I was never entirely clear on that. How was House Atreides a threat to House Corrino, or to the Imperium?
I read the book decades ago, but my recollection is that Atreides had a huge private army and was popular with the nobility. He wanted to cut off a potential adversary before he could grow too big and gain enough influence to challenge him.
In the movie: Magic blaster guns. Oh noes!
Highly popular house in the Landsraad, Harkonnens always struck me as somewhat outcasts in the Houses system, the Atreides on the other hand were not.
The real question about Dune is this: so you wanna play a trick against the Atreides, ambush them? Yeah the really smart thing to do would be to trap them next to the most important single ressource in the Universe, no way they’re gonna play that card , choke production and have control over the entire Empire that way (which makes one wonder why the fuck isnt it the Imperial House that controls Arrakis directly, in fact you shouldnt be Emperor unless you control the planet that has the most strategic importance in the whole universe)…
Wasn’t it when the importance of spice became apparent that all the political skulduggery began?
In the book, Leto was the unofficial spokesman of the Landsraad, their “highest position”. Plus he was well liked, and highly competent. Shaddam IV was a paranoid maniac, who pretty much was just trying to kill off his closest apparent “rival”, with the freely offered assistance of that rival’s greatest enemy.
ISTR in the book, but I could be wrong, that Leto was offered Arrakis, not ordered to move there. He knew it was a trap, but he also knew that the spice was much too good a bait to pass up - if he could survive the Harkonnens & Imperials, he would have become even more powerful. Even if he was ordered there, they had to give him something as good as Arrakis so he didn’t just go rogue and drop out of sight.
And it was important for the Emperor that the whole affair look like it was just a fight between the Atreides and Harkonnens. If it came out that that the Emperor had been involved, all the other Houses Major would have banded together against the Emperor for fear they’d be next. Since the Harkonnens owned Arrakis, he had to give it to Leto to make it believable that the Harkonnens would go to total war against them.
I could see the position as steward of Arakis being a huge feather in the cap that the Emperor can bestow on nobles as part of political gaming. Arakis is such a shitty planet that the Emperor wouldn’t live there, so he’d have to appoint someone to govern it in any case. Might as well get the ability to give it as a political favor in the process.
Besides, no one thought that the Sardukar were stoppable. It’s only because Paul lead the Fremen that the Emperor’s troops didn’t effortlessly defeat them.
No, that was age-old. It’s hazily implied, IIRC, that the Emperor’s position is tenuous. He’s nominally in charge, but the politics and technology don’t permit this. The Houses are the day-to-day government, and they would resist any big imposition of imperial power.
Furthermore, the Emperor had a couple options: with a daughter and no son, he could ally himself with the Atreides via marriage. This might have worked well, but with the Atreides were popular and the Emepror didn’t want to be second fiddle to anybody, ever. The Harkonnen were also powerful and influential, if not well-loved or even liked. They could also be a powerful ally, having control of Arrakis. So the Emperor went with them, stabbed the Atreides in the back, let the Harkonnen take the blame but without any serious reprisal, and then used the guerrilla war in the desert as an excuse to take over there himself.
Is there anything from Frank Herbert (not his grave-robbing son who sold out to Kevin J. Anderson) on the origin of the feud? And are the Harkonnes just all bad all the way through or was it mostly Baron Harkonnen’s generally psychotic 'tude?
We just watched the Lynch movie, and my gf asked me the exact OP’s question. My answer was that the pimply faced Baron guy could fly, and that was cool. She accepted my answer, but I’ll print this thread out for her.
The difference was the Harkonnens had Giedi Prime as their fief, and just administered Arrakis remotely. But the Atreides left Caladan and movied their entire household there, making Arrakis their fiefdom.
Actually, it was Leto’s plan all along to enlist the Fremen to his side and use them as troops against the Sardaukar. The attack came sooner than he planned on though, plus there were far more Sardaukar than he expected, given the extremely high rates for shipping troops. That plus Yueh was what caused the Atreides defeat.
From Dune:
So old vs new nobility plus the battle of Corrin.
The power of the Houses was in trade, and thus in space travel. A House that stopped the flow of spice would be slitting its own throat. It was only when Paul based his power in the non-space-travelling Fremen that stopping space travel became a viable option.
I always felt sorry for the people of Caladan, abandoned as they were by the Atreides. What had they done to deserve that?
Come to think of it, AFAICR, no mention was made in the book of what happened to Caladan, whether it became some other lord’s fief or what.
They were born bootless and unhorsed.
Jessica takes over after the Jyhad. I don’t know what happens to it in the time period between the Atredies taking over Dune and Paul taking over the Universe, though. My vague impression was that it was still under Atredies control, but I don’t really remember where I got that from.
In the appendix or glossary, it says that Count Fenring administered Caladan after the Atreides left. Remember, the guy who had a humming language with his wife?
Right - the genetic dead-end who was also the deadliest fighter alive. That’s good; I was always under the impression that it was a trade, and the Harkonnens had been given Caladan. It seemed monsterously unfair.
Is the title a spoiler?
I’m about 5 pages in, and didn’t read the thread because I don’t want to be spoiled further.
There are obviously going to be open spoilers in the thread, but they shouldn’t be in the title.
The book is from 1963, and is a massive best-seller. There’s no way on earth to avoid spoilers. Face it: that worm has sailed.
Yes, but the TITLE OF THE THREAD should not contain spoilers! There’s no reason for that.
There’s no reason to spoiler-box the discussion within. But those of us who don’t wish to be spoiled should at least be given the option of not reading the thread.