She does.
It doesn’t go well.
Oooh…yeah. But I mean a LOT earlier. Like when Paul was two and skipping the whole water of life thing.
Facile answer: because it would be a different book. 
In-universe answer: because the BG really can’t control everything like they think they can. Which I think is important, plot-wise. One person can mess up centuries of work, for love. Jessica isn’t a BG robot. She chose to have a son, despite explicitly instructed to have a daughter.
And look what it got her!
Because that wouldn’t have joined the two houses together, which is what the BG wanted. Duke Leto with only a daughter, accepting a marriage to the Harkonnens, means that the offspring of that marriage will be the heir to both houses. But with Paul as the current heir to House Atreides, any sister of his wouldn’t have an immediate claim, unless Paul died, which is clearly problematic. Paul would be presumed to marry at some point, and his children would inherit the house in turn. Even if his sister were to marry into the Harkonnens, her kids would be at best cousins to Paul’s kids, and the Harkonnens would be awfully tempted to kill those cousins off, in order to take House Atreides that way, which really isn’t a great outcome.
The only way to join the houses without massive war or murder or betrayal is a marriage between a single male heir on one side, and single female heir on the other.
Now, why they chose the notoriously evil and dysfunctional Harkonnens to produce the male heir is a puzzler. A female Harkonnen raised with the influence of a BG mother would have been more likely to avoid the worst excesses of the male Harkonnen.
I think it was all about genetics. The BG started waaaay back on this endeavor. They didn’t know what shitheads the Harkonnens would become.
ETA: If only they had someone who could see the future! 
That was my impression. Before Vladimir, the Harkonnens were corrupt and sadistic, but only in the routine “power corrupts: absolute power corrupts absolutely” kind of way. Vladimir was not only corrupt and sadistic, but intelligent enough and ambitious enough to be really dangerous.
I don’t think the BG cared about such things. They didn’t “chose” the Harkonnen that was simply the container in which the genes they had been paitently combining for centuries were going to come together in the right sequence to create their super being. The Harkonnen and the Atredies were just convenient receptacles for those genes nothing more.
One thing that is puzzling to me is how the expected to control the Kazzwach Haderack (sp?) when he appeared. They totally failed with Paul and he was raised in the Atredies tradition of honor and duty. How TF did they expect to control a psychotic Harkonnen brat with super powers? (No spoilers I’m watching Dune 2 later this week!)
It depends - you can take Brian’s word for if the novels are based on his fathers notes and outlines, or not. He never provided proof of it, so doubt is fully reasonable. Do I think his writing is not a match for his fathers? Oh yes. Do I think it’s probably more accessible to modern readers? Probably. I prefer the legends and prequel novels, and find the sequels to the original series and supplemental stuff much more jarring, as he doesn’t IMHO capture the style of the original characters, and is much safer on older or alternate characters.
Whatever your opinions on those novels though, the points I made are still consistent with the OG novels if you only want to stick to those.
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The Duke has lots of power on the surface, and is regarded as an honorable man. True, and we are told and shown the power and training of his armies, and even his enemies, including the Emperor grant him the latter.
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The Emperor is weak. Well, pardon, but duh. He’s a quasi-feudal emperor with NO HEIR. Everyone, including Leto is talking about the political opportunities of wedding one of his daughters. He isn’t powerful or influential enough to deal with the Duke, so he arranges a dagger in the back via the Harkonnen, who are fully aware of his efforts and are using him right back. He bribes the Harkonnen with an unprecedented second fief on Dune, which almost certainly looks weak and complicit (we don’t really see enough of the other houses to make more than an informed guess to this, granted), and his opponents see nothing wrong with abandoning him and killing his representatives as long as they have a figleaf of cover. This is not a strong ruler.
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My guess that Jessica would have attempted to conceal the facts of Paul’s death and the likelyhood of the Reverend Mother escaping though, is entirely supposition, not based on anything other than the initial text.
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The thought that Leto would possibly break, DID use some info from the prequels, but it’s still a valid reading (note, I said possibility, not certainty) on his intense emotional reaction where he spends pages internally monologing about how “they tried to kill my son”.
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Last point, for you and @Whack-a-Mole about Leto being able to pin this on the Emperor. I never ruled it out, I just thought it was unlikely. Because, again, most would consider this an internal manner to the BG, or, if not, and especially if the RM made Jessica take the fall for it (in BG terms, taking responsibility for not following orders) an action of planned betrayal. Remember, even the most loyal Atreides inner circle did not fully trust Jessica, especially her final loyalties. When the Harkonnen spread rumors, Paul and Leto were certain in her, but many of the others were manipulated by their doubts. If the BG spent a fraction of the effort the Harkonnens did, along with Jessica accepting responsibility, they could spin it however they might want.
FYI: Kwisatz Haderach (“Shortening of the Way”)
The Bene Gesserit (BG) would not outright “control” the Kwisatz Haderach but if they knew when and where he would appear they would be sure to be around him and guide him as he grew and subtly control him. He’d never know it was happening. The BG are all about subtlety and not into overt actions. They are very, very good at it.
Paul got out of their control. Paul got a lot of his lessons on Arrakis with the Fremen. Well away from the BG and other powers. (not a spoiler I don’t think…you see Paul hanging with the Fremen at the end of Dune 1)
This is where the B.G. truly failed. They were breeding for someone who could see the past and multiple futures. That is someone who is basically impossible to control.
I thought the future vision stuff was more big picture, broad vision rather than a detailed idea of what the Bene Gesserit (or whoever) were up to.
Even if one could see the future which future that person chooses to pursue will be very different among different people. Consider an ideal future you would pursue and one Donald Trump would pursue. Betting they’d be different.
The BG could make the person want the future they want.
(I may be misremembering how future vision works…been a long time since I read the books)
Well, the BG likely didn’t understand what they were getting. They knew what they wanted, but Paul’s ability to see possible futures didn’t give him much ability to control said futures. The whole crux of the God Emperor’s reign is to avoid the trap of foresight.
But the BG likely believed that by knowning the future they could change it to a path they had influence over… and likely they could have, at least the small things. It would probably be a poisoned chalice for them eventually as well.
Quite so. As mentioned, by now they are all in on the “sunk cost” of this grand generational experiment and become convinced they can’t be wrong about what it “should” produce.
At the time of the Dune events it looks like they could have been thinking, Ok, next step: Have the X be an Atreides BG-Adept girl. Have the Y be a Harkonnen boy. Harkonnens may be mental, but a good BG Adept can play them. Join the Houses, get them to produce the next generation of potential KH candidate(s). Then conveniently have Harkonnen Y-donor Boy one fine morning be down with a mild case of death while the kids and Mum are halfway across the galaxy from Giedi Prime, and we take over raising them.
I disagree.
Sympathy is not a strong coin in the kind of political game played out here. Exploitation of weakness is. A Duke who couldn’t protect his own heir? In his own demesne? That is a weak Duke.
The Landsraad are behind him because he is a strong counterbalance to the Emperor. But if he appears weak, he’s toast.
The alternative to disobeying that decree is Tupile. Or the Sardaukar. Not one legion on loan in secret, but the full might of them.
Well, except for the influence of the Missionaria Protectiva on everything the Fremen believe.
I do not see it that way at all. As many noted above, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam is the Emperor’s right hand (and also top of the Bene Gesserit). It’d be like vice president Kamala Harris visiting Russia and meeting with Katerina Putin and stabbing her with a poison pin and killing her. (If Harris was also much, much more powerful.)
The rest of the world would not think Putin was weak. They’d turn on Biden for sending his second to kill the child. Even if Harris did it of her own accord Biden and the US would face the consequences.
Other countries (the Landsraad) would band together against the emperor. They’d have their casus belli against a weak emperor they do not like anyway. The Emperor’s Sardukar are not enough against all that.
What gives you that idea? We are given absoutely no indication she’s the Reverend Mother Superior (there are later characters who are explicitly so named)
The “rest of the world” isn’t a knife-mad patriarchal feudal hierarchy that proceeds with politics via formal Wars of Assassins and is in complete thrall to a quasi-religious fear cult. And extensively culturally manipulated by a literal female Illuminati.
She is the emperor’s truthsayer. Arguably the second most powerful person in the universe (and, secretively, maybe the first most powerful). Maybe there are others above Mohiam but she is clearly near the tippy-top if not THE top of the BG hierarchy.
Do we know of other BG who can order Mohiam around?
ETA: It seems there is a “Reverend Mother Superior”. It seems Harishka was the head of the Bene Gesserit when this all happened.
And? That makes her post a very important placement for the BG, but says nothing about her place in the BG itself.
Not even close. The leaders of the Spacing Guild fill all the “most powerful” slots that exist (before Paul awakens).
Definitely.
She is. But she explicitly is not the top or she would be called that - as Herbert explicitly did for later Mother Superiors like Odrade and Murbella (and that’s ignoring the prequels, where we are told who the top person is. ETA: as you’ve found out)
That’s all nitpicking. The Duke would not be seen as “weak” because Mohaim was able to poke Paul with a poison pin.
Every house would understand that would be impossible to guard against in a reasonable manner (they are not going to strip search her).
He’d be seen as weak because he let someone get into his demesne and kill his son. If he can’t protect the most precious thing close to him from the witches - worse, if he’s so pussy-whipped by his own witch whore that he lets her let a killer in, what kind of man is he? (I’m purposefully using misogynistic patriarchal language here to express how I think that kind of culture would think, not my own thoughts)
If he can’t protect his own, in his own place, how will he protect us, in our planets, when the Sardaukar come to pick us off one by one?
Letting her get close to him in the first place is entirely on Jessica. Which reflects on the Duke.