History Literature / GodEmperorOfDune

* AddictionPowered: Leto makes decade long allocations of scarce Melange, highlighting this aspect of the Imperium.

* AGodAmI: Leto II, at-least publicly.

* {{Badass}}: Leto II, Duncan Idaho, Siona, Malky.

* CompellingVoice: Leto II, thanks to carrying the memories of his Bene Gesserit grandmother. .

* LonelyAtTheTop: Leto II at the height of hid power has no one to truly understand them.

* CompellingVoice: Leto II, thanks to carrying the memories of his Bene Gessert grandmother. .

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* AbsentAliens: Unless you count the Sandworms, and their [[{{Precursors}} implied creators]]. Even then, the sentience was added after the fact, by Leto II.
** Plenty of non-sentient species are also mentioned in passing. There's a lot of ''life'' in the universe, but none of it talks back.

** The Fish Speakers are quite literally warrior moms
** Siona

** Guild Navigators breathe great quantities of melange/spice, giving them limited powers of prescience, enough to find safe passage when their ship is traveling faster than light. The general population doesn't gain this benefit.
** The Mentats derive their enhanced mental abilities (said to exceed even the most advanced electronic computers) via consumption of sapho juice; however, a Mentat must endure lifelong training (and probably genetic enhancement as well) before the sapho juice can have its stated effect.
** Bene Gesserits depend on some drugs and the Spice for some of their abilities, each Reverend Mother is addicted.

* AGodAmI: Leto II, at-least publically.
* AIIsACrapshoot: In the original books, it was not that the computers were inherently bad, it was that humanity chose to destroy them because they were making humans lazy and limiting humanity's potential, effectively making them dependent on sentient machines for survival. Computer AI was later demonized.
** Even the God-Emperor publically upholds the prohibition, even though he plays with this by privately using technology that others would find questionable.
* AlternativeCalendar: The calender used in the book begins from the establishment of the Spacing Guild's monopoly on space travel, with BG standing for "Before Guild" and AG being "After Guild".
** In addition it's implied that the (3000-year) reign of the Leto II has in effect become a calendar.

* AncientAstronauts[=/=]AllMythsAreTrue: A variant in that humans themselves fill this role, with the Bene Gesserit purposely spreading myths based on heroic and religious archetypes throughout fledgling colonies to make use of the people there later.
* AncientConspiracy: Although they are more visible than most ancient conspiracies, the Bene Gesserit definitely count: they have manipulated practically all existing religions in the ''Dune'' universe to be tools for their purposes, to the point a Bene Gesserit can basically go to any planet and detect different cues and codes within the local religion's tenets to know exactly what to say and do to present herself as a paragon, prophet or even messiah of the local religion. This is how Lady Jessica insinuates herself and Paul into the Fremen culture. Of course, Jessica had no way of knowing Paul would become an ACTUAL messiah.

* AnyoneCanDie: [[spoiler: Leto II, Moneo Atreides, Hwi Noree…….. Duncan Idaho]]

* AscendedExtra: Duncan Idaho, in the first book, actually ''dies'' only to become the only character to feature in all six novels of the original series.

* BadassBookworm: Moneo show shades, Leto II counts too

* BeliefMakesYouStupid: Inverted, Subverted, Justified, and Invoked. All depends on your personal interpretation, and which characters you examine. Frank himself said one of the main themes of the series was putting all your faith into one person and following them blindly. You can ''follow'' someone, but to utterly ''submit'' to them leads to total destruction.
* BigBad: The Tleilaxu and Ix
* BlackAndGrayMorality: Paul slaughters billions under the godhead of the Madhinate, and his son Leto II is the greatest tyrant in history; yet both claimed their actions were necessary to avoid an even greater catastrophe -- the complete and total extinction of humanity. (And considering that Paul and Leto both share an ability to see into the future, they are probably ''right''.)
* BlessedWithSuck: You can see the future. All of it. Every twist, turn, nook, and cranny. There are no surprises. There is no escape. You will never live something that you have not already foreseen.

* ClingyCostume: As a matter of survival. The climate of Arrakis is such that the Fremen must wear their stillsuits at all times outside sietches, and sometimes even inside, as they have a deeply ingrained cultural taboo against wasting water. Subverted later, when Stilgar notes in disgust how many Fremen who have achieved high positions within Muad'Dib's Empire never wear stillsuits anymore when they go into the desert, as they can afford to waste water. Anyone who has smelt an old wetsuit might work out why they were keen to stop, and it is outright stated that Fremen stink in closed spaces.
** Mostly out of use by this time, but Siona needed one during her test.

* CombatClairvoyance: The Kwisatz Haderach has the ability to (among other things) see into the future. Mentats can also see the future by way of "projecting" the possible outcomes of a given choice, but their role is not usually that of a military strategist.
* CompellingVoice: The Bene Gesserit have the Voice. Jessica uses this in the first novel to facilitate the escape of her and Paul, by making the guards kill each other. The fear of this prompts various defenses, including stationing deaf-mutes as guards for important people and, later, conditioning people to reflexively kill at the first sign of Voice being used. In the original novel, the Bene Gesserit have to study the target of the Voice in order to adjust their pitch accordingly.
* ConLang: Many of the phrases and terms used throughout the book have some basis in real-world languages. The Fremen speak a clear development of Arabic. Galach, the official language of the Imperium, is described as an Anglo-Slavic hybrid with some other tongues mixed in for good measure -- and it shows... in the rare instances when we get to read some actual untranslated phrases from it.
* CoolButInefficient: A lot of the tech, [[JustifiedTrope justifying]] the FeudalFuture / PunkPunk feel of TheVerse. Much of this is deliberate due to prohibitions against thinking machines and the dominance of shields in warfare.

* ImmuneToFate: Siona and her descendents
* InsignificantLittleBluePlanet: Humanity rules an Empire of a million worlds that stretches across the galaxy. Thing is, not one of those is Earth, the majority of humanity has no idea where their race evolved.

** The current Duncan isn't much better, being deeply self-righteous and homophobic.
* JunkieProphet:

* LastOfHisKind: [[spoiler:Leto II, as the last of the sandworms]].
* LivingLieDetector: Bene Gesserit can notice the visual and auditory cues that denote a lying person. Many courts employ Bene Gesserit for this specific purpose, as "Truthsayers". The Kwisatz Haderach takes this power UpToEleven, as it does all the other BG powers. Leto II can detect a human's emotional state with perfect accuracy by sampling pheromones at 3 parts per billion.

* LongevityTreatment: One of many uses for spice, when it is plentiful lifespans of three hundred years aren't uncommon.

* NationalWeapon: Crysknives, made from the tooth of a sandworm, are sacred to the Fremen. Leto II keeps his father’s in a special compartment for use in ceremonies.

* NoTranshumanismAllowed: Both subverted and played straight. Deliberate breeding programs are used to create humans with intelligence, reflexes, lifespan, capacity higher consciousness and physical capabilities far beyond those of current-day humans, but a religious taboo is kept in place on genetically engineering anything recognizably inhuman or unable to interbreed back into the larger human population. Thus, the characters and societies remain human while simultaneously having greater advancements over modern man than modern man has over homo erectus. The Tleilaxu, however, have no religious taboo on inhumanity and gleefully make a living selling inhuman humans genetically-engineered for specific purposes.
** Though Leto II could arguably be a ProHumanTranshuman.

* OnceAnEpisode: The Litany Against Fear, which is recited in its entirely at least once in every one of the original books (not all the prequels and sequels, though).
* OrganicTechnology: Due to the prohibitions against advanced technology, humans were forced to develop their own talents to fill the void. Mentats act as human-computers, the Spacing Guild navigates space through prescience in the place of computers, and the Bene Tleilax [[spoiler:use their females as wombs for their genetic products]].

* PaintingTheMedium: Some words like "SPICE" and "VOICE" tend to be printed in capital block letters to give them a sort of mystical echo (see above for DEATH in the Discworld novels). However, there are no capital letters in the Hebrew language, so the Hebrew translation has these words printed in bold and in a larger typeface than the rest of the sentence. This method makes them even more creepy and resfonant than the original, if at all possible.
* PhlebotinumOverload: Shield and lasgun interaction results in nuclear explosions.

* SandWorm: Possibly the TropeMaker.

* SelfFulfillingProphecy: ''Dune'' takes this trope quite literally. "True" prophets (Paul Atreides and his descendants) don't predict the future so much as create it, locking themselves (and everyone else) into an inescapable destiny. It takes [[spoiler:Leto II]] almost four thousand years to break humanity free from the consequences of this.
* SendInTheClones: [[spoiler:Duncan Idaho]] dies in the first novel, only to return over and over again first as a ghola, then as a ghola-clone. ''God-Emperor of Dune'' even has several [[spoiler:Duncan]] gholas throughout the story, though all but one were played with through flashbacks and mentions.
* ShoutOut: Leto II asks Hwi Noree if she's familiar with the philosophy of Noah Arkwright[[labelnote:*]] a MeaningfulName, when you consider that "-wright" means "maker" or "builder."[[/labelnote]] Arkwright is a philosopher/explorer mentioned (but apparently never actually appearing) in several of Anderson's stories.

* TheSpock: Mentats. Although not all of them are by any means moral and logical.
* StandardTimeUnits: Years are known as "Standard years", or SY, and are described as being about 20 hours less than the "so-called primitive year".

* SuperSoldiers:
** The Sardaukar, the original Fremen when organized, the Fish Speakers
** Leto II's Fish Speakers, an AmazonBrigade, become more feared than the Sardaukar.
* SwordFight: Swords and knives are the main weapons used in ground combat. {{Justified|Trope}}: [[DeflectorShields shields]] stop projectile weapons, and [[PhlebotinumOverload explode like nukes]] when attacked with [[EnergyWeapon lasguns]].
** This is inverted during and after Leto II's reign, as he bans shields within the Empire in order to force warfare to start evolving again.

* TrilogyCreep: An interesting example. ''Dune'' was actually conceived as one long book, with the sequels ''Dune Messiah'' and ''Children of Dune'' fitting directly after the first. ''Messiah'' was fleshed out while writing ''Dune'' and eventually became its own novel, which due to its expansion then warranted ''Children'' to be expanded as well and also became its own book. ''God Emperor of Dune'' and the last two in the series, ''Heretics'' and ''Chapterhouse'' are genuine examples of a trilogy creep, though the fact that the story is now over ''10,000'' years past in the originals, it's fair to say that they're a trilogy of their own.

* {{Unobtainium}}: The Spice.

* VoiceOfTheLegion: The billions of ego memories within genetic memory-awakened individuals can appear like this, especially to the pre-born.
* VoluntaryShapeShifting: Face Dancers
* WarfareRegression: Thanks to the Holtzman fields, warfare is limited to melee combat. Fast moving bullets and artillery shells are blocked by such shields. Of course, one could wish to shoot the shield with a laser weapon, if they don't mind the resulting nuclear explosion that destroys them.

* TheWarToEndAllWars: Kralizec; in the oldest Fremen beliefs it is the Typhoon Struggle, the war at the end of the universe.
* WeWillUseManualLaborInTheFuture: Justified in that after the Butlerian Jihad, complex autonomous machines are forbidden for millennia. Even regular old calculators are replaced by (highly-paid) people known as Mentats.

* GambitRoulette: More like a Gambit Casino because Leto II [[spoiler: goes through four millennia of jihad after jihad, taking a totalitarian grip on all matters secular and religious, controlling the universal economy with his stranglehold on the spice, and carefully manipulating the bloodline stemming from his sister through the ages, all to get Duncan Idaho in bed with his great-great-great-great-great-great^? grand niece (and subsequently create prescient-immune people)]].

* MadLibThrillerTitle: ''Dune...'' or ''...of Dune''

* ScrewDestiny: This is the major theme of ''Children of Dune'' and ''God-Emperor of Dune''. The main character's goal of the novels is the creation of what he termed, the 'Golden Path' -- a future completely free of destiny with unlimited choices. The ironic thing is, to do this, Leto messes with people's futures for the next 3,500 years. This is also a direct subversion of the original novel, where one of the main themes were "you can't fight fate."

* {{Jerkass}}: Siona opposes the greatest tyrant mankind has ever known, but she's also hypocritical, cruel and pointless vindictive. Nor does she admit the consequences of her actions. [[spoiler:She does not even oppose the Golden Path once she understands it, but persists nonetheless.]]

Will Leto's 'Golden Path' survive? will humanity?

''God-Emperor of Dune'' is the fourth installment of the ''[[Franchise/{{Dune}} Dune Chronicles]]'' by Creator/Frank Herbert. God-Emperor of Dune was published in 1981 by Putnam, it was a best seller according to Publisher Magazine the same year.

''God-Emperor of Dune'' is the fourth installment of the ''[[Franchise/{{Dune}} Dune Chronicles]]'' by Frank Herbert. God Emperor of Dune was published in 1981 by Putnam, it was a best seller according to Publisher Magazine the same year.

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* KillAndReplace: A favorite tactic of Tleilaxu Face Dancer {{Shape Shifter}}s.

SandWorm: Possibly the TropeMaker.

.* SwordFight: Swords and knives are the main weapons used in ground combat. {{Justified|Trope}}: [[DeflectorShields shields]] stop projectile weapons, and [[PhlebotinumOverload explode like nukes]] when attacked with [[EnergyWeapon lasguns]].

* AchillesHeel: Leto II, at the end of ''Children of Dune'' [[TwoBeingsOneBody combines his body with sandworm larvae]] to extend his life by thousands of years and gain immunity to almost every form of physical damage, also inherits the sandworms' [[KillItWithWater vulnerability to water]]. Of course, this is intentional and part of his plan.

''God Emperor of Dune'' is the fourth installment of the ''[[Franchise/{{Dune}} Dune Chronicles]]'' by Frank Herbert. God Emperor of Dune was published in 1981 by Putnam, it was a best seller according to Publisher Magazine the same year.

''God Emperor of Dune'' [[TimeSkip skips]] 3500 years from ''Literature/ChildrenOfDune''. Leto II is ruler of the Imperium and has continued the metamorphosis he started in ''Children of Dune'', greatly enhancing his life-span and making him NighInvulnerable. Leto's awareness greatly surpasses even his father's and he had an iron grip on all aspects of life in his empire in order to ensure humanity's continued survival via the Golden Path. Leto has commandeered the Bene Gesserit breeding program for his own purposes, culminating in Siona, a rebel who is invisible to even Leto's oracular vision. Siona is the daughter of Moneo, Leto's majordomo, he himself was once a rebel as well before seeing the necessity of the Golden Path. The cast is rounded out by Duncan Idaho, which Leto continues to task the Tleilaxu with restoring back to life over the last three millennia both for breeding and for the company he provides, despite many of them dying while trying to assassinate Leto himself.

Will Leto's Golden Path survive? will humanity?

God Emperor of Dune is the fourth installment of the ''[[Franchise/{{Dune}} Dune Chronicles]]'' by Frank Herbert. God Emperor of Dune was published in 1981 by Putnam, it was a best seller according to Publisher Magazine the same year.

God Emperor of Dune [[TimeSkip skips]] 3500 years from ''Literature/ChildrenOfDune''. Leto II is ruler of the Imperium and has continued the metamorphosis he started in ''Children of Dune'', greatly enhancing his life-span and making him NighInvulnerable.

[[redirect:Franchise/{{Dune}}]]