The bene gesserits and the fish speakers descendants allied together in the scattering, didn’t they?
No cite, but i’m fairly sure after my many readings thats true.
Unless you’re suggesting that Fish Speaker descendants rose to the levels of power and control of the Honoured Matres by themselves?
I can’t see it. The Honoured Matres seem to me to be the Bene Gesserit stripped of subtly. This from mostly their knowlege (and skill) in using sex as a control, as well as their musculature/nervous reaction. These things are obvious, blatently physical powers. The BG’s are careful to hold such things in check - knowing that using power is to lose it - and power is best applied subtly in key positions.
A mixture of Bene Gessert (berift of spice) and a democray would produce the Honoured Matres for me, and I think the text backs me up. If there is strong disagreement, I’ll go read and check.
Whoa - what I remember from the last books is that the Honored Matres are not from scattered Bene Gesserit - that was merely a hypothesis that a character put out early on. They turn out to have come from, instead, the Fish Speakers - the fanatical women soldiers devoted to Leto as god. There was a strong undercurrent of some BG methods they had tried to adopt or adapt, but I don’t remember them coming primarily from the BG.
Possibly. That then begs the question of what happened to the Reverand Mothers who went out into the scattering, and why they allowed the Honoured Matres to get so powerful.
Bah. Too many unanswered questions that will only be looked at by Brian and that other fool.
Oh, how I envy them access to Frank’s notes…
I’m still not convinced that the Honoured Matres have nothing to do with the scattered Bene Gesserit.
I think that may be it. Leto needs to stick around in one form or another, and needs Sheeana to get him started up off of Rakis (so he won’t get totally wiped out by the HM attack).
Reverend Mothers need the spice (and other chemicals from the sandworms’ deaths) to transfer their memories. Without that, they are going to only be BG wanabees in a generation.
It was conjectured that the drug the HM’s take that makes their eyes orange was possibly developed as an unsuccessful substitute for this spice, either by BG’s looking for an alternative, or HM’s looking for the same powers. I don’t recall this being resolved or proven in the books, but I remember the conjecture.
On the other hand, it’s been a while, and this is from memory, so I could easily be misremembering something.
They don’t need chemicals from the Sandworm’s death… it was stated in Dune that other chemicals can be used as a substite for the water of life. Mentioned in the Dune Encyclopedia too.
I would second the “if you like Dune, steer clear of the prequels”. They tend to rob the Frank Herbert novels of some of their implied grandeur and span by adding too many details with too little story too tell.
Especially Butlerian Jihad. When reading Dune et al I read the commandment against making machines in the shape of man, thinking machines. I inferred that the shape referred to and the threat were metaphorical as much as literal. Computers become a dependency and a crutch, a moral and intellectual slavery rather than a physical threat. Then I read Butlerian Jihad, where the foes are in fact cyborgs, robots, and a supercomputer bent on enslaving humanity (for physical labor!!) and possibly wiping out humanity altogether. While the Jihad had seemed to be at the intersection of prescience and Luddism in the Frank Herbert books, it became nothing more than a mediocre rebels vs uncaring empire opera, with the side benefit of meeting everyone who pretty much simultaneously set in motion all those things that come to a head in Dune.