[..] You’ll Bear My Sister: St. Alia Of The Knife.

something funny and highly specific to consider about feyd-rautha from a meta perspective is that all of the actors who have played him either are musicians or have played a musician.

in lynch's dune, feyd is played by Sting, lead vocalist and songwriter for The Police.

in jodorowsky's planned adaptation of dune, feyd was planned to be played by (and his design highly based on) Mick Jagger.

in villeneuve's dune, feyd is played by Austin Butler, who shot to fame for his portrayal of Elvis.

also worth noting: all three of these musicians have — to a certain degree — an element of rebelliousness and sex appeal that characterises their 'on-stage' persona.

i mean, just take a look at this quote about Mick Jagger from Philip Norman's symphony for the devil: the rolling stones story:

"[...] his conflicting and colliding sexuality: the swan's neck and smeared harlot eyes allied to an overstuffed and straining codpiece."

“Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

by  Alex Jay Brady

The real tragedy of Dune (which the movies did an excellent job of portraying) is that almost none of the characters we see have any real choice in what they do. The only choices they have are in how they do them.

Duke Leto must take House Atreides to Arrakis, or be declared a traitor to the Imperium and hunted down. He knows it's a trap and that the Emperor is, in the very best case scenario, setting him and his family up for a serious reversal of their fortunes (far more likely, he's outright scheming to get them killed). But he doesn't have a choice. He must go to Arrakis. He does go to Arrakis. He dies.

Paul and Jessica must flee into the desert or the Harkonnen soldiers will kill them both brutally. They must go to the Fremen for refuge or the desert will kill them. They go. They find that the Fremen have already begun to mythologise Paul. He's the Mahdi, the Lisan al-Gaib. There is no option for Paul to be a normal person here. He is either the messiah or he is a false prophet, and false prophets in a nation of true believers don't live for long.

So Paul fits himself into the mold of the myth. He becomes Muad'dib and leads the Fremen in war because they believe too much in him to let him be anything less. Is it manipulation? Yes. But because the Bene Gesserit have been manipulating the Fremen for centuries, Paul has no choice but to continue it if he wants to live.

He sees the holy war at the end of every timeline by glimpses and he fights to avoid it. To avoid it, he becomes the Kwizatz Haderach and gains the ability to fully see timelines, and thereby he makes himself that much more of the Fremen messiah and brings himself one step closer to the holy war. Every choice he makes is a choice for survival and an attempt to avoid that war, the war he cannot escape because every step he makes along the path to survival is one more step towards the war. He has no more choice in what he becomes than his father had in whether or not he went to Arrakis.

The only people who ever had a choice were the Emperor and Gaius Helen Mohiam. They made their choice, to exterminate House Atreides, and thereby they took everyone's choices away, including their own. Once they sent House Atreides to Arrakis, the entire plot was inevitable.

dune: part two, dir. denis villeneuve (2024) sharp objects, gillian flynn (2006)

Animatic of the opening scene from Jodorowsky's Dune (unmade)

Art: Moebius Directed: Alejandro Jodorowsky Year: mid 1970s As seen in 'Jodorowsky's Dune' (2013)

“You know the ancient tongues.” “I know many things…”

REBECCA FERGUSON in DUNE (2021) dir. DENIS VILLENEUVE

Character designs by Mœbius for Jodorowsky’s unproduced version of DUNE. I’ve featured some before.

page 184 of dune messiah by frank herbert

“They said you were dead,” Gurney repeated.

“And it seemed the best protection to let them think so,” Paul said.

Gurney realized that was all the apology he’d ever get for having been abandoned to his own resources, left to believe his young Duke … his friend, was dead. He wondered then if there were anything left here of the boy he had known and trained in the Ways of fighting men.

Paul took a step closer to Gurney, found that he had tears in his eyes. “Gurney ….”

It seemed to happen of itself, and they were embracing, pounding each other on the back, feeling the reassurance of solid flesh.

“You young pup! You young pup!” Gurney kept saying.

And Paul: “Gurney, man! Gurney, man!”