Dune

The point isn't just to discredit Paul by making him blind, although that's a side effect of the weapon used that provides a nice little contingency backup.

It's an assassination attempt on Paul, first and foremost.

Though keep in mind Biblical Moses was denied the Promised Land because he broke his faith with God. He wasn't really a good guy either in the end.

In both cases, they are denied the Promised Land because of the very nature of said Promised Land. The Promised Land of the Bible was meant for those faithful to God — and Moses wasn't that anymore.

The Golden Path meanwhile was a future for humanity free of prescience and tyrants. And Leto II was a prescient tyrant. His 3,500 or so years of tyranny was in fact meant to make humanity collectively sick of people like him (while also using breeding programs to insert a genetic immunity to prescience).

Leto II had it even harder than Moses in a way. God at least let Moses see the Promised Land at a distance. The very nature of the Golden Path meant Leto II couldn't even use prescience to see it.

Calling Paul or Leto II evil is really missing the intended message of the books. Now, one may disagree with them, and that's fair, but both are acting in the service of what they believe to be a higher cause: preventing the extinction of humanity.

Prescience traps the prophet: this is one of the most crucial messages of Dune as a series. It's not Paul's fault that he was born with the genetic ability to see the future. It's not his fault that those visions reveal to him a rippling wave of possibilities that include death on a scale far beyond anything he can imagine. It's completely rational for him to fear those bad outcomes and try to prevent them.

We can say that Paul's choices result in 61 billion deaths. But if we follow the logic of the story — and we must, because it's the logic of the story — it would have been much, much worse had he not made those choices. So is he a hero? I don't see how someone responsible for 61 billion deaths can claim that title, and he would probably agree. But I don't think we can call him a villain either. Morality isn't that clean.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 28th 2024 at 8:51:34 AM

If there's anyone truly at fault for what Paul and Leto II would eventually do, it's the Bene Gesserit who thought the Kwisatz Haderach was the solution to the problem they knew was coming. Leto II even left a posthumous message calling them out on not attempting the Golden Path themselves.

Edited by M84 on Mar 28th 2024 at 9:12:28 PM

Another way of looking at it, which is emphasized in the later books, is that knowledge of the past contains an inherent call to action: atoning for the errors of the past and/or preventing those same errors in the future. Those who refuse or reject said call are the actual villains.

Leto II's ultimate gift to humanity may be that he finally convinces the Bene Gesserit to be an active force for good rather than passive observers and/or manipulators.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 28th 2024 at 9:20:19 AM

One gets the impression that a whole lot of pain could have been avoided if the Bene Gesserit had tried that from the start instead of their shadowy breeding programs and political manipulations.

Looked at one way, they are as trapped in the web of causality as everyone else. Sometimes (often) it's not possible to cleanly assign blame. Might as well yell at Agamemnon for making choices that would lead to Leto Atreides getting killed on Arrakis twenty-thousand years later.

Most people live blissfully unaware of that web, and are no more responsible for the grand outcome than a fly is for being caught by a spider.

Perfect knowledge of the past and future is tricky like that. Where does free will come into play if you already know what will happen? Leto II suggests that it can only come when people are freed of prescience, something simply not possible during Paul's era.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 28th 2024 at 9:33:09 AM

Actually maybe the Butlerian Jihad is more to blame. The whole reason people started using prescience is because they stopped using computers.

Well-Intentioned Extremist and Knight Templar type of villains are still.......villains.

Leto II ruled as a tyrant with an iron fist for like 3000 years, and killed an untold number of innocents. This is villainous and monstrous, even if he has selfless motives, or if he is trying to avoid a worse future.

.............

Of course, unlick more idealistic settings, the audience doesn't have an effective Ideal Hero to sympathize with, so Leto II it is.

Edited by jawal on Mar 28th 2024 at 7:52:15 PM

As the appendices to *Dune* make clear, all the factions had their schemes and plans and never realized that they were merely pawns in a greater design of the species as a whole.

Leto II points out the specific flaws of the various factions he faces: the tendency of the Tleilaxu to become the mask they hide behind, the Ixians ceasing true innovation in favor of 'mechanical' thinking, the Guild always choosing the safe path and never taking any risks. But he says the Bene Gesserit are the only ones he's considered wiping out. They've become so enamored of being the Secret Masters and having knowledge and power beyond ordinary humans that they've been encouraging the vulnerability of humanity to their powers instead of helping them develop beyond. They're the ultimate "Mothers Know Best" tyrants and refuse to cut the apron strings.

Some people have observed that morality is a thing that you can only afford when you aren't fighting for your life. True or not, the point of Leto II's tyranny (and he self-identifies as a tyrant) is to put on such a show of control that humanity will never seek out leaders like him again.

It's like the meme of a parent forcing their child to smoke a pack of cigarettes to put them off smoking, except applied to an entire species for thousands of years. "You want to be led around by the nose? You want peace and comfort? Well, here it is: utter stagnation. Still want that?"

When you can see the future (and the past), you have a greater duty to your species. Ignoring that duty is the true evil, or so Leto II believes. Most villains who claim a higher calling are no more enlightened than anyone else; they just want justification to be dicks. Leto II has an explicit and very real justification.

Leto is perhaps the most moral character in the entire series because he refuses to shy away from his duty even though it will come at an immense personal and social cost. The next two books confront the question of whether he was right to believe so.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 4th 2024 at 12:19:27 PM

I'm of the mind that if you know anything about Frank Herbert, you'd also realize he would be the first person to congratulate any reader who believed that Paul and Leto II were probably fooling themselves that they were the only hope to prevent human extinction. Both of them absolutely believed the Golden Path was the only way but that was because they saw it with prescience and locked themselves into it.

It's the opposite. Leto II couldn't foresee a way out for humanity, and realized that prescience itself was the problem. He thus had to make sure prescience could no longer lock in anyone's future.

And Leto II didn't believe he was the only one who could do it. He believed the Bene Gesserit could have done it. His posthumous message for them was basically calling them out for not trying it themselves.

Exactly. He told them, "If you'd had the guts to do this yourselves, I wouldn't be necessary. This was your responsibility from the start. I did what you refused to do."

The lesson the Bene Gesserit take from Leto II is that knowledge of the past compels a kind of supreme accountability for the present, because you understand where all the mistakes were made. You don't have the excuse of ignorance.

Edit: The textual justification for both Paul and Leto II's actions is to prevent the extinction of humanity. It is never established if they are wrong in their beliefs, but whether they are "heroes" or "villains" is beside the point.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 4th 2024 at 2:01:15 PM

Yes and I think Frank Herbert would be the first person to think that any reader who takes both men's messianic delusions as 100% accurate as having missed the point.

Maybe? The books contain no textual contradictions of Leto II's visions. Indeed, he appears to succeed at his stated goals: ridding humanity of its dependence on the spice, oracles, and comfort. His own death is an intentional part of that future.

The oracle thing is iffy based on the weirdly ambiguous ending of Chapterhouse, but since Herbert died before finishing its sequel, we may never know.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 4th 2024 at 7:28:54 AM

Paul and Leto II had no messianic mindsets. Rather they were the first ones to realize a messiah could not save humanity. Hence Leto II’s plan to get people to stop trying to make or find a messiah.

I mean if your plan to get rid of messiahs is to be the one person who takes over the universe as a God King then I feel that isn't an actual argument.

The thing about Paul was he didn't become Emperor to do anything good. He knew he'd unleash the Jihad that would kill billions. It was just one of the two ways he saw to get revenge. The other way was giving up his revenge on the Harkonens and getting the Baron to aid him in overthrowing the Emperor.

He chose the way where he could murder both.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 4th 2024 at 7:43:24 AM

Paul trapped himself through prescience, meaning once the jihad was underway even he could not stop it.

Leto II’s God Emperor reign was done to shock humanity out of its complacency.

And neither had delusions they were totally in the right. Even to the very end Leto II had doubts about the Golden Path. The Ixians’ plot with Hwi Noree would not have been as successful otherwise. And Paul ended up preaching against his own godhead.

There is a theme in Dune that even messiahs like all leaders are human. And humans make mistakes. Leto II despite everything was still human.

Edited by M84 on Apr 4th 2024 at 10:58:30 PM

The Golden Path may not be the right course of action, but letting humanity continue the course it was on seems to have been guaranteed to result in its extinction. So if that's by definition wrong, trying something with even a chance of being 'correct' seems an improvement.

In the books, Paul is not "choosing revenge". Revenge is the furthest thing from his mind, although he realizes that it's part of the path necessary to claim his birthright as Duke. He can't do that while letting his enemies live, but it's almost entirely practical by that point.

I think you're missing the essential fact that prescience in Dune is real. It's not chicanery. Most villains in fiction who claim foreknowledge are at best operating with incomplete data and at worst lying, allowing the heroes to invoke Take a Third Option to save the day. That's not how Herbert writes his story. It is possible for prescient visions to be incomplete or misleading, but they are never wrong.

Prophetic Fallacy as a trope illustrates this to some extent, and the problem with the Imperium is that it is filled with wannabe oracles, each trying to catch a glimpse of the winning lottery numbers or outsmart their opponents. Paul's vision — and Leto II's even greater vision — supersede all the others. They alone understand the burden that prescience places on the prophet. It is a position of supreme accountability, where you can no longer deny the causes and effects of your actions.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 8th 2024 at 2:31:00 PM

It's not strictly true to say that the visions are never wrong, at least in terms of THE future. They represent POSSIBLE futures — and in a few cases, having the vision makes the events seen certain NOT to occur.

Sorry, that's correct. The true prophet chooses the future from among infinite potential outcomes. Paul attempts to choose a future in which he wouldn't lose Chani, and fails in his moral obligation as a result. Leto II corrects his course by picking the Golden Path: the single thread that would prevent humanity's extinction.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 8th 2024 at 4:30:29 AM

Right, it's more that he can see all possible futures, rather than just a preset future. It's like he can calculate all the permutations of a chess game in his head, and see the winning strategy.

Except he can't see all possible futures, either. He compares the experience to walking through a desert composed of dunes. When at a low point, you can see only the immediate territory. When atop a dune, you can see further — but you can't see where the dunes block line of sight.

In this metaphor, human extinction is a mountain visible on the horizon.