My notes to self remind me to write about the “Three tragedies” for the fourth book in the Dune series.
The first book, Dune is the ascendancy of Paul Atreides, from a young scion of the Atreides to Paul Muad’ib, the little mouse of the desert. In the second, Dune Messiah, Herbert takes us beyond the golden sunset that our favourite characters typically walk into. What happens when one man becomes a Messiah? What happens when a downtrodden people rise against their masters? What happens when they conquer all the known worlds? Children of Dune, the third book brings in the next generation, the twins of Paul and Chani who are born with a prescience that is fast becoming the cross the Atreides must bear.
The tragedy of Leto Atreides II
We are here, three and a half thousand years after the events of the last book. Everyone and everything from that era is now dust. Possibly the only dust on the planet, Arrakis.
Perhaps this is why I love the Dune series so much. Nothing stays the same, and we will constantly evolve, change and distort and diverge from the ideas and ideologies of the past. What a man (or woman or child) speaks today can be lifted out of context, or enshrined in cults or forgotten in the future.
“If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary“
extract from Leto’s Secret Journals
Leto Atreides II, the God Emperor is the only living creature that has seen the old times when the planet was a desert, sparsely populated by the ragged but hardy Fremen. Things are much softer now, full of water. In the engineered greening of the planet the God Emperor is following his Golden Path. This is a period of enforced calm and “peace”, an unnatural and absolute docility that the human spirit constantly explodes against.
Although many authoritarian dictators have used the trope of a paternalistic protection of “my people” and the self-sacrificial “I do this for you“, in the case of Leto II we have the privilege of peering into his soul through the epigraphs in every chapter. It is here that a wellspring of loneliness mixed with the iron grip of a sacrifice can be felt.
The tragedy of Leto and Hwi Noree
No calm can be achieved without suppression. The God Emperor and his army of women (“Fish-speakers”) have built peace by crushing dissent from all the key players of the previous books. The Bene Gesserit women who scheme and conduct political genetic engineering, the Ixians with their strange and wondrous devices, the Tleilaxu and their mules who need to be kept alive because every tyrant needs a scapegoat, the Spacing Guild who can barely journey across time warps, the lost Corrino and Harkonen bloodlines, and even the Fremen, the worms and melange itself are faint whispers of what they used to be. But even now there are conspiracies and in this context emerges the gentlest woman and embodiment of all that Leto II finds attractive- the dusky and gentle Hwi Noree.
It is the tragedy of accepting your partner for who they are and never changing them, for they cannot be changed. And therein lies many a tragedy.
The tragedy of the Ghola- Duncan Idaho
After the first book, every appearance of Duncan Idaho wrings my heart. For the first Duncan is dead, and every Duncan after him are copies of original. Each has memories of the first until the moment of his death, and then new paths from their revival. Every Duncan is brought to life because they are so beloved to Paul first, and then to Leto II and because the Duncans are loyal.
Thus every time one dies, another Duncan is brought to life, like an endless supply of clones. Could you love someone or something so deeply that you bring them back again and again from the dead? Or would your love allow the dead to rest? Or are the dead resting, and these are just more of the same?
Leto II constantly revives his Duncan after their death. It is like he wants someone to share the memories of a past that no longer exists. That is what getting old is like, to have memories that no one else around you has.
Sanctum Meum 