometimes you do not know what to think of me. Am I all-powerful and all-prescient? You bring me these little dibs and dabs and you wonder: Does he already know this? If he does, why do I bother? But I have ordered you to report such things, Moneo. Is your obedience not instructive?”

Obedience.

Not certainty.

Leto knows there is a chance he might be wrong about the Golden Path. Sometimes it tortures him. And he knows that just before him Paul hit da bricks so how definitive is the Golden Path really?? But Leto is never going to act on his doubts. It's not who he is, it's not Atreides. Like Moneo, Leto acts on what he believes and his belief in the Golden Path is what his power, his whole empire, is based on.

We don't know if the Golden Path is real. No one knows. The choice is not between the Golden Path and letting mankind perish.

The choice Leto makes is to sacrifice his own life and the lives of billions and billions for something no one can even be sure is real.

thinking about Paul's agency a lot and. this scene got to me.

if you only look at the first book in the series, it's a tragedy in the classic sense. it's Paul fighting his future and his past with a futility that's heartbreaking. trying not to become the thing he fears and then becoming it.

because book Paul can't win.

not against the grandfather whose hunger for leadership he inherited, not against his mother who raised him for power. not against his father who clearly lays out Paul's path on Arrakis in a few desperate words to his son: become the lisan al gaib, guerilla-warfare your way back to ruling. the only love Paul knows speaks the language of power and control.

Paul inherits what he will become.

and then there is the spice that opens his mind but what he sees isn't enough to guide him. and his quasi-mentat powers can't help him because they are disconnected from his heart and soul. and the Fremen culture he eventually becomes part of, well. putting the tribe above everything else, killing your way to leadership, constant war and violence... his fight with Jamis, his initiation into Fremen life, is itself an act of violence. and heavily manipulated by Jessica who watches the fighting machine she helped create kill a man she helped weaken for the kill.

the Villeneuve films take a different approach overall, not just with the Jamis fight. Paul is less of a 'machine' and 'product' in the films and especially Leto a much more loving influence.

Film Paul has more of a fighting chance. His agency is painted in a different light.

in leaving Caladan, all of House Atreides start descending into their personal hell. knowingly. Leto prepares to face the downfall of the Atreides, Jessica the dangers to her loved ones and Paul his terrible purpose. Gurney prepares to fight the Harkonnens once more and Thufir for a world of chaos he doesn't have the strength to subdue anymore. Yueh? he is already in hell.

it's devastating and hypnotic.

because these people love each other.

they are comrades, trusted friends, family, lovers but they all face their worst fears alone. they never open up to each other and they never find much comfort in each other. they are caught up in their roles and the need to hide all weakness. all they do is watch each other in secret dread, orbit each other and watch, closely, intimately, lovingly, on the brink of doom.