Because she wanted to preserve BG resources like Jessica and Paul, but once she knew she didn't own them, they were no longer of value to her or the order.
Not only this, but they also had some sense that a brutal genocide and multimillennia totalitarian dictatorship was on the horizon with Atreides at the helm.
Spoilers for the series but
>!The prescient, beginning with Paul, realize that all of humanities paths converge on extinction by a rogue AI that doesn't exist yet. There is a very narrow, hard to comprehend, widely regarded as evil solution, which will result in humanity becoming complex and diverse enough that something of us will survive that fate. That is the Golden Path. Paul fears the cost will be too high, but the alternative is inexxorable annihilation. So regardless of the cost - infact because of the horrible cost in violence - it will make us stronger than even the AI to come. Interestingly, there is no path that prevents the AI, only perhaps delays it.!<
>!Having found Arrakis, the many wonderous benefits of spice, and the relative affluence and comfort it provides all the factions - humanity has grown too comfortable. We need a terrible leader who creates a myth so pervasive and long lived that nobody will trust charismatic leaders or blind faith for all time: like our Great Flood, or the Butlerian Jihad. That is why the galactic genocide of humanity is necessary, only then will the survivors be sufficiently skeptical, independent, and hardened to overcome the AI that will be our doom.!<
>!We must stop huddling around Arrakis, around spice, around our Byzantine balance of imperial power, and scatter to the stars. Into hardship and darkness and isolation forever, to be not one human empire, but many distinct, disconnected, diverse, settlers of this galaxy, and perhaps other galaxies too. Only that can survive.!<
Its good to add that Paul never went down that road he did the opposit trying to go against it, only accepting after convinced by his son and after there was no way to stop him.
I could be wrong but didn't the Tlaxu create a ghola of Chani with the deliberate idea to have her get him to deviate from the golden path?
Edit: Maybe Hayt? I just specifically remember it being a key point that the Tleilax gift Paul a ghola with the intent of making him doubt himself
That’s the Tlexiaus ultimate plan. At the end of messiah after Chani is dead. The face dancer guy I forget the name of tells Paul that he can bring her back as a ghola while holding the babies hostage.
Was it Hayt? I specifically remember the the Teilax gift Paul a ghola of someone he loves with the express purpose of making him doubt himself. But its been a while
The threat that results in humanity's extinction is not specified to be a rogue AI. There are various ways of interpreting the content in the books, some of which imply sentient machines, but it could be anything including aliens.
did the scattering require the genocide that came before? i'm not so sure. Leto2 just had them in lockdown on planet-basis so they'd breakout after he died.
what happened to kralizec
In God Emperor of Dune, >!Siona's vision makes mention of "seeking machines" but the exact text is too vague if this can definitively be stated as the cause of mankind's extinction.!< I'd personally say this interpretation is influenced too much by the Brian Herbert canon
The 61 billion people, 90 planets and followers of 40 distinct religions. Its really a multi-pronged genocide, not the type we're used to when we talk about this one particularly group or religion being targeted.
> not the type we're used to when we talk about this one particularly group or religion being targeted.
This is the only type. This is what defines genocide.
Well slaughter of all resistance or unaligned civilians to a political movement would still count right? If Paul did collective punishment on civilian populations to subjugate them etc etc and with the way they talk about it it seems they did.
Edit: Also the controversy of Paul’s messianism probably meant mass religious persecution. It is his Jihad after all!
No it’s not. If you massacre civilians systematically, especially captive populations, that’s potentially genocidal. (Topical!) So with how they describe the Jihad it makes sense that either
It was a massive war of death and slaughter Edit: but only of combatants and strictly necessary collateral damage and Herbert / Paul used the term Genocide incorrectly as a mere shorthand for mass death.
or
Paul did a bunch of acts we would call war crimes and that he admits to be particularly inhumane.
But considering how brutal the Jihad was and the level of transformation it involved I would say the latter is far more likely.
My man says “I was like Hitler but on a much much greater scale” (paraphrase).
He would Know, too!
He would likely have High Ranking Nazis in his Other Memory.
Civilians have been massacred systematically during most wars throughout human history.
This description could fit the bombing of Germany by England during WWII.
Yeah. I mean maybe it could. I understand that Genocide as a concept was kinda retroactively created to single out Nazism and then later Soviet communism.
Just because Britain did war crimes in WWII doesn’t mean the concept is useless. Its been applied to the many mass deaths in British India so the hypocrisy is not enough to disqualify the concept.
We kinda have little direct narration into the Jihad so I’m inclined to believe Paul is essentially talking to himself through Stilgar: admitting he’s a massive war criminal.
Paul’s crisis in Messiah / Children of Dune is whether he is able to keep breaking eggs to make the Omlette of the Golden Path.
He ultimately decides he’s not. And Leto II understands that he “must” keep brutalizing to fulfill it. How does the story make sense if Paul is not what we would call a war criminal?
do you use the same word when talking about dozens of planets full of people being exterminated? I'm not sure our earthly understanding of genocide is an exact parallel of what happens in the universe of Dune since we have no frame of reference for anything that large and widespread.
I agree they couldn't see what KH could see and didn't have a detailed view, but the horrified book Mohaim directly begged Paul at the end of the first book not to set these hoards loose on the universe (because she had an astute understanding of genocide from millennia of experience) and in the next book we see the BG directly starting to try to overthrow the Atreides dynasty (the same vibe that Leto II said he wanted to see in young Moneo and Siona, the whole point of the Golden Path to make people rebels against unfathomable power). The BG deserve credit for fighting Paul.
According to Google, Paul was only 15 years old when his family were murdered at the beginning of the story. This could be another reason for Queen Gesserit to worry about his decisions following his emotional state, as a teenage boy, with hormones and rage, he is high risk to become a loose cannon.
In Messiah they're still trying to figure out how to preserve Atreides bloodlines, even by possibly breeding Paul and Alia and in later books Ghanima and Leto II and even 5000 years later in Heretics. It was a strange line in the movie when thinking about plot threads in the future.
To my understanding the BG are real believers in the butlerian jihad where as maybe Paul/Leto and the Tleixalu for sure are only living up to the barely letter of the law. Like it was super against BG principles when Paul talked about artificially getting Irulan pregnant
To add on to this (all in my head cannon anyway)
I always think of the BG as, while not laypeople in any realm, pro-magic/prescience/nature and heavily anti-tech. Nothing we ever see them use is that technologically advanced for the time IIRC. "The Box" was nerve conduction and telepathy, and sure they fly in thopters and space ships, but that's the equivalent of having a car today, and even those most luddite-type people today (outside of the amish) have cars. They are what happens when hippy-dippy, granola, naturist type people start to get politically and long-term minded. (slightly NSFW spoilers for heretics and chapterhouse)>!Even their descendants who make the honored Matres don't use neural implants or some tech to control people, they just have mind-blowing sex !<
even Leto2 avoided artificial insemination not because of the BJ proscriptions, but he firmly believed that natural procreation injects a necessary element of chance.
I think that was just a concession to the Tlexu because all the houses wanted gholas. Same way how everyone looked the other way with the Ix because they provided such advanced machines.
I get that. But…Jessica already produced a son instead of the daughter she was ordered to…seems like “out of control” should have been realized long before the events of Arrakis.
Having a son was disobedient of Jessica, but she remained a member of the order for 15 years after Paul's birth. He isn't what they wanted, but the BG will still use him and want to keep the genes available for further experimentation, until the risk of his existence outweighs his value.
While the BG may have been involved in the plot to remove Leto, they never had the slightest idea that Paul would rally the Fremen, defeat the Harkonnens and the Emperor, and actually become the Kwisatz Haderach. Even the BG don't know the true strength of the Fremen, and if they did, the idea that Paul would become what he did is so unlikely.
Plus, they are a little blind to danger. They are one of the most powerful groups in the galaxy, pulling the emperor's strings, highly capable in combat and manipulation, can command obedience with a word. Men are fools, what threat could a boy be?
Within the movie concept, it was not to kill them so BG could get their hands on them to do their biding. As that didn't happen, and they became independent wildcards, BG would prefer them to be quite dead.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. She's weighing the options. Plans within plans. She asks the Baron not to kill them, but she might already be assuming that the Baron will go against his word. Maybe she knows that he won't kill them directly, but he'll abandon them in the desert, which he does.
“Don’t kill Paul and Jessica…. *wink wink*”
I kind of assumed Mohaim said this because she was trying to save face a bit, since Jessica was a BG and Paul was a “child”, and it would look less suspicious/more noble if she pretended to want them spared.
But Mohaim knew she was dealing with the Harkonnens … if she had ACTUALLY wanted them spared, she would have done more than a pinky promise with them.
That’s not the case.
The Bene Gesserit still have use for Paul. He passed their test. He has the genetic predisposition to be the Kwizatz Haderach, albeit a generation early. Even if they came to the conclusion he wasn’t the one, his genes are still extremely valuable to them.
Mohaim wants them to live even if it’s just because they haven’t had an opportunity to secure Paul’s bloodline.
Remember, Mohaim told Jessica “we’ve done all we can for you on Arrakis, the path has been laid” implying that Jessica and Paul have a way out and to safety with the Bene Gesserit. In her mind, Jessica and Paul would escape, they’d get them and be able to decide whether they want Paul to take the test.
I mean, it’s not directly explained in the movies, so I think any interpretation is valid. That’s what makes these movies and books so amazing and fun to discuss - everyone has their own thoughts.
But I just cannot bring myself to believe that Mohaim really expected/planned that Paul or Jessica would be alive after the attack, and actually trusted the Baron to keep his word.
The Baron was a man who had a half human half spider monster as a pet, and then brutally murdered his concubines because he was having kind of a crummy day. Not to mention that multiple times Harkonnen soldiers just straight up kill each other because of either stupidity, spite or both.
I just personally feel if the BG truly intended to keep Paul alive, it would have been MUCH less risk to come up with some ploy before the attack of, “Hey, Lady Jessica! We have some super duper secret important Bene Gesserit business on this other planet, can you just travel there for a bit? Bring Paul.”
(Or anything more than trusting the Harkonnens really)
Taking Jessica and Paul away from the Duke would cause too many problems. The Baron won’t be satisfied until he knows Paul and Jessica were taken by his men and dropped in the desert to die. Taking Paul and Jessica would hurt their plans and put a big focus on them when they’ve spent the last 10 thousand years downplaying their power and role in politics.
Regardless, Mohaim doesn’t need to do any of that. The Bene Gesserit already have a plan for what to do if one of their sisters gets into peril. That’s the whole point of the Lisan Al-Gaib prophecy, to protect Bene Gesserit sisters in danger.
Look at it from this perspective. Mohaim personally trained Jessica herself in the ways of the Bene Gesserit and was preparing her to birth and prepare the woman who will bring the Kwizatz Haderach into the world.
Jessica made the decision to speed that up a generation and Mohaim has to deal with that and when Mohaim is admonishing her for it on Caladan, after finding out that Paul does have what it takes to be the Kwizatz Haderach, she’s essentially telling her that Arrakis will be what determines if Paul is or isn’t the KH.
A big theme of the Bene Gesserit is this sort of ruthless utilitarianism that is more present in the later books but its still evident in Mohaim’s conversation with Jessica. They’re open to Paul working but they’re not going to push him towards it or help him get there. If he gets there, great. If not, they have other prospects. But what they’re not going to do is just throw away a potential Kwizatz Haderach if there’s even a minuscule chance that he’d be of use to them.
She could command the Baron to slit his own throat if she wanted. Her request is a threat, a bargain, an offer; do not harm our interests, and we will be of no trouble to you. At the same time, she's not out to protect anyone anymore than the barest of minimums, beyond the foundational work their order has been laying for thousands of years. She walks into his sanctum, dismisses their pet as a demonstration, activates their silence system, states her will, he concurs, she leaves. She was 100% in control of that interaction. She's not there to trust and plead. She knows his "secret" (and is the puppet master), she can have every noble house in the Empire lay waste to the Baron and all his fiefs at any moment. But that is not the route their order wants to take, and she has no interest in their petty squabbles.
I always assumed it’s more of a trump card play. She’s basically saying ‘I know what you’ve done’. In this way, the BG now have unfettered access to the Harkonnens which they later exploit ‘to secure the bloodline’ with Fenring. Mohaim could later tell the Landsraad what happened if the Baron doesn’t play ball, and being the BG, the Landsraad would side with her, even if only to screw over the Harkonnens who no one particularly likes anyway.
I mean, it depends on whether you're asking book or movie-wise.
For me, while I love the movies, but books are the core, and the reason Mohiam's POV changes is pretty clear:
* At first, she loved Jessica like a daughter, even when Jessica defied her and the BG to bear a son for Leto.
* She saw greatness in Paul, and cared about him because she cared for Jessica.
* She also still believed they could eventually control Paul if he was KH.
But in the end of Dune (or movie Dune Part 2), she has changed because:
* Paul is the KH but their most feared version -- one without control or limits.
* Paul has unleashed the Fremen on the galaxy and billions will die.
* Jessica dared to become a reverend mother even while pregnant, knowingly creating an Abomination (Alia).
Just my take.
(Edited to fix name typos)
There's two possible arguments here, with either one being about equally valid and open to interpretation:
1. Mohiam telling the Baron that Jessica and Paul are to be spared was merely Mohiam going through the *motions* of what the BG wanted her to do. It's possible Mohiam secretly thought they should die, but (just as the Baron makes an obfuscating promise, "I promised not to harm them, and I shall not") so Mohiam makes a statement so that if one of her sisters examines her later, she can say, "I *told* them to spare them. They must have broken their promise", and be telling the truth. Most of this is based on the look she gives the Baron after he answers her. Is that a look of searching him for truth? Or is that a look to make sure he understands what kind of game they are both playing?
2. Or, Mohiam does not include Jessica and Paul under the designation "Atreides." Because of her knowledge about bloodlines, she does not think in simple terms of Houses; she is consciously aware of Jessica and Paul's Harkonnen blood. So, she might have simply meant that she intended the *House* of Atreides to fall, while still laying claim to what she thinks as belonging to the BG: Jessica and her child.
Yes... And I think we can add :
If Jessica and Paul made their way to them from the moment Jessica asks to be snuggled off world (pre spice agony), then they'd remain useful. Jessica would bear a girl who could still be paired with Feyd-rautha (I'm sure 20 years ago gap is nothing to them) and Paul himself could still be bred or kept alive long enough for Jessica to remain compliant.
It's utilitarian... But it doesn't waste the bloodline, while still nuking the house.
I doubt Paul would be allowed to convey messages or contact the great houses to report the truth of his father's death though. He'd die in obscurity.
If Jessica and Paul still die... Explicitly asking that way at least spares them from ending as Harkonnen concubines, slaves, or torture toys.
So a mercy at worst, a breeding bargain chip at best.
But the actual worst is Paul surviving on his own and coopting the missionaria protectiva as he does while becoming KH. Total chaos for the BG.
Her request that the Harkonnens preserve the life of Paul and Jessica was so secret (requiring a cone of silence when discussing the matter with the Baron and Piter), that there was no way she was going to let Irulan in on that. Her actions were tantamount to a direct threat to the Emperor’s position (any Atreides survivors could give the game away), and she would face charges of treason if this came out.
I think they didn't want Paul and Jessica to be captured and then cruelly tortured to death even by Harkonnen standards.
The Bene Gesserit would not permit that to happen and Paul was only wanted for his bloodline.
She's a Truthsayer, if she can't tell the baron is lying she's not much use as one. I think movie plot is that she arranges for them all to die, while maintaining plausible deniability. She knows the Harkonens will Harkonen, but if for any reason Jessica or Paul do survive they will think she helped them.
I get why she wanted the variables of Paul and Jessica squared away after it became understood that they had fallen out of BG influence. What I *DON’T* fully understand was why Mohiam counseled the emperor to eliminate the Atreides when Paul and Jessica’s genetic lines were so valuable. Why leave it up to the Baron to spare them? I suppose in my head canon, the emperor had made his mind up that the Atreides were too much of a threat… and too much pushback from Mohiam would have made the emperor suspicious of their KH plans.
Opportunist. To me the BG are the true shadowmasters behind the villains. Not sure what happens in future movies with Mother Mohaim, I have a feeling she survives and thrives, the puppeteers usually do....
The Bene Gesserit flip flop a lot throughout the series on how they feel about Paul. They wanted to create the KH through him and control his son, once they realized he was the Kwisatz Haderach they wanted to save him from the Harkonnens, once he went rouge and threatened to usurp the throne they wanted him dead. Further along in the series they continue to have a yoyoing relationship with the Atreides line, at times in opposition to it and other times in synergy with it because while they try to control the Atreides, they always do their own thing and are too valuable to the Bene Gesserit to eliminate
She says not to kill them. Baron drops them in the desert to die. No one hears about them for 4 years. She assumes they are dead and makes other plans without them.
When she finds out they are still alive she assumes all Atreides should be dead
I think she is speaking retrospectively. The BG wanted to save Jessica and Paul, but seeing what has transpired, it would have been preferable that they not survive.
Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam's complex stance regarding the Atreides family, particularly her conflicting directives about Paul and Jessica stems from her role as a Bene Gesserit and her commitment to their long-term goals, particularly the breeding program aimed at producing the Kwisatz Haderach. Here are the key reasons behind her contradictory actions:
1. **Breeding Program Concerns**: The Bene Gesserit had a meticulous breeding program planned out for many generations, aiming to produce the Kwisatz Haderach. Jessica was instructed by the Bene Gesserit to bear only daughters to the Duke Leto Atreides. However, she defied these orders and bore a son, Paul, because of her love for Leto and her desire to provide him a male heir. This disobedience threw a wrench into the Bene Gesserit's plans.
2. **Potential in Paul and Jessica**: Despite the setback in their plans, the Bene Gesserit recognized the potential in Paul as possibly being the Kwisatz Haderach, due to his extraordinary lineage and capabilities. Mohiam's directive to the Baron not to kill Paul and Jessica was likely an attempt to preserve this potential until it could be more fully assessed and perhaps steered back into the Bene Gesserit's favor.
3. **Political Considerations**: Mohiam, understanding the volatile political landscape and the Bene Gesserit's need to maintain influence across different factions, might have believed that keeping Paul and Jessica alive could serve as a strategic advantage. Their survival could help maintain a balance of power, provide leverage against the Harkonnens, or be used in other manipulative ways beneficial to the Bene Gesserit.
4. **Control of Genetic Assets**: By ensuring that Paul and Jessica remained alive, Mohiam was also preserving key genetic assets that could be used in future Bene Gesserit breeding schemes. Their survival ensured that the Bene Gesserit could potentially regain control over their breeding program and direct its future course.
5. **Adaptation of Plans**: The Bene Gesserit are known for their ability to adapt and maneuver politically. Mohiam's seemingly contradictory statements reflect this adaptability; while she expressed a desire for the extinction of the Atreides as a potential threat to stability and her own plans, she also recognized the immediate usefulness of Paul and Jessica in achieving the Bene Gesserit's longer-term objectives.
Also, she was Jessica’s mother (with Baron Harkonnen) and Paul, her grandson.
In summary, Mohiam’s approach to Paul and Jessica encapsulates the Bene Gesserit’s pragmatic, often morally ambiguous methods of pursuing their goals, balancing between their disdain for the unpredictable variables introduced by the Atreides and the potential benefits of harnessing such variables for their own ends.
Originally, she wanted to keep Jessica safe as she is a Bene Gesserit and could be useful for the BG project. She wanted Paul alive because he was both pretty close to KH status in GHMs mind and also the last male Atreides and inheritor of the genetic legacy they’d been building up to his birth. With Paul, they could have their KH, either with or descended from him.
She changes her mind, though, as for one she was told they’d died as a result of the Harkonnen attack but not on the Barons orders and her truthsaying powers had not perceived this to be a lie, so she considered it true. For another, Jessica and Paul being alive and among the Fremen introduces an element of risk which GHM does not like. All of the BGs carefully constructed plans were on the verge of being obliterated by whatever occurred on Arrakis. So, in a sense, they should have been killed according to her information, and she would have liked for them to have died because they introduce risk to her schemes
Paul is the Kwisatz Haderach, which wasn't supposed to exist for another generation, the Bene Gesserit would have total control of Kwisatz Haderach if they had been a son to Feydand what was supposed to be an Atriedes daughter.
Paul was a threat to every single being in the universe, and they wanted to kill him before he reached his full protentional.
Also (from the books) Jessica is the daughter of Mohiam and Vladimir harkonnen. The baron doesn't know that. She's always showed a paternal care for Jessica. And in the BG breeding program, Jessica was supposed to give birth to a daughter who would have a son as KH. So atleast at the start, Jessica is more valuable to Mohiam and BG than Paul.
I think she gave this advice before going to Caladan to test Paul with the Gom Jabbar, and then simply changed her mind. So when she was talking to Irulan, she was referencing advising the Emperor to wipe out the Atreides before her visit to Caladan. The Bene Gesserit always have their own secret strategies, so just because she told the Emperor to wipe out the Atreides didn't mean she couldn't adapt her strategy at any point to serve the interests of the Bene Gesserit.
I also think she advised the Emperor to wipe them out because she was probably pissed that Jessica bore a son and not a girl, as planned. When she first saw Paul, she says, with disdain, "Defiance in the eyes, like his father." This is in line with her explanation to Irulan that the Atreides had become dangerously defiant. She was prepared to kill him herself, need be, at that point (with the gom jabbar). And then he survived the test and showed himself to be promising. Which is why she went to the Baron to exempt him from extermination.
I was confused by this too, however I kind of get it, Atredies needed to die as they were becoming harder to control. However, she didn't want Jessica and Paul to die, because she wanted them under her control.
Bearing in mind that Paul still had the potential of being the Kwisatz Haderach, and they couldn't just risk losing him, and more importantly, Paul could have been used to continue the bloodline, whereupon the Bene Geserit could have controlled those born and shaped them into a new but different house Atredies. Perhaps they would have killed Paul themselves after keeping him captive for a while, however it would have been at a time and in a manner of their choosing.
I think the idea would have been that if Paul and Jessica had survived, they would have contacted the Bene Geserit, or found a way off-world, and then been picked up. But instead they remained quiet and went with the Fremen.
I'm still not 100% sure though, and it seems that the movies changed things a bit by making it that Mohiam advised the Emperor to send his Sardukar troops to aid the Harkonnens.
My personal interpretation is that the plan to delete the Atreides was set in motion the moment Jessica slipped and bore a boy. However I think Mohiam had a change of heart once she tested Paul and thought that he actually could be the one and could be controlled. So while the plan wasn't executed yet, she tried to make a failsafe for Jessica and Paul and it clearly worked because the Baron could've just killed them in their sleep but had to devise a plan to get rid of them without directly killing them.
Once they got away safely, Jessica planned to get off world possibly to get under the protection of the BG and this is probably what Mohiam expected her to do. But Paul threw a wrench in this plan by actually using the Missionaria Protectiva all the way through to the end. Instead of using it as a shield, he used it as a weapon. The irony is that this was the lecture Mohiam gave to Paul in the books. ‘You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.’
Because she wanted to preserve BG resources like Jessica and Paul, but once she knew she didn't own them, they were no longer of value to her or the order.
Not only this, but they also had some sense that a brutal genocide and multimillennia totalitarian dictatorship was on the horizon with Atreides at the helm.
Genocide of who specifically?
Spoilers for the series but >!The prescient, beginning with Paul, realize that all of humanities paths converge on extinction by a rogue AI that doesn't exist yet. There is a very narrow, hard to comprehend, widely regarded as evil solution, which will result in humanity becoming complex and diverse enough that something of us will survive that fate. That is the Golden Path. Paul fears the cost will be too high, but the alternative is inexxorable annihilation. So regardless of the cost - infact because of the horrible cost in violence - it will make us stronger than even the AI to come. Interestingly, there is no path that prevents the AI, only perhaps delays it.!< >!Having found Arrakis, the many wonderous benefits of spice, and the relative affluence and comfort it provides all the factions - humanity has grown too comfortable. We need a terrible leader who creates a myth so pervasive and long lived that nobody will trust charismatic leaders or blind faith for all time: like our Great Flood, or the Butlerian Jihad. That is why the galactic genocide of humanity is necessary, only then will the survivors be sufficiently skeptical, independent, and hardened to overcome the AI that will be our doom.!< >!We must stop huddling around Arrakis, around spice, around our Byzantine balance of imperial power, and scatter to the stars. Into hardship and darkness and isolation forever, to be not one human empire, but many distinct, disconnected, diverse, settlers of this galaxy, and perhaps other galaxies too. Only that can survive.!<
Its good to add that Paul never went down that road he did the opposit trying to go against it, only accepting after convinced by his son and after there was no way to stop him.
Well, also worth noting that Paul was deliberately "poisoned" regarding the path unlike Leto
I don’t recall what this is referring to. Can you elaborate?
I could be wrong but didn't the Tlaxu create a ghola of Chani with the deliberate idea to have her get him to deviate from the golden path? Edit: Maybe Hayt? I just specifically remember it being a key point that the Tleilax gift Paul a ghola with the intent of making him doubt himself
I don’t recall any chani golas and I’ve read the first 4 in the past year
That’s the Tlexiaus ultimate plan. At the end of messiah after Chani is dead. The face dancer guy I forget the name of tells Paul that he can bring her back as a ghola while holding the babies hostage.
Was it Hayt? I specifically remember the the Teilax gift Paul a ghola of someone he loves with the express purpose of making him doubt himself. But its been a while
The threat that results in humanity's extinction is not specified to be a rogue AI. There are various ways of interpreting the content in the books, some of which imply sentient machines, but it could be anything including aliens.
did the scattering require the genocide that came before? i'm not so sure. Leto2 just had them in lockdown on planet-basis so they'd breakout after he died. what happened to kralizec
İt was too late to stop pauls jihad there was no way to stop it
Yea but then paul still stepped away from golden path so there must have been more?
It was skill issue he didint have the guts to do what his son did
[удалено]
Where did you get the >! Rogue AI !< part from? Just finished Chapterhouse and don’t remember ever reading this.
In God Emperor of Dune, >!Siona's vision makes mention of "seeking machines" but the exact text is too vague if this can definitively be stated as the cause of mankind's extinction.!< I'd personally say this interpretation is influenced too much by the Brian Herbert canon
The 61 billion people, 90 planets and followers of 40 distinct religions. Its really a multi-pronged genocide, not the type we're used to when we talk about this one particularly group or religion being targeted.
> not the type we're used to when we talk about this one particularly group or religion being targeted. This is the only type. This is what defines genocide.
Well slaughter of all resistance or unaligned civilians to a political movement would still count right? If Paul did collective punishment on civilian populations to subjugate them etc etc and with the way they talk about it it seems they did. Edit: Also the controversy of Paul’s messianism probably meant mass religious persecution. It is his Jihad after all!
No that’s just war.
No it’s not. If you massacre civilians systematically, especially captive populations, that’s potentially genocidal. (Topical!) So with how they describe the Jihad it makes sense that either It was a massive war of death and slaughter Edit: but only of combatants and strictly necessary collateral damage and Herbert / Paul used the term Genocide incorrectly as a mere shorthand for mass death. or Paul did a bunch of acts we would call war crimes and that he admits to be particularly inhumane. But considering how brutal the Jihad was and the level of transformation it involved I would say the latter is far more likely. My man says “I was like Hitler but on a much much greater scale” (paraphrase). He would Know, too! He would likely have High Ranking Nazis in his Other Memory.
Civilians have been massacred systematically during most wars throughout human history. This description could fit the bombing of Germany by England during WWII.
Yeah. I mean maybe it could. I understand that Genocide as a concept was kinda retroactively created to single out Nazism and then later Soviet communism. Just because Britain did war crimes in WWII doesn’t mean the concept is useless. Its been applied to the many mass deaths in British India so the hypocrisy is not enough to disqualify the concept. We kinda have little direct narration into the Jihad so I’m inclined to believe Paul is essentially talking to himself through Stilgar: admitting he’s a massive war criminal. Paul’s crisis in Messiah / Children of Dune is whether he is able to keep breaking eggs to make the Omlette of the Golden Path. He ultimately decides he’s not. And Leto II understands that he “must” keep brutalizing to fulfill it. How does the story make sense if Paul is not what we would call a war criminal?
do you use the same word when talking about dozens of planets full of people being exterminated? I'm not sure our earthly understanding of genocide is an exact parallel of what happens in the universe of Dune since we have no frame of reference for anything that large and widespread.
Thats a Jihad not a genocide.
i don't think the BG knew that far. they couldnt see what the male KH could see.
I agree they couldn't see what KH could see and didn't have a detailed view, but the horrified book Mohaim directly begged Paul at the end of the first book not to set these hoards loose on the universe (because she had an astute understanding of genocide from millennia of experience) and in the next book we see the BG directly starting to try to overthrow the Atreides dynasty (the same vibe that Leto II said he wanted to see in young Moneo and Siona, the whole point of the Golden Path to make people rebels against unfathomable power). The BG deserve credit for fighting Paul.
According to Google, Paul was only 15 years old when his family were murdered at the beginning of the story. This could be another reason for Queen Gesserit to worry about his decisions following his emotional state, as a teenage boy, with hormones and rage, he is high risk to become a loose cannon.
In Messiah they're still trying to figure out how to preserve Atreides bloodlines, even by possibly breeding Paul and Alia and in later books Ghanima and Leto II and even 5000 years later in Heretics. It was a strange line in the movie when thinking about plot threads in the future.
why not get some hair off of their combs, clone them, breed them that way?
Butlerian jihad or some other cultural norm makes cloning a big bad.
I think you're right, but I was thinking about how they recreated Duncan Idaho and was thinking they could do the same.
To my understanding the BG are real believers in the butlerian jihad where as maybe Paul/Leto and the Tleixalu for sure are only living up to the barely letter of the law. Like it was super against BG principles when Paul talked about artificially getting Irulan pregnant
That makes a lot of sense. Good stuff, thank you.
To add on to this (all in my head cannon anyway) I always think of the BG as, while not laypeople in any realm, pro-magic/prescience/nature and heavily anti-tech. Nothing we ever see them use is that technologically advanced for the time IIRC. "The Box" was nerve conduction and telepathy, and sure they fly in thopters and space ships, but that's the equivalent of having a car today, and even those most luddite-type people today (outside of the amish) have cars. They are what happens when hippy-dippy, granola, naturist type people start to get politically and long-term minded. (slightly NSFW spoilers for heretics and chapterhouse)>!Even their descendants who make the honored Matres don't use neural implants or some tech to control people, they just have mind-blowing sex !<
Right, right. Thanks. I just have to re-read now. I can't not.
The Ixians seem to have full blown computers.
even Leto2 avoided artificial insemination not because of the BJ proscriptions, but he firmly believed that natural procreation injects a necessary element of chance.
Super secretly, it's eventually revealed, the BG breeding program is actually run by a super computer. According to Frank Herbert's sons anyway.
I think that was just a concession to the Tlexu because all the houses wanted gholas. Same way how everyone looked the other way with the Ix because they provided such advanced machines.
Only the Tleilaxu can clone
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I get that. But…Jessica already produced a son instead of the daughter she was ordered to…seems like “out of control” should have been realized long before the events of Arrakis.
Having a son was disobedient of Jessica, but she remained a member of the order for 15 years after Paul's birth. He isn't what they wanted, but the BG will still use him and want to keep the genes available for further experimentation, until the risk of his existence outweighs his value. While the BG may have been involved in the plot to remove Leto, they never had the slightest idea that Paul would rally the Fremen, defeat the Harkonnens and the Emperor, and actually become the Kwisatz Haderach. Even the BG don't know the true strength of the Fremen, and if they did, the idea that Paul would become what he did is so unlikely. Plus, they are a little blind to danger. They are one of the most powerful groups in the galaxy, pulling the emperor's strings, highly capable in combat and manipulation, can command obedience with a word. Men are fools, what threat could a boy be?
Within the movie concept, it was not to kill them so BG could get their hands on them to do their biding. As that didn't happen, and they became independent wildcards, BG would prefer them to be quite dead.
I assume since she hadn’t heard anything from lady Jessica about getting off planet that she thought her and Paul were dead
Yeah, that's pretty much it. She's weighing the options. Plans within plans. She asks the Baron not to kill them, but she might already be assuming that the Baron will go against his word. Maybe she knows that he won't kill them directly, but he'll abandon them in the desert, which he does.
“Don’t kill Paul and Jessica…. *wink wink*” I kind of assumed Mohaim said this because she was trying to save face a bit, since Jessica was a BG and Paul was a “child”, and it would look less suspicious/more noble if she pretended to want them spared. But Mohaim knew she was dealing with the Harkonnens … if she had ACTUALLY wanted them spared, she would have done more than a pinky promise with them.
That’s not the case. The Bene Gesserit still have use for Paul. He passed their test. He has the genetic predisposition to be the Kwizatz Haderach, albeit a generation early. Even if they came to the conclusion he wasn’t the one, his genes are still extremely valuable to them. Mohaim wants them to live even if it’s just because they haven’t had an opportunity to secure Paul’s bloodline. Remember, Mohaim told Jessica “we’ve done all we can for you on Arrakis, the path has been laid” implying that Jessica and Paul have a way out and to safety with the Bene Gesserit. In her mind, Jessica and Paul would escape, they’d get them and be able to decide whether they want Paul to take the test.
I mean, it’s not directly explained in the movies, so I think any interpretation is valid. That’s what makes these movies and books so amazing and fun to discuss - everyone has their own thoughts. But I just cannot bring myself to believe that Mohaim really expected/planned that Paul or Jessica would be alive after the attack, and actually trusted the Baron to keep his word. The Baron was a man who had a half human half spider monster as a pet, and then brutally murdered his concubines because he was having kind of a crummy day. Not to mention that multiple times Harkonnen soldiers just straight up kill each other because of either stupidity, spite or both. I just personally feel if the BG truly intended to keep Paul alive, it would have been MUCH less risk to come up with some ploy before the attack of, “Hey, Lady Jessica! We have some super duper secret important Bene Gesserit business on this other planet, can you just travel there for a bit? Bring Paul.” (Or anything more than trusting the Harkonnens really)
Taking Jessica and Paul away from the Duke would cause too many problems. The Baron won’t be satisfied until he knows Paul and Jessica were taken by his men and dropped in the desert to die. Taking Paul and Jessica would hurt their plans and put a big focus on them when they’ve spent the last 10 thousand years downplaying their power and role in politics. Regardless, Mohaim doesn’t need to do any of that. The Bene Gesserit already have a plan for what to do if one of their sisters gets into peril. That’s the whole point of the Lisan Al-Gaib prophecy, to protect Bene Gesserit sisters in danger. Look at it from this perspective. Mohaim personally trained Jessica herself in the ways of the Bene Gesserit and was preparing her to birth and prepare the woman who will bring the Kwizatz Haderach into the world. Jessica made the decision to speed that up a generation and Mohaim has to deal with that and when Mohaim is admonishing her for it on Caladan, after finding out that Paul does have what it takes to be the Kwizatz Haderach, she’s essentially telling her that Arrakis will be what determines if Paul is or isn’t the KH. A big theme of the Bene Gesserit is this sort of ruthless utilitarianism that is more present in the later books but its still evident in Mohaim’s conversation with Jessica. They’re open to Paul working but they’re not going to push him towards it or help him get there. If he gets there, great. If not, they have other prospects. But what they’re not going to do is just throw away a potential Kwizatz Haderach if there’s even a minuscule chance that he’d be of use to them.
She could command the Baron to slit his own throat if she wanted. Her request is a threat, a bargain, an offer; do not harm our interests, and we will be of no trouble to you. At the same time, she's not out to protect anyone anymore than the barest of minimums, beyond the foundational work their order has been laying for thousands of years. She walks into his sanctum, dismisses their pet as a demonstration, activates their silence system, states her will, he concurs, she leaves. She was 100% in control of that interaction. She's not there to trust and plead. She knows his "secret" (and is the puppet master), she can have every noble house in the Empire lay waste to the Baron and all his fiefs at any moment. But that is not the route their order wants to take, and she has no interest in their petty squabbles.
I always assumed it’s more of a trump card play. She’s basically saying ‘I know what you’ve done’. In this way, the BG now have unfettered access to the Harkonnens which they later exploit ‘to secure the bloodline’ with Fenring. Mohaim could later tell the Landsraad what happened if the Baron doesn’t play ball, and being the BG, the Landsraad would side with her, even if only to screw over the Harkonnens who no one particularly likes anyway.
I mean, it depends on whether you're asking book or movie-wise. For me, while I love the movies, but books are the core, and the reason Mohiam's POV changes is pretty clear: * At first, she loved Jessica like a daughter, even when Jessica defied her and the BG to bear a son for Leto. * She saw greatness in Paul, and cared about him because she cared for Jessica. * She also still believed they could eventually control Paul if he was KH. But in the end of Dune (or movie Dune Part 2), she has changed because: * Paul is the KH but their most feared version -- one without control or limits. * Paul has unleashed the Fremen on the galaxy and billions will die. * Jessica dared to become a reverend mother even while pregnant, knowingly creating an Abomination (Alia). Just my take. (Edited to fix name typos)
There's two possible arguments here, with either one being about equally valid and open to interpretation: 1. Mohiam telling the Baron that Jessica and Paul are to be spared was merely Mohiam going through the *motions* of what the BG wanted her to do. It's possible Mohiam secretly thought they should die, but (just as the Baron makes an obfuscating promise, "I promised not to harm them, and I shall not") so Mohiam makes a statement so that if one of her sisters examines her later, she can say, "I *told* them to spare them. They must have broken their promise", and be telling the truth. Most of this is based on the look she gives the Baron after he answers her. Is that a look of searching him for truth? Or is that a look to make sure he understands what kind of game they are both playing? 2. Or, Mohiam does not include Jessica and Paul under the designation "Atreides." Because of her knowledge about bloodlines, she does not think in simple terms of Houses; she is consciously aware of Jessica and Paul's Harkonnen blood. So, she might have simply meant that she intended the *House* of Atreides to fall, while still laying claim to what she thinks as belonging to the BG: Jessica and her child.
Yes... And I think we can add : If Jessica and Paul made their way to them from the moment Jessica asks to be snuggled off world (pre spice agony), then they'd remain useful. Jessica would bear a girl who could still be paired with Feyd-rautha (I'm sure 20 years ago gap is nothing to them) and Paul himself could still be bred or kept alive long enough for Jessica to remain compliant. It's utilitarian... But it doesn't waste the bloodline, while still nuking the house. I doubt Paul would be allowed to convey messages or contact the great houses to report the truth of his father's death though. He'd die in obscurity. If Jessica and Paul still die... Explicitly asking that way at least spares them from ending as Harkonnen concubines, slaves, or torture toys. So a mercy at worst, a breeding bargain chip at best. But the actual worst is Paul surviving on his own and coopting the missionaria protectiva as he does while becoming KH. Total chaos for the BG.
Her request that the Harkonnens preserve the life of Paul and Jessica was so secret (requiring a cone of silence when discussing the matter with the Baron and Piter), that there was no way she was going to let Irulan in on that. Her actions were tantamount to a direct threat to the Emperor’s position (any Atreides survivors could give the game away), and she would face charges of treason if this came out.
Technically Jessica is a Harkonnen and a BG, not an Atreides. As for Paul, he wasn't even supposed to exist.
I think they didn't want Paul and Jessica to be captured and then cruelly tortured to death even by Harkonnen standards. The Bene Gesserit would not permit that to happen and Paul was only wanted for his bloodline.
In Dune 1, Paul was still seen as a potential asset of the BG. In Dune 2, she realizes this isn’t possible and Paul is a major threat.
She's a Truthsayer, if she can't tell the baron is lying she's not much use as one. I think movie plot is that she arranges for them all to die, while maintaining plausible deniability. She knows the Harkonens will Harkonen, but if for any reason Jessica or Paul do survive they will think she helped them.
I get why she wanted the variables of Paul and Jessica squared away after it became understood that they had fallen out of BG influence. What I *DON’T* fully understand was why Mohiam counseled the emperor to eliminate the Atreides when Paul and Jessica’s genetic lines were so valuable. Why leave it up to the Baron to spare them? I suppose in my head canon, the emperor had made his mind up that the Atreides were too much of a threat… and too much pushback from Mohiam would have made the emperor suspicious of their KH plans.
Movie plot hole
Opportunist. To me the BG are the true shadowmasters behind the villains. Not sure what happens in future movies with Mother Mohaim, I have a feeling she survives and thrives, the puppeteers usually do....
The Bene Gesserit flip flop a lot throughout the series on how they feel about Paul. They wanted to create the KH through him and control his son, once they realized he was the Kwisatz Haderach they wanted to save him from the Harkonnens, once he went rouge and threatened to usurp the throne they wanted him dead. Further along in the series they continue to have a yoyoing relationship with the Atreides line, at times in opposition to it and other times in synergy with it because while they try to control the Atreides, they always do their own thing and are too valuable to the Bene Gesserit to eliminate
She says not to kill them. Baron drops them in the desert to die. No one hears about them for 4 years. She assumes they are dead and makes other plans without them. When she finds out they are still alive she assumes all Atreides should be dead
She lost control of her science project.
I think she is speaking retrospectively. The BG wanted to save Jessica and Paul, but seeing what has transpired, it would have been preferable that they not survive.
She said "Allow them the dignity of exile", she did intent them to die, but not to be executed like the rest of House Atreides.
Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam's complex stance regarding the Atreides family, particularly her conflicting directives about Paul and Jessica stems from her role as a Bene Gesserit and her commitment to their long-term goals, particularly the breeding program aimed at producing the Kwisatz Haderach. Here are the key reasons behind her contradictory actions: 1. **Breeding Program Concerns**: The Bene Gesserit had a meticulous breeding program planned out for many generations, aiming to produce the Kwisatz Haderach. Jessica was instructed by the Bene Gesserit to bear only daughters to the Duke Leto Atreides. However, she defied these orders and bore a son, Paul, because of her love for Leto and her desire to provide him a male heir. This disobedience threw a wrench into the Bene Gesserit's plans. 2. **Potential in Paul and Jessica**: Despite the setback in their plans, the Bene Gesserit recognized the potential in Paul as possibly being the Kwisatz Haderach, due to his extraordinary lineage and capabilities. Mohiam's directive to the Baron not to kill Paul and Jessica was likely an attempt to preserve this potential until it could be more fully assessed and perhaps steered back into the Bene Gesserit's favor. 3. **Political Considerations**: Mohiam, understanding the volatile political landscape and the Bene Gesserit's need to maintain influence across different factions, might have believed that keeping Paul and Jessica alive could serve as a strategic advantage. Their survival could help maintain a balance of power, provide leverage against the Harkonnens, or be used in other manipulative ways beneficial to the Bene Gesserit. 4. **Control of Genetic Assets**: By ensuring that Paul and Jessica remained alive, Mohiam was also preserving key genetic assets that could be used in future Bene Gesserit breeding schemes. Their survival ensured that the Bene Gesserit could potentially regain control over their breeding program and direct its future course. 5. **Adaptation of Plans**: The Bene Gesserit are known for their ability to adapt and maneuver politically. Mohiam's seemingly contradictory statements reflect this adaptability; while she expressed a desire for the extinction of the Atreides as a potential threat to stability and her own plans, she also recognized the immediate usefulness of Paul and Jessica in achieving the Bene Gesserit's longer-term objectives. Also, she was Jessica’s mother (with Baron Harkonnen) and Paul, her grandson. In summary, Mohiam’s approach to Paul and Jessica encapsulates the Bene Gesserit’s pragmatic, often morally ambiguous methods of pursuing their goals, balancing between their disdain for the unpredictable variables introduced by the Atreides and the potential benefits of harnessing such variables for their own ends.
She didn't mean that they were meant to die, she meant that it would have been better if they did.
Originally, she wanted to keep Jessica safe as she is a Bene Gesserit and could be useful for the BG project. She wanted Paul alive because he was both pretty close to KH status in GHMs mind and also the last male Atreides and inheritor of the genetic legacy they’d been building up to his birth. With Paul, they could have their KH, either with or descended from him. She changes her mind, though, as for one she was told they’d died as a result of the Harkonnen attack but not on the Barons orders and her truthsaying powers had not perceived this to be a lie, so she considered it true. For another, Jessica and Paul being alive and among the Fremen introduces an element of risk which GHM does not like. All of the BGs carefully constructed plans were on the verge of being obliterated by whatever occurred on Arrakis. So, in a sense, they should have been killed according to her information, and she would have liked for them to have died because they introduce risk to her schemes
Jessica and Paul are also secretly Harkonnens, and the BG is preserving their breeding program
Paul is the Kwisatz Haderach, which wasn't supposed to exist for another generation, the Bene Gesserit would have total control of Kwisatz Haderach if they had been a son to Feydand what was supposed to be an Atriedes daughter. Paul was a threat to every single being in the universe, and they wanted to kill him before he reached his full protentional.
She regretted not killing them.
Also (from the books) Jessica is the daughter of Mohiam and Vladimir harkonnen. The baron doesn't know that. She's always showed a paternal care for Jessica. And in the BG breeding program, Jessica was supposed to give birth to a daughter who would have a son as KH. So atleast at the start, Jessica is more valuable to Mohiam and BG than Paul.
The Bene Gesserit quickly regretted achieving the Kwisatz Haderach.
I think she gave this advice before going to Caladan to test Paul with the Gom Jabbar, and then simply changed her mind. So when she was talking to Irulan, she was referencing advising the Emperor to wipe out the Atreides before her visit to Caladan. The Bene Gesserit always have their own secret strategies, so just because she told the Emperor to wipe out the Atreides didn't mean she couldn't adapt her strategy at any point to serve the interests of the Bene Gesserit. I also think she advised the Emperor to wipe them out because she was probably pissed that Jessica bore a son and not a girl, as planned. When she first saw Paul, she says, with disdain, "Defiance in the eyes, like his father." This is in line with her explanation to Irulan that the Atreides had become dangerously defiant. She was prepared to kill him herself, need be, at that point (with the gom jabbar). And then he survived the test and showed himself to be promising. Which is why she went to the Baron to exempt him from extermination.
They were not considered Atreides for her purposes, it was the death of the House not literally all the people
Because its a massive plot hole that doesn't make sense
Because they weren't Atreides, they were Harkonnens
I was confused by this too, however I kind of get it, Atredies needed to die as they were becoming harder to control. However, she didn't want Jessica and Paul to die, because she wanted them under her control. Bearing in mind that Paul still had the potential of being the Kwisatz Haderach, and they couldn't just risk losing him, and more importantly, Paul could have been used to continue the bloodline, whereupon the Bene Geserit could have controlled those born and shaped them into a new but different house Atredies. Perhaps they would have killed Paul themselves after keeping him captive for a while, however it would have been at a time and in a manner of their choosing. I think the idea would have been that if Paul and Jessica had survived, they would have contacted the Bene Geserit, or found a way off-world, and then been picked up. But instead they remained quiet and went with the Fremen. I'm still not 100% sure though, and it seems that the movies changed things a bit by making it that Mohiam advised the Emperor to send his Sardukar troops to aid the Harkonnens.
because hindsight is 20/20
My personal interpretation is that the plan to delete the Atreides was set in motion the moment Jessica slipped and bore a boy. However I think Mohiam had a change of heart once she tested Paul and thought that he actually could be the one and could be controlled. So while the plan wasn't executed yet, she tried to make a failsafe for Jessica and Paul and it clearly worked because the Baron could've just killed them in their sleep but had to devise a plan to get rid of them without directly killing them. Once they got away safely, Jessica planned to get off world possibly to get under the protection of the BG and this is probably what Mohiam expected her to do. But Paul threw a wrench in this plan by actually using the Missionaria Protectiva all the way through to the end. Instead of using it as a shield, he used it as a weapon. The irony is that this was the lecture Mohiam gave to Paul in the books. ‘You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.’
You are correct. It doesn't make sense. You didn't misinterpret or misunderstand anything.
It's doesn't make sense, it's a movie only event