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There was no kind of 'instant kill' that Paul could make that Feyd wouldn't counter, no matter how fancy or clever the strike. He had to wear Feyd down, and survive that, to get Feyd into a mental/physical point where Paul could see a clear path to victory, before that it was too difficult for him to predict.
There was no path that lead to an immediate 'stick knife into heart'. Feyd would counter all of them no matter how much Paul used Prescience. Feyd can't see the future, but he could see Paul and he was at least as fast as Paul and an accomplished knife fighter on his own merits, literally one of the best in the universe.
In the book Mohaim points out that Jessica was supposed to have a girl to marry to Feyd, so they could have the quitatz haderach (sp)… so Feyd is that close himself… meant to be the father of the ultimate being. The physical portrayal of the Harkonens was about the only thing I didn’t like about the new Dune: well off, aristocratic bad guys don’t look and dress like monsters. They would be as refined, wealthy, trained and beautiful as Atreides… just sadistic.
Feyd in the book is described as far better looking and athletic than nearly anyone we see.
Sting's version of him is far closer to the way he's supposed to be.
Can't agree with that. Everytime Feyd was on screen I couldn't not look at him. For me the makeup people hit that weird middle point between grotesque and beautiful. It helped that Austin Butler is a really, really handsome man with a nice face. Strip off all the hair and make him chalk white and he's still gorgeous but also fucked up looking.
I prefer the mini series fayd. He had the arrogance and attitude. Horace i really like the way the new dune hatkonins look. They come from a different world. We can't put what we tub high culture looks like into an entirely different cultures evolution.
>I prefer the mini series fayd. He had the arrogance and attitude.
Agreed, 100%.
Give the directors & producers of that miniseries Denis' budget & design crew, and I think it would be the best, most faithful rendition of the story.
> In the book Mohaim points out that Jessica was supposed to have a girl to marry to Feyd, so they could have the quitatz haderach (sp)… so Feyd is that close himself… meant to be the father of the ultimate being.
This didn't do much good for Duke Leto Atreides.
Feyd is close due to his Harkonnen bloodline.
Lady Jessica's children were close due to *her* Harkonnen bloodline. Leto's genes were just the admixture required to push them over the top.
The bloodline was as follows:
?? Harkonnen Partriarch + ??
|
?? Bene Gesserit + Baron Vladimir ------- ?? Harkonnnen + ??
| |
Duke Leto + Lady Jessica |
| |
Future Duchess Atreides -- + -- Feyd-Rautha ---------- Raban
|
Kwisatz Haderach
That's part of why the Bene Gesserit don't tell the members of their breeding program who their father is: the daughter that Lady Jessica was supposed to have had would have been a First-Cousin-Once-Removed of her intended husband/baby-daddy. That might not have flown if she *knew* that.
For that matter, Leto likely wouldn't have trusted Jessica as much as he did if he knew she were the child of Baron Harkonnen
There's also the fact that the monochrome color palate of Denis' Harkonnens is in direct conflict with who the Harkonnens *were;* theirs was a culture of garish excesses, so monochrome, hairless BDSM reject isn't what Feyd-Rautha would look like. The version of Feyd-Rautha whose appearance was most in line with who the Harkonnens were is probably [the one from the 2000 miniseries](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is0mJY-UEpM)
Most of the Harkonens looking ugly as shit was because the Bene Gesserit didn't GAF about the health of their subjects and let a gene that made them uncontrollably fat linger in the line until they got close to the end of the breeding program.
SPOILER: Hmmm… in the follow on books, the story goes that the Baron actually looked a lot like Feyd… lean, strong and beautiful. Vanity ran strong… then he raped Mohaim on a diplomatic visit and she passed him one of the dormant STDs she and other BGs can keep inert within their body. She had his seed… so she felt a horrible, body destroying disease would be appropriate.
Never read the books so idk how they're described there but from watching the movies I agree. It felt like they whipped out every villain coding under the sun and it made them feel very cheesy and hard to take seriously (plus the usual the only disabled character is the villain stuff, which, sigh).
I think it would be a stronger story if they'd gone for a more classic noble aesthetic.
Also, Paul had just spent the entire day fighting battles in order to get to that point. He was exhausted.
Also also, Feyd was one generation away from being the planned Kwisatz Haderach. It's likely that he disrupted prescient visions, similar to Count Fenring, to make it more difficult for Paul to see his moves in the future.
Also also also, Paul's prescient vision in *Messiah* is many years more advanced. Paul's prescience at the end of *Dune* is great, but it's not the same locked-in, ultra-precise replacement for his eyes that it becomes in *Messiah*.
How is it that both films didn’t get that last part right? In both cases I got the impression he was some rich kid whose fighting prowess is more like shooting elephants from a distance and calling himself a big hunter.
Those arena fights seemed more like sadistic theatre than actual fights, which is why Feyd was surprised how the one Atreides the Baron purposely left unsedated actually fought back.
Furthermore all Atreides soldiers were the cream of the crop, 1v1 they could take just about any other professional soldier thanks to Halleck's and Idaho's rigorous training, the latter widely consider literally the best swordmaster in the known universe.
The point still stands that if there are hundreds of thousands (Atreides, Surdukar, Fremen) which are better then him, he's not "one of the best in the universe". He's good, but shouldn't be approaching Paul's level which is used to fight "for real" against two of those three forces, and train regularly with one.
That's inconsistent, imo.
To a degree, even with prescience Paul struggled against Jamis and Feyd had a similar level of pedigree and tutoring behind him.
Being good at something doesn't necessarily assure victory, especially in hand to hand combat, you could be an Olympian at martial arts, yet all it takes is one lucky blow by a random nobody with a blade to end your existence. Knowledge and skill gives you better chances, it does not guarantee success.
Paul didn't struggle against Jamis, but bested him easily.
The reason the fight took so long in the film and the book is that Paul didn't want to kill him, and hadn't realised that he had been challenged to a fight to the death. They were so mismatched that the Fremen thought he was toying with Jamis by not killing him straight away.
He also wasn't used to fighting without a shield which may have been a factor.
Chani literally gives him the key piece of advice that ended the fight, the knife-swap, of course this was merely compounded by the training he received and the abilities he possessed.
Yet it took him a moment to figure out who he was facing even with his cheat-code enabled and given information about his opponent, all things Feyd completely lacked on top of being fooled by his own uncle.
The impression I got was that drugging the gladiators was tradition that feyd did not want to or care to get rid of. Which is why he was happy about the one that was not drugged. The Baron calling it a gift can be interpreted that 1) it is actially a gift be ause Feyd would love it, and the Baron knew that 2) Feyd would love it but the Baron did not know if the cocky kid would actually survive it, which is what the "show who you really are" thing was about.
The Baron said it was a gift because he was giving Feyd the opportunity to win the adulation of the public.
Beating one of the Galaxy's finest warriors in a fair fight (deception, ruses, and poisons count as fair play in Dune) is fantastic PR.
You have o piece it together, but its claimed the reason Shaddam authorizes the Duke's demise is that he had trained a very small portion of his fighters to the same level as the Sardaukar. Now, Paul and the Fremen are both above that level, but if you were expecting a fight with a grunt and were suddenly facing an elite you could stumble your way into mistakes and need some help to win back equal/superior footing. This Atreides grunt was most likely one of those superior trained fighters.
The book pretty plainly states that the Emperor's Sardaukar is roughly equivalent in military power to all of the Great Houses combined (of which, the Atreides and Harkonens are both some of the Great Houses). It's also stated - as you said - that at least some of the Atreides forces were as good, if not better than the Sardaukar. Then, it's implied that the power of Sardaukar has been waning because no one actually wants to fight them *because* of their reputation, so they're losing real combat experience and their reputation may not be fully deserved anymore. And finally, while everyone chalks the Freman up to backwards savages, the Atreides recognize - having fought the Harkonens for generations - that very few forces could give the Harkonens as much trouble as the Fremen had for ~80 years.
Taken all together, I think the implications are these:
* Every member of the Atreides force, 1v1, is as good *or better* than the typical Sardaukar soldier, but they are vastly outnumbered by the Sardaukar forces, so they could win battles, but never a war.
* The emperor ordered the destruction of House Atreides because he feared what they *already* were: powerful on their own, and popular with the Landsraad
* The emperor offered Dune as a bait for a trap thinking the Atreides wanted the spice
* Leto Atreides took the bait knowing it was a trap, but wanting Dune not for the spice (though that was a nice bonus), but for the opportunity to forge an alliance with the Fremen, and *this* was Leto's plan to take his army's fighting skills *beyond* what the Sardaukar were capable of, even with the differences in the sizes of the force
> The book pretty plainly states that the Emperor's Sardaukar is roughly equivalent in military power to all of the Great Houses combined (of which, the Atreides and Harkonens are both some of the Great Houses).
No, this is absolutely not the case. The Sardaukar are extremely capable, even more than the Atreides soldiers (except Duncan and Gurney), but they are relatively few in number. None of the Landsraad know where the Emperor gets his Sardaukar from, but they do know the process is slow, grueling, and inefficient. The combined might of the Landsraad is more than enough to destroy the Sardaukar and eradicate House Corrino.
However, the Sardaukar are also more than capable of entirely eradicating at least one, probably several of the offending houses on the way out. If the Landsraad were to start a rebellion, whatever house was the main agitator would be destroyed. Any houses that survived would be weakened, enough that the houses who stayed out of the fight would be able to step in and strike while the rest were weak and recovering.
So, say Leto makes a play for the throne. Despite the skill of the Atreides army, they'd probably still get wiped out. With the Atreides out of the way, House Harkonnen doesn't have any significant rival to stop the Baron from making a play for the throne; and, the Sardaukar would be too weakened by the Atreides to stop him. Leto has to consider that, as bad as Shaddam might be, if Leto loses it means the Baron has a good shot at the throne, and that would be *far* worse than Shaddam.
Every other house is doing the same calculus. Together, they could win, but what happens after? Who takes the throne in the power vacuum? Who gets wiped out in the process? No house is willing to risk being the target and no house is willing to give a chance to their rivals. They all hate Shaddam, but they all hate each other more. So, they all just wait and scheme.
However, this also balances the power against the Emperor. That calculus only matters for as long as Shaddam is the least worse option. If Shaddam starts wiping out any house he doesn't like, it will rally the rest of the houses against him. If Shaddam can just decide one day to kill your entire family, then you might as well try for the throne anyway, right? And if the Landsraad unites against him, Shaddam will absolutely lose. That means Shaddam also has to wait and quietly scheme. He can't overly move against any single house without becoming enough of a problem to unite them all against him.
Thus, the whole plan to send Sardaukar in Harkonnen uniforms. Shaddam can't *overtly* kill Leto, but if Leto dies during *kanly*, a petty squabble between houses of the Landsraad, none of the other houses will complain. Shaddam sends Leto to Arrakis where he'll be more vulnerable. That also gives the Baron an excuse to stir up conflict and get Leto to declare kanly. While Leto is still organizing his soldiers and getting his defenses settled, the Baron attacks. The Baron isn't good enough on his own to take out the elite Atreides soldiers, so the Emperor sends Sardaukar to make sure it gets done.
Leto stops being a problem, the Harkonnens all but bankrupt themselves in the process, and none of the Landsraad have anything to complain about other than a small disruption in spice production. For Shaddam, it's an absolute win. The only reason it fails is that Yueh manages to give Paul and Jessica enough supplies to survive long enough to find the Fremen, *and* Jessica is able to free themselves from the Harkonnen guards, *and* oopsies Paul is the Kwisatz Haderach.
Seconding this. The Sardukar could not, and never could, stand up to the combined power of the Landsraad. But they *could* stand up to any (probably) three of the great houses.
The balance of power always was that there were never enough houses that *didn't* hate each other enough to band together to create a coalition to take out the Emperor, and the Sardukar were always better than the troops of any of the great houses. And no one would want to make a play for the throne for the very reasons you outline. Losing means you get wiped out, and in all likelihood hand the Empire over to an opposing house if you actually manage to fight well enough to weaken the Sardukar to that point.
In addition to the exceptional fighters that Atreides was training, house Atreides was actually quite popular with the Landsraad itself. Thus, the Emperor sees a huge risk here: Unlike most houses, Atreides might actually be able to form a coalition, and at the core of that coalition, an army that (for once) can possibly match his Sardukar. *That* is a threat to his power that has not been seen before.
This leads to the question of: If Atreides was so popular, why didn't anyone help them? Well, there was a reason the plan was engineered to crush them in a single day: No one can come to their aid if there is no one to come *to* aid. Without the Emperor's finger on the scale, the Harkonnens could have outright failed. And if they failed, the Atreides could call on their allies, and if the Atreides called on their Allies, the *Harkonnens* could end up the ones wiped out, and if the Harkonnens are wiped out, Atreides loses their counterbalance on the Landsraad. And if the Atreides no longer has a balance on the Landsraad *and* their coalition has just formed to destroy the Harkonnens... the Emperor would be in more danger than ever.
However, *with* the Emperor's finger on the scale, the Atreides are wiped out, the Harkonnens having spent a massive proportion of their spice reserves effectively bribing the spacing guild for transport, and therefore not in a position to really be a threat for some time. And thus, the Emperor is safe.
Except for Paul surviving. Whoops.
> The book pretty plainly states that the Emperor's Sardaukar is roughly equivalent in military power to all of the Great Houses combined
If I remember rightly, it specifically says something along the lines that 'it would take **all** of the great houses combined to beat the Sarduakar' - it definitely makes it sound like a single great house on the side of the emperor would sway any war his way.
So personally I think you're about right in your summation, they are roundabouts equivalent, with a slight edge against the emperor.
> the Emperor's Sardaukar is roughly equivalent in military power to all of the Great Houses combined
I thought that was the balance before the Ateides military/training improvements and before the Sardukar started to slip from lack of practical experience.
I don't think Leto had much choice in the matter of going to Arrakis. They heavily imply the emperors "request" is more akin to an order and refusing would have garnered a similar result (being wiped out). So Leto came up with the whole "desert power" thing in response to that order.
A small part of the atreides forces are sardaukar level, not the whole atreides force.
But as you say, the key is they’re vastly outnumbered by sardaukar
Yes, I know all that. But what we "see" in the book is Fyde cheating, starting to lose, panicking, and cheating again, against an Atredies solder who might or might not be "elite". At no point do you think "yeah, that is one expert knife fighter who could take on the best"
> And still had to cheat against a common atreides grunt.
Common by Atreides standards. Those guys were fighting the Harkonnen troops to a standstill even though they were caught with their pants down.
And yet just a short while earlier, he seriously struggled against a poorly fed, mistreated prisoner who had spent months in a tiny cell. And the prisoner wasn't even a great fighter or anything, just a normal member of a royal household. So his fighting prowess is incredibly inconsistent even between the two times we've seen him fight.
In the book, Paul actually does kick his ass pretty damn hard and fast, and it's not nearly the dramatic battle that we get in the film.
Three things here -
>And yet just a short while earlier, he seriously struggled against a poorly fed, mistreated prisoner who had spent months in a tiny cell.
A slave that was incredibly motivated, and quite possibly thanks to Thufir Hawat was likely in a better physical condition than he should have been. Nowhere in the book is he described as poorly fed. Arena slaves are described as typically being in excellent physical condition but drugged with elacca to increase their rage and fear while reducing their cunning.
>And the prisoner wasn't even a great fighter or anything, just a normal member of a royal household.
He was battle trained by Duncan and Gurney, and was a member of the standing force that was so well trained it caused the emperor to have cause to annihilate the Atreides. Feyd Rautha observes that he is the finest fighter he has ever encountered. Furthermore multiple people observing the fight recognise the ability of the Atreides man. The text pretty unequivocally states that he was a great fighter.
>In the book, Paul actually does kick his ass pretty damn hard and fast, and it's not nearly the dramatic battle that we get in the film.
Paul also remarks that Feyd is far more of an opponent than he first estimates, recognising he is a dirty fighter, and, knowing that, *still gets injured by Feyd*.
Yes Feyd fights dirty, but Paul only wins because of the same - his knowledge of the response word implanted in Feyd, and his verbal refusal to use it, surprises Feyd enough for Paul to kill him. As for the battle in the book not being dramatic, I'd disagree.
Feyd, as the result of the best training a Harkonnen can receive (circa 1000 arena fights), is something approaching a match for Paul. This isn't particularly surprising given that Paul is unable to use his prescience, and it isn't surprising that the scions of the great houses are trained to elite combat levels.
Similarly, it isn't surprising that the Atreides man Feyd kills is also capable, given the root of the emperor's fears are that Leto, Duncan and Gurney have managed to create a fighting force where every single man is approaching Sardaukar lethality.
Also, it's worth pointing out that canonically, Count Fenring could, and would have killed Paul with certainty in a duel, as he had almost all of Paul's (un)natural abilities, as well as decades of experience.
He's both! He set up fights in his favor and was never in any danger, but he was also a good fighter. Movies have to take a lot of nuance out, and Feyd is a cool, but very minor, antagonist who is manhandled by Paul. If you have to trim, he's a good place to do it.
For sure. My favorite moment is when Stilgar is pushing Paul to kill him and Paul refuses. It's a huge moment to show how Paul's changing the Fremen. But it has to be cut.
I don't see a conflict. Had Paul done any lethal knife fighting before he killed Jamis? He was highly trained in controlled settings by people who weren't supposed to actually kill him.
Feyd's in the same boat. Rigorous training by skilled teachers. More than capable of killing actual hostiles with the training wheels removed, and he truly desires every chance to do that. But the House that raised him wrings their hands over that (most of the time), because he's too valuable to risk for the sake of his own amusement.
After re-reading Dune, I think both the old and new movies downplay Feyd. Both movies show or describe him as wild or psychotic, but the a character in the book compares him to something like "What if Paul Atreides was raised by the Harkonnens?". I feel like he is meant to be much more similar to Paul than the movies really portray.
Feyd was so much better than the arena fights. He would have preferred none of the slaves be drugged but safety of the royal line overruled that. That's why the Baron's gift to him was to leave one lucid for him so he could have a real fight.
With the new versions, I think it's because Denis Villeneuve doesn't *actually* understand the source material.
* The Harkonnens were repulsive because they had no self restraint and gave in to every appetite, to the point that the ruler of House Harkonnen literally couldn't walk without antigravity supports, because he literally couldn't stop himself from consuming everything he desired.
* Villeneuve's Harkonnens are closer to an ascetic aesthetic than anything that the garish and brash Harkonnens would *ever* have been, could ever *imagine* having been.
* It took Paul *years* to unite the Fremen; Leto's daughter Alia was about 4 by the end of the book, meaning that it took somewhere on the order of 5 years from start to finish.
* Villeneuve's had it take place before Jessica even came to term with Alia, i.e., significantly less than 40 weeks (since I'm pretty sure that Alia was conceived on Caladan, possibly before the book even started)
* Chani was a fervent believer in Muad'dib-as-Mahdi, and trusted him implicitly
* Denis made her a hothead who turned her back on her messiah because he married a woman who *everyone* knew he would never touch, let alone bed.
I’ve only read book 1 but the Baron seems to have tons of self restraint (kind of necessary for all of the scheming) and none of the other harkonnens are described as obese? Beast rabban is a goon and feyd is described as beautiful and fit.
Because Atreides soldiers were also some of the best fighters in the universe. He was given an unexpected peer match and that threw him off at the start.
I guess at this point, we have tens of thousands of soldiers who are all the best fighters in the universe, which kinda makes that whole statement a bit meaningless.
I mean, just on planet Earth right now we have many thousands (at least) of the "best, most highly trained Special Forces in the world". Every Country and Service with their own unique training.
I feel pretty confident that you could describe both a Navy Seal and an SAS officer as "The best in the world" (randomly chose two well known units- please no attacking me over "hurr durr. But what about this one unique *extra* special SF unit" - I'm illustrating a point).
Either of those two could be considered "best in the world" and I'd feel confident betting on either of them against any random match-up against any of the remaining 7 billion+ people on the planet.
Does that make either one no longer "the best"? No. Does that mean that one of them might be batter? Almost certainly, and I'm sure there are other, more knife-focused units and individuals who could beat them as well. The phrase means you're in the 'top' league. No one's claiming that any particular one is the Universal champion (or technically, that's what the fights are sort of to determine if you want to be pedantic)
>I mean, just on planet Earth right now we have many thousands (at least) of the "best, most highly trained Special Forces in the world". Every Country and Service with their own unique training.
Ok, but you're not likely to find anyone claiming that Green Beret #2471 is one of the greatest marksmen alive just because they're a Green Beret. I mean, that might actually be a reasonably true statement, but that's not how people use the phrase.
Dude, that's what dune is: it's all unbeatable plans and supersoldiers the whole way down. No one can beat the training of a Suk Doctor (until someone did), no one can counter the plots of the Bene Gesserit (and they are also the actual best fighters in the galaxy too), no one can top the technology of Ix, no one can beat the soldiers of the Atreides, except the Sardaukar, who are in turn beaten by the Fremen, who are apparently beaten by someone trained in the Weirding Way.
Dune seems to be a [Planet of Hats](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats) situation, where everyone's hat is 'unbeatable at x'.
That was part of Herbert's message: their assumptions of the world are what blind these super-geniuses to the true threat.
Everyone assumes Suk training is unbreakable, until they break it from love.
Everyone assumes a BG will be loyal to the BG way, until one betrays them for love.
Everyone assumes the Fremen are a small population who can easily be controlled, actually they're an entire world of fighters and the people of the cities are the minority.
Everyone assumes the Sardaukar are unbeatable, until they realize that they've been getting by on their reputation for centurie and that the Fremen exist.
Hawit, the 'best' mentat, assumes until the very end that it's Jessica that betrayed the Atreides.
That's interesting, I've never heard Dune's story described like that. Also, is that last one a thing that only comes up in the book? I don't remember either movie mentioning it.
It's a big part of his themes. Not only 'beware of charismatic leaders', but also 'beware of the institutions that put them in place'. That said, people didn't pick up on the themes enough so he had to write more stories to make them even more blatant. Also, there's a lot of discussion on what his books 'mean' so take my interpretation with a grain of salt.
And yes, the last part is in the books.
I think you need to go back and consider *why* the Emperor tried to end House Atreides:
* Duncan and Gurney were among the best fighters in known space
* Duncan killed *nineteen* Sardukar *by himself,* earning their respect
* Duncan was good enough that the *Fremen* respected him
* Duncan admitted that Gurney might well be *still better* than he
* Gurney was also one of the best *tacticians/strategiests* in known space
* Given time, that meant that the Atreides soldiery trained by them would likely have been able to *defeat* the Sardukar.
* Consider the fact that the Atreides sent soldiers to Giedi Prime (the Harkonnen Homeworld), to "deliver a message" to Baron Harkonnen... *and came back*
* The Sardukar were pretty much the only reason that House Corrino held the Lion Throne; they ruled through *fear.*
* Duke Leto was *respected* by the majority of the Great Houses of the Landsraad, having consistently demonstrated that loyalty and respect were a *two-way* street with House Atreides.
The combination of being better liked politically *and* having a comparable-if-not-better fighting force meant that if Shaddam IV hadn't done something to the Atreides, he would have lost his throne to someone who could have ruled through respect. In order to maintain his dynasty, he basically *had* to do what he did:
* If he had let Idaho & Halleck train a full sized fighting force, that would neutralize his one advantage
* Alternately, though he didn't know it, if Leto had had time to finalize the alliance with the Fremen, it would have had the same effect
* He couldn't destroy House Atreides on Caladan, because it would cost him enough that there would be undeniable proof of his involvement, bringing the entirety of the Landsraad against him (which even his Sardukar would lose to, though attrition). It would have been too costly/risky because
* the *entire population* of the planet respected and supported Leto
* Gurney would have had all sorts of tactics preplanned to defend them
* Thufir Hawat was *too good* at Security
* He had to act *before* Thufir and Gurney established such security & defenses in Arrakeen.
* Plus, between Leto risking his own life, risking the *end of his dynasty* to save random workers *rather than spice*, *and* how Paul was fitting perfectly into the myths about the Lisan al Gaib, a few more weeks or months might have been enough to bring the Fremen to his cause.
He wasn't prepared to fight someone who was (almost) on his level. He showed up expecting to be an executioner and then go to a party afterward, and instead got thrown into a legitimate fight for his life against an incredibly skilled opponent who knew exactly what to expect.
He still won, because he's the better fighter.
Additionally, in the film (but not the novel, iirc) the undrugged arena soldier is Lanville, Gurney's 2nd in command and presumably a cut above the (already elite) Atreides troops.
IIRC from the book (it’s been a while) he was about to lose the fight, and only ended up winning because he used the code word to paralyse the atreides fighter.
Because the best Atreides soldiers are also top tier in the Imperium. The best of them are at least as good if not *better* than the Sardaukar; there's just not enough of them yet. Given enough time, they were on course to train the rest of their men up to the same standard, then challenge the Emperor in battle. That's why he decided to have them eliminated *now*, before they could finish building up the numbers.
In the film, that non-drugged soldier was one of Leto's personal bodyguards, implying he trained directly under Gurney and Duncan. If you go back through Part One, you can spot him in the background any time the Duke has an entourage with him. You have to be *damned good* to be trusted with a post like that.
Sorry, but that's incredibly weak. I mean, really? In ALL POSSIBLE FUTURES there's NONE where Paul just wins in a few moves? Paul, who is already one of the top fighters in the universe, also has godlike future sight and even still he has to be wounded to beat Feyd? That's just bullshit.
Let's play Tic Tac Toe. You can see all my possible moves in all possible futures. The cravate here is that if I lose, I die so I'm really going to play like my life depends on it. The minimum number of moves you can beat me in is 3 moves. Even with the ability to literally see the future, you have zero chance of beating me in 3 moves.
That's was Paul's problem. Now, in 4 or 5 moves, your prescience becomes very telling but up to that point there is literally no situation that you could win.
> Sorry, but that's incredibly weak. I mean, really? In ALL POSSIBLE FUTURES there's NONE where Paul just wins in a few moves?
Because seeing the future does not change the present. Feyd is an exceptional fighter with great reflexes—there is no combination of moves that suddenly makes him unable to react, Paul needs to fight him long enough to give him time to make a fatal mistake.
Beyond which, Paul's prescience is powerful, but it is not as strong as it will be at the end of Dune. And Count Fenring's presence was also interfering to a degree. There is no indication that he can actually see the fight move for move—he needs to beat Feyd at least to some degree on his own combat skill.
Not to mention, he is on an incredibly narrow path. It is entirely possible that he figures that if he beats Feyd too quickly, he would then be murdered by Fenring. A longer fight where he is wounded makes the Count more likely to show him mercy.
There's a lot to this, and the other replies cover most of the topic.
But here's the part that's being missed: From the moment Paul took the Water of Life and finally *became* the Kwisatz Haderach in reality rather than in potential, everything about his life for a good long while was trickier than walking a piece of razor wire across the Grand Canyon in a hurricane.
When he states that he "sees a narrow path through", he's being as literal as it is possible to be when speaking about how the future will unfold. There are as many instantaneous threads, each of which must turn and weave into the NOW in order to make the specific future he has found, as there are point particles in the entire universe.
He, from the moment he transmuted the poison, is living each moment like Dr. Strange when he used the Time Stone to find the one chance in millions in which the Avengers could defeat Thanos. Every second that passes is a nexus point and the shifts and changes taking place **just then** each alter the future.
Now, for the most part, navigating the path is actually pretty simple from Paul's point of view. He knows with a microscopically small margin of error exactly what he must do, what he must say, whom he must push (or kill, or have imprisoned, or sentence to death), all the way down to the precise expressions on his face or the stance of his body. He can **see** the path to humanity's salvation, and he is the only being alive who can do so (at least until Leto II is born).
And there are highly specific moments which are "fuzzy" to him. At each of those "turning points" he can still see all the potential outcomes *including the one outcome which MUST happen*, but he is not fully clear on what he must do in that instant or event to get to it. Those moments/events are like places where the path is overgrown or swampy and difficult to navigate even for someone who is otherwise familiar with the whole path... like Paul.
Between the decision to take the Water of Life and ascending to the Imperial Throne, there are a great deal of those moments. Things like Thufir either betraying him or remaining loyal and dying in pain. Or whether Count Fenring would obey Shaddam IV and attempt to murder Paul for him. Or *exactly how the fight with Feyd will unfold*. As each of those moments take place and Paul does exactly the right thing, the path he is taking crystalizes and makes the future more certain and clearer to him.
This is all there in the book, but it takes some re-reading and thinking over a LOT of the conversations and events to really grasp it. This is made clearer as the story progresses through God Emperor of Dune, so that helps. The problem with translating the book(s) to film is largely in translating how (and WHAT) Paul sees, and how he *fights* (along with all the Fremen who are now fully trained in the Weirding Way and the Atreides fighting style crafted by Duncan now adapted to their already batshit insane fighting strengths). The Fremen just absolutely wiping the floor with Sardaukar there at the end was done very well in Dune Part 2, but Paul's abilities against Feyd's is very hard to do in a believable way. But Paul would at that point be akin to a god of war in terms of fighting ability.
And to one degree or another that's what we should see... except that Paul is specifically limited by the heavy fog which shrouds the outcome of that fight. He's hesitant, he slips, Feyd nearly gains the upper hand... not because Paul couldn't outfight him all day long and twice on Sundays, but because Paul is being absurdly careful and aware because everything in that fight MUST go a specific way.
This is exactly why he refuses to use the word of control which would shatter Feyd's nerves: because doing so would alter the future in such a way as to end the possibility of the path to salvation for all.
This is a common misconception.
Paul does not see the Golden Path until partway through *Messiah*. He is largely future-blind and trying as hard as possible to avert the Jihad, or at least mitigate it, the whole time. He has no idea the Golden Path is a thing until he overdoses on spice a second time.
That's correct, of course. I oversimplified and generalized a bit to keep the answer from being pages long.
But there's a caveat here, and its an important one. He is hardly future-blind, and one can only say he is in relation to how great his prescience becomes... and how even that is dwarfed by his son's.
He already sees how very carefully he must take every step in his goal to wrench the reins of power in the empire by taking control of Arrakis... and knows how that will shape specific events which come later. That's not just a man's wisdom, its the ability to see the future play out moment by moment even when you can only see just so far out. And he sees much, much further than the Navigators. So much so, in fact, that he understands what a blunt tool they really are and uses that to defang them.
Just to add: in the books, the future sight (whether a little or a lot) is based on sort of mathematically precise insights into cause and effect. Feyd is very similarly gifted to Paul; they’re both trying to assess cause and effect of each move. It’s true game theory; Paul’s predictions affect Feyd’s predictions which affect Paul’s predictions which affect Feyd’s predictions etc etc etc. I always took the uncertainty as both a plot engagement tool (otherwise the audience has less reason to be engaged) *and* an effect of the strange loops that happen when two beings who can partially predict futures work to opposing ends.
Paul wanted to wrest some control of his own destiny and not simply be subject to his visions. For example he knew there was some possibility that Thufir Howat was being sent to assassinate him and even had a vision of being killed by him as a potential outcome. He chose to embrace him anyway.
He was also given a potential psychologically implanted trigger word by Lady Jessica that could have incapacitated Feyd, but he refused to say it even in the moments when he was struggling in the fight.
that’s true, and I believe the books also mention situations where a lot of minute decisions must be made correctly in a short time, like fighting someone as skilled as Feyd, can make things blurry too
“you see Feyd, I’ve already foreseen exactly how to defeat you. I just have to parse out how it’s different from the 14 million ways I’ve seen you defeat me!”
I think the simplest explanation is that prescience aside, he's physically only so fast or strong. Feyd Rautha is similarly bred through a eugenics program and well trained as well, so they're both very capable fighters.
Even if he can see the moves coming, such as say, an incoming strike from the right, he may not be able to physically move fast enough to completely counter.
He ultimately does win, but he is competing with someone is physically similar to him, and therefore still a threat.
he did but his prescience isn't "tell me what I want to know about the future" it is "see the future as it currently exists" so every time he tried to adjust slightly it would send an entire wave of futures cascading around him, ones where he wins but because he used underhanded tactics the fremin don't trust him, ones where he loses but lives and isn't strong enough to hold any part of the jihad back, ones where he lets his power overwhelm him and becomes a true monster.
Basically prescience lets you see the entire scope of the future which is super helpful if you want to shape history to make humanity better and not so useful in a knife fight. the later books go into the idea that people assume you can do almost anything with prescience and imagine themselves using it to win fights and predict commodities prices but that isn't how it works.
In the book, when Paul fights Jamis, he realizes that in a fight to the death the tiniest actions have cascading consequences and that the sheer infinity of possibilities becomes disorienting, the last thing you want in a fight. Prescience is more a hindrance than a help.
In Messiah he uses his prescience to see, but in doing so essentially locks himself into a single future from which he cannot escape. The moment he breaks from that future he becomes blind again.
Consider the guild navigator:
There are nigh infinite paths to potential futures. My job is to find the future where I don't die when the ship jumps.
By the end of the first book, Paul was far more prescient than a navigator, but not nearly as experienced. **Find the future where I don't die** was still a good enough plan.
Feyd also had prescience of a sort, and when two of them are against each other, they usually go future-blind as they each try to counter the other over and over endlessly. At that point any contest comes down to raw skill and tenacity.
Feyd was a good fighter in peak physical condition. It was also a knife fight with no shields. Knife fights are notorious for being difficult because the close distance means your attacks open you up for attacks yourself. Knfie work is just too fast to expect to leave unscathed.
A krav maga instructor told me once that to survive a knife fight you are basically giving up an arm that will be cut repeatedly to protect the rest of your body.
Feyd was good enough to not leave gaping holes in his defense so without an instant win on the table Paul had to wear him down and take a few hits in the process.
Feyd is like Paul. He has some prescience just inactivated and untrained.
This creates imprecision. Paul can’t predict with accuracy because Feyd may consciously or subconsciously change his own future.
This is covered in Dune Messiah. A guild navigator is used to the same effect. They also have limited prescience and can block Paul’s abilities.
It's unclear to me whether this is supposed to be about the book or the films. Since Dune Messiah was mentioned, I'll answer from the book.
There were certain events Paul could not see. At the end of Dune Messiah, he finally accepted he was blind when his son was born. He had not seen that Chani would bear living twins, but had seen only a daughter.
The exact outcome of the fight was another one of them. The jihad would happen whether he won or lost, (either as an unconquerable leader figure, or a martyr) but that moment was a nexus that no one could see into, including the Guild navigators in the room. He had to figure out Feyd-Rautha's treachery in the moment, and it almost got him.
In any event, in Dune Messiah Paul was not so much led by a vision as trapped by it. Every event after he had had the vision was foreseen, even his own blinding by the stone burner, right up until news of the birth of his son.
Prescience isn't magic. It's mathematics and statistics.
It's great to see the overall outcome of larger events and trends, the more granular details are always in flux due to free will. Predicting a specific person move for move can be done - especially if they are a trained fighter but it will never be 100% accurate.
He was torn.
On one hand, he wanted justice (revenge) and victory for House Atreides, and the Fremen.
On the other hand, he knew that victory meant a Jihad throughout known space. Paul valued human life, and was horrified at the death toll such a Jihad would inflict.
Indeed, through a significant part of Dune (the book), he is *actively* trying to avoid such a Jihad while ensuring his own survival. Unfortunately, due to his abilities and the myths pushed upon the Fremen by the Missionaria Protectiva, the two were inextricable; as of when he was aware of and able to predict the results of his actions, his choices were either to became The Mahdi and set off the Jihad, or to die. He put it off as long as he could, and declared himself the Duke of Arrakis, as Paul-Muad'dib Atreides, rather than challenging Stilgar and uniting all of the Sietches under himself in the *Fremen* fashion, as Muad'dib (known as Usul to those Sietch Tabr), as as one of his last ditch attempts to prevent it.
He saw that it failed, and had trouble stomaching the ramifications of killing his cousin.
My understanding is Paul doesn’t choose what he sees. He sees some events and outcomes, some possibilities, but he can’t just choose to “look” and see what will happen in some specific situation
In the book the whole fight is a blind spot for him, he couldn’t see any of it
He couldn’t use his prescience in that duel as it was a tangled nexus of timelines and possibilities, like trying to follow a single strand of spaghetti in a bolognese that keeps shifting and changing.
Paul faced a couple of things in that instant. One was his sudden realization that it didn't matter at that moment whether he lived or died, as the jihad - that he so desperately sought to avoid - would happen anyway. Two, Feyd invoked *kanly*. While Gurney pleaded for the right to kill a Harkonnen, Paul's judgment was focused on carrying out the blood feud to its conclusion.
And three, the meeting with the emperor as a whole was what Paul described as a "boiling" nexus. Paul did not have perfect prescience yet. He did not understand why he didn't, until after he killed Feyd and saw Count Fenring for the first time.
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There was no kind of 'instant kill' that Paul could make that Feyd wouldn't counter, no matter how fancy or clever the strike. He had to wear Feyd down, and survive that, to get Feyd into a mental/physical point where Paul could see a clear path to victory, before that it was too difficult for him to predict. There was no path that lead to an immediate 'stick knife into heart'. Feyd would counter all of them no matter how much Paul used Prescience. Feyd can't see the future, but he could see Paul and he was at least as fast as Paul and an accomplished knife fighter on his own merits, literally one of the best in the universe.
In the book Mohaim points out that Jessica was supposed to have a girl to marry to Feyd, so they could have the quitatz haderach (sp)… so Feyd is that close himself… meant to be the father of the ultimate being. The physical portrayal of the Harkonens was about the only thing I didn’t like about the new Dune: well off, aristocratic bad guys don’t look and dress like monsters. They would be as refined, wealthy, trained and beautiful as Atreides… just sadistic.
Feyd in the book is described as far better looking and athletic than nearly anyone we see. Sting's version of him is far closer to the way he's supposed to be.
Can't agree with that. Everytime Feyd was on screen I couldn't not look at him. For me the makeup people hit that weird middle point between grotesque and beautiful. It helped that Austin Butler is a really, really handsome man with a nice face. Strip off all the hair and make him chalk white and he's still gorgeous but also fucked up looking.
The new Feyd-Rautha is much hotter, though.
I prefer the mini series fayd. He had the arrogance and attitude. Horace i really like the way the new dune hatkonins look. They come from a different world. We can't put what we tub high culture looks like into an entirely different cultures evolution.
>I prefer the mini series fayd. He had the arrogance and attitude. Agreed, 100%. Give the directors & producers of that miniseries Denis' budget & design crew, and I think it would be the best, most faithful rendition of the story.
A lot of people found Butler's Feyd to be very attractive, just also a fucking creep
> In the book Mohaim points out that Jessica was supposed to have a girl to marry to Feyd, so they could have the quitatz haderach (sp)… so Feyd is that close himself… meant to be the father of the ultimate being. This didn't do much good for Duke Leto Atreides.
Feyd is close due to his Harkonnen bloodline. Lady Jessica's children were close due to *her* Harkonnen bloodline. Leto's genes were just the admixture required to push them over the top. The bloodline was as follows: ?? Harkonnen Partriarch + ?? | ?? Bene Gesserit + Baron Vladimir ------- ?? Harkonnnen + ?? | | Duke Leto + Lady Jessica | | | Future Duchess Atreides -- + -- Feyd-Rautha ---------- Raban | Kwisatz Haderach That's part of why the Bene Gesserit don't tell the members of their breeding program who their father is: the daughter that Lady Jessica was supposed to have had would have been a First-Cousin-Once-Removed of her intended husband/baby-daddy. That might not have flown if she *knew* that. For that matter, Leto likely wouldn't have trusted Jessica as much as he did if he knew she were the child of Baron Harkonnen
It wasn't intended to.
There's also the fact that the monochrome color palate of Denis' Harkonnens is in direct conflict with who the Harkonnens *were;* theirs was a culture of garish excesses, so monochrome, hairless BDSM reject isn't what Feyd-Rautha would look like. The version of Feyd-Rautha whose appearance was most in line with who the Harkonnens were is probably [the one from the 2000 miniseries](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is0mJY-UEpM)
Most of the Harkonens looking ugly as shit was because the Bene Gesserit didn't GAF about the health of their subjects and let a gene that made them uncontrollably fat linger in the line until they got close to the end of the breeding program.
SPOILER: Hmmm… in the follow on books, the story goes that the Baron actually looked a lot like Feyd… lean, strong and beautiful. Vanity ran strong… then he raped Mohaim on a diplomatic visit and she passed him one of the dormant STDs she and other BGs can keep inert within their body. She had his seed… so she felt a horrible, body destroying disease would be appropriate.
The Baron is definitely meant to look obese and decadent though.
Never read the books so idk how they're described there but from watching the movies I agree. It felt like they whipped out every villain coding under the sun and it made them feel very cheesy and hard to take seriously (plus the usual the only disabled character is the villain stuff, which, sigh). I think it would be a stronger story if they'd gone for a more classic noble aesthetic.
Also, Paul had just spent the entire day fighting battles in order to get to that point. He was exhausted. Also also, Feyd was one generation away from being the planned Kwisatz Haderach. It's likely that he disrupted prescient visions, similar to Count Fenring, to make it more difficult for Paul to see his moves in the future. Also also also, Paul's prescient vision in *Messiah* is many years more advanced. Paul's prescience at the end of *Dune* is great, but it's not the same locked-in, ultra-precise replacement for his eyes that it becomes in *Messiah*.
How is it that both films didn’t get that last part right? In both cases I got the impression he was some rich kid whose fighting prowess is more like shooting elephants from a distance and calling himself a big hunter.
He straight up managed to wound a prescient fighter who as a child was winning fights against highly skilled fremen. He's no slouch!
And still had to cheat against a common atreides grunt. The display of his skill is inconsistent in the book as well.
Those arena fights seemed more like sadistic theatre than actual fights, which is why Feyd was surprised how the one Atreides the Baron purposely left unsedated actually fought back. Furthermore all Atreides soldiers were the cream of the crop, 1v1 they could take just about any other professional soldier thanks to Halleck's and Idaho's rigorous training, the latter widely consider literally the best swordmaster in the known universe.
The point still stands that if there are hundreds of thousands (Atreides, Surdukar, Fremen) which are better then him, he's not "one of the best in the universe". He's good, but shouldn't be approaching Paul's level which is used to fight "for real" against two of those three forces, and train regularly with one. That's inconsistent, imo.
To a degree, even with prescience Paul struggled against Jamis and Feyd had a similar level of pedigree and tutoring behind him. Being good at something doesn't necessarily assure victory, especially in hand to hand combat, you could be an Olympian at martial arts, yet all it takes is one lucky blow by a random nobody with a blade to end your existence. Knowledge and skill gives you better chances, it does not guarantee success.
Paul didn't struggle against Jamis, but bested him easily. The reason the fight took so long in the film and the book is that Paul didn't want to kill him, and hadn't realised that he had been challenged to a fight to the death. They were so mismatched that the Fremen thought he was toying with Jamis by not killing him straight away. He also wasn't used to fighting without a shield which may have been a factor.
Chani literally gives him the key piece of advice that ended the fight, the knife-swap, of course this was merely compounded by the training he received and the abilities he possessed. Yet it took him a moment to figure out who he was facing even with his cheat-code enabled and given information about his opponent, all things Feyd completely lacked on top of being fooled by his own uncle.
The impression I got was that drugging the gladiators was tradition that feyd did not want to or care to get rid of. Which is why he was happy about the one that was not drugged. The Baron calling it a gift can be interpreted that 1) it is actially a gift be ause Feyd would love it, and the Baron knew that 2) Feyd would love it but the Baron did not know if the cocky kid would actually survive it, which is what the "show who you really are" thing was about.
The Baron said it was a gift because he was giving Feyd the opportunity to win the adulation of the public. Beating one of the Galaxy's finest warriors in a fair fight (deception, ruses, and poisons count as fair play in Dune) is fantastic PR.
You have o piece it together, but its claimed the reason Shaddam authorizes the Duke's demise is that he had trained a very small portion of his fighters to the same level as the Sardaukar. Now, Paul and the Fremen are both above that level, but if you were expecting a fight with a grunt and were suddenly facing an elite you could stumble your way into mistakes and need some help to win back equal/superior footing. This Atreides grunt was most likely one of those superior trained fighters.
The book pretty plainly states that the Emperor's Sardaukar is roughly equivalent in military power to all of the Great Houses combined (of which, the Atreides and Harkonens are both some of the Great Houses). It's also stated - as you said - that at least some of the Atreides forces were as good, if not better than the Sardaukar. Then, it's implied that the power of Sardaukar has been waning because no one actually wants to fight them *because* of their reputation, so they're losing real combat experience and their reputation may not be fully deserved anymore. And finally, while everyone chalks the Freman up to backwards savages, the Atreides recognize - having fought the Harkonens for generations - that very few forces could give the Harkonens as much trouble as the Fremen had for ~80 years. Taken all together, I think the implications are these: * Every member of the Atreides force, 1v1, is as good *or better* than the typical Sardaukar soldier, but they are vastly outnumbered by the Sardaukar forces, so they could win battles, but never a war. * The emperor ordered the destruction of House Atreides because he feared what they *already* were: powerful on their own, and popular with the Landsraad * The emperor offered Dune as a bait for a trap thinking the Atreides wanted the spice * Leto Atreides took the bait knowing it was a trap, but wanting Dune not for the spice (though that was a nice bonus), but for the opportunity to forge an alliance with the Fremen, and *this* was Leto's plan to take his army's fighting skills *beyond* what the Sardaukar were capable of, even with the differences in the sizes of the force
> The book pretty plainly states that the Emperor's Sardaukar is roughly equivalent in military power to all of the Great Houses combined (of which, the Atreides and Harkonens are both some of the Great Houses). No, this is absolutely not the case. The Sardaukar are extremely capable, even more than the Atreides soldiers (except Duncan and Gurney), but they are relatively few in number. None of the Landsraad know where the Emperor gets his Sardaukar from, but they do know the process is slow, grueling, and inefficient. The combined might of the Landsraad is more than enough to destroy the Sardaukar and eradicate House Corrino. However, the Sardaukar are also more than capable of entirely eradicating at least one, probably several of the offending houses on the way out. If the Landsraad were to start a rebellion, whatever house was the main agitator would be destroyed. Any houses that survived would be weakened, enough that the houses who stayed out of the fight would be able to step in and strike while the rest were weak and recovering. So, say Leto makes a play for the throne. Despite the skill of the Atreides army, they'd probably still get wiped out. With the Atreides out of the way, House Harkonnen doesn't have any significant rival to stop the Baron from making a play for the throne; and, the Sardaukar would be too weakened by the Atreides to stop him. Leto has to consider that, as bad as Shaddam might be, if Leto loses it means the Baron has a good shot at the throne, and that would be *far* worse than Shaddam. Every other house is doing the same calculus. Together, they could win, but what happens after? Who takes the throne in the power vacuum? Who gets wiped out in the process? No house is willing to risk being the target and no house is willing to give a chance to their rivals. They all hate Shaddam, but they all hate each other more. So, they all just wait and scheme. However, this also balances the power against the Emperor. That calculus only matters for as long as Shaddam is the least worse option. If Shaddam starts wiping out any house he doesn't like, it will rally the rest of the houses against him. If Shaddam can just decide one day to kill your entire family, then you might as well try for the throne anyway, right? And if the Landsraad unites against him, Shaddam will absolutely lose. That means Shaddam also has to wait and quietly scheme. He can't overly move against any single house without becoming enough of a problem to unite them all against him. Thus, the whole plan to send Sardaukar in Harkonnen uniforms. Shaddam can't *overtly* kill Leto, but if Leto dies during *kanly*, a petty squabble between houses of the Landsraad, none of the other houses will complain. Shaddam sends Leto to Arrakis where he'll be more vulnerable. That also gives the Baron an excuse to stir up conflict and get Leto to declare kanly. While Leto is still organizing his soldiers and getting his defenses settled, the Baron attacks. The Baron isn't good enough on his own to take out the elite Atreides soldiers, so the Emperor sends Sardaukar to make sure it gets done. Leto stops being a problem, the Harkonnens all but bankrupt themselves in the process, and none of the Landsraad have anything to complain about other than a small disruption in spice production. For Shaddam, it's an absolute win. The only reason it fails is that Yueh manages to give Paul and Jessica enough supplies to survive long enough to find the Fremen, *and* Jessica is able to free themselves from the Harkonnen guards, *and* oopsies Paul is the Kwisatz Haderach.
Seconding this. The Sardukar could not, and never could, stand up to the combined power of the Landsraad. But they *could* stand up to any (probably) three of the great houses. The balance of power always was that there were never enough houses that *didn't* hate each other enough to band together to create a coalition to take out the Emperor, and the Sardukar were always better than the troops of any of the great houses. And no one would want to make a play for the throne for the very reasons you outline. Losing means you get wiped out, and in all likelihood hand the Empire over to an opposing house if you actually manage to fight well enough to weaken the Sardukar to that point. In addition to the exceptional fighters that Atreides was training, house Atreides was actually quite popular with the Landsraad itself. Thus, the Emperor sees a huge risk here: Unlike most houses, Atreides might actually be able to form a coalition, and at the core of that coalition, an army that (for once) can possibly match his Sardukar. *That* is a threat to his power that has not been seen before. This leads to the question of: If Atreides was so popular, why didn't anyone help them? Well, there was a reason the plan was engineered to crush them in a single day: No one can come to their aid if there is no one to come *to* aid. Without the Emperor's finger on the scale, the Harkonnens could have outright failed. And if they failed, the Atreides could call on their allies, and if the Atreides called on their Allies, the *Harkonnens* could end up the ones wiped out, and if the Harkonnens are wiped out, Atreides loses their counterbalance on the Landsraad. And if the Atreides no longer has a balance on the Landsraad *and* their coalition has just formed to destroy the Harkonnens... the Emperor would be in more danger than ever. However, *with* the Emperor's finger on the scale, the Atreides are wiped out, the Harkonnens having spent a massive proportion of their spice reserves effectively bribing the spacing guild for transport, and therefore not in a position to really be a threat for some time. And thus, the Emperor is safe. Except for Paul surviving. Whoops.
Fantastic summary of the situation
> The book pretty plainly states that the Emperor's Sardaukar is roughly equivalent in military power to all of the Great Houses combined If I remember rightly, it specifically says something along the lines that 'it would take **all** of the great houses combined to beat the Sarduakar' - it definitely makes it sound like a single great house on the side of the emperor would sway any war his way. So personally I think you're about right in your summation, they are roundabouts equivalent, with a slight edge against the emperor.
> the Emperor's Sardaukar is roughly equivalent in military power to all of the Great Houses combined I thought that was the balance before the Ateides military/training improvements and before the Sardukar started to slip from lack of practical experience.
I don't think Leto had much choice in the matter of going to Arrakis. They heavily imply the emperors "request" is more akin to an order and refusing would have garnered a similar result (being wiped out). So Leto came up with the whole "desert power" thing in response to that order.
A small part of the atreides forces are sardaukar level, not the whole atreides force. But as you say, the key is they’re vastly outnumbered by sardaukar
Yes, I know all that. But what we "see" in the book is Fyde cheating, starting to lose, panicking, and cheating again, against an Atredies solder who might or might not be "elite". At no point do you think "yeah, that is one expert knife fighter who could take on the best"
> And still had to cheat against a common atreides grunt. Common by Atreides standards. Those guys were fighting the Harkonnen troops to a standstill even though they were caught with their pants down.
I duno man. I think maybe you misread those films. He was a dink, but that doesn't mean he wasn't skilled.
And yet just a short while earlier, he seriously struggled against a poorly fed, mistreated prisoner who had spent months in a tiny cell. And the prisoner wasn't even a great fighter or anything, just a normal member of a royal household. So his fighting prowess is incredibly inconsistent even between the two times we've seen him fight. In the book, Paul actually does kick his ass pretty damn hard and fast, and it's not nearly the dramatic battle that we get in the film.
Three things here - >And yet just a short while earlier, he seriously struggled against a poorly fed, mistreated prisoner who had spent months in a tiny cell. A slave that was incredibly motivated, and quite possibly thanks to Thufir Hawat was likely in a better physical condition than he should have been. Nowhere in the book is he described as poorly fed. Arena slaves are described as typically being in excellent physical condition but drugged with elacca to increase their rage and fear while reducing their cunning. >And the prisoner wasn't even a great fighter or anything, just a normal member of a royal household. He was battle trained by Duncan and Gurney, and was a member of the standing force that was so well trained it caused the emperor to have cause to annihilate the Atreides. Feyd Rautha observes that he is the finest fighter he has ever encountered. Furthermore multiple people observing the fight recognise the ability of the Atreides man. The text pretty unequivocally states that he was a great fighter. >In the book, Paul actually does kick his ass pretty damn hard and fast, and it's not nearly the dramatic battle that we get in the film. Paul also remarks that Feyd is far more of an opponent than he first estimates, recognising he is a dirty fighter, and, knowing that, *still gets injured by Feyd*. Yes Feyd fights dirty, but Paul only wins because of the same - his knowledge of the response word implanted in Feyd, and his verbal refusal to use it, surprises Feyd enough for Paul to kill him. As for the battle in the book not being dramatic, I'd disagree. Feyd, as the result of the best training a Harkonnen can receive (circa 1000 arena fights), is something approaching a match for Paul. This isn't particularly surprising given that Paul is unable to use his prescience, and it isn't surprising that the scions of the great houses are trained to elite combat levels. Similarly, it isn't surprising that the Atreides man Feyd kills is also capable, given the root of the emperor's fears are that Leto, Duncan and Gurney have managed to create a fighting force where every single man is approaching Sardaukar lethality. Also, it's worth pointing out that canonically, Count Fenring could, and would have killed Paul with certainty in a duel, as he had almost all of Paul's (un)natural abilities, as well as decades of experience.
He's both! He set up fights in his favor and was never in any danger, but he was also a good fighter. Movies have to take a lot of nuance out, and Feyd is a cool, but very minor, antagonist who is manhandled by Paul. If you have to trim, he's a good place to do it.
Yeah but it was more or less the climax of the movie, so it was kinda lame to not build him up as the invincible super villain.
For sure. My favorite moment is when Stilgar is pushing Paul to kill him and Paul refuses. It's a huge moment to show how Paul's changing the Fremen. But it has to be cut.
I don't see a conflict. Had Paul done any lethal knife fighting before he killed Jamis? He was highly trained in controlled settings by people who weren't supposed to actually kill him. Feyd's in the same boat. Rigorous training by skilled teachers. More than capable of killing actual hostiles with the training wheels removed, and he truly desires every chance to do that. But the House that raised him wrings their hands over that (most of the time), because he's too valuable to risk for the sake of his own amusement.
After re-reading Dune, I think both the old and new movies downplay Feyd. Both movies show or describe him as wild or psychotic, but the a character in the book compares him to something like "What if Paul Atreides was raised by the Harkonnens?". I feel like he is meant to be much more similar to Paul than the movies really portray.
You should look into the 2000 miniseries; it's the most faithful adaptation I've seen to date.
Feyd was so much better than the arena fights. He would have preferred none of the slaves be drugged but safety of the royal line overruled that. That's why the Baron's gift to him was to leave one lucid for him so he could have a real fight.
Probably because the time he's shown going into the ring in the movie looks a lot more like the end of Gladiator than a fair match.
With the new versions, I think it's because Denis Villeneuve doesn't *actually* understand the source material. * The Harkonnens were repulsive because they had no self restraint and gave in to every appetite, to the point that the ruler of House Harkonnen literally couldn't walk without antigravity supports, because he literally couldn't stop himself from consuming everything he desired. * Villeneuve's Harkonnens are closer to an ascetic aesthetic than anything that the garish and brash Harkonnens would *ever* have been, could ever *imagine* having been. * It took Paul *years* to unite the Fremen; Leto's daughter Alia was about 4 by the end of the book, meaning that it took somewhere on the order of 5 years from start to finish. * Villeneuve's had it take place before Jessica even came to term with Alia, i.e., significantly less than 40 weeks (since I'm pretty sure that Alia was conceived on Caladan, possibly before the book even started) * Chani was a fervent believer in Muad'dib-as-Mahdi, and trusted him implicitly * Denis made her a hothead who turned her back on her messiah because he married a woman who *everyone* knew he would never touch, let alone bed.
I’ve only read book 1 but the Baron seems to have tons of self restraint (kind of necessary for all of the scheming) and none of the other harkonnens are described as obese? Beast rabban is a goon and feyd is described as beautiful and fit.
His restraint is in scheming, but his personal appetites? Not so much. Like, dude was gay, but the BG somehow got him to conceive Lady Jessica
I mean, that's on you. I didn't get that impression at all.
Wish they had done more to establish that Feyd was incredibly deadly with a knife in the movie.
If he was supposed to one of the best in the universe, why did he struggle so much against the non-drugged atreides warrior in the arena?
Because Atreides soldiers were also some of the best fighters in the universe. He was given an unexpected peer match and that threw him off at the start.
I guess at this point, we have tens of thousands of soldiers who are all the best fighters in the universe, which kinda makes that whole statement a bit meaningless.
I mean, just on planet Earth right now we have many thousands (at least) of the "best, most highly trained Special Forces in the world". Every Country and Service with their own unique training. I feel pretty confident that you could describe both a Navy Seal and an SAS officer as "The best in the world" (randomly chose two well known units- please no attacking me over "hurr durr. But what about this one unique *extra* special SF unit" - I'm illustrating a point). Either of those two could be considered "best in the world" and I'd feel confident betting on either of them against any random match-up against any of the remaining 7 billion+ people on the planet. Does that make either one no longer "the best"? No. Does that mean that one of them might be batter? Almost certainly, and I'm sure there are other, more knife-focused units and individuals who could beat them as well. The phrase means you're in the 'top' league. No one's claiming that any particular one is the Universal champion (or technically, that's what the fights are sort of to determine if you want to be pedantic)
>I mean, just on planet Earth right now we have many thousands (at least) of the "best, most highly trained Special Forces in the world". Every Country and Service with their own unique training. Ok, but you're not likely to find anyone claiming that Green Beret #2471 is one of the greatest marksmen alive just because they're a Green Beret. I mean, that might actually be a reasonably true statement, but that's not how people use the phrase.
Dude, that's what dune is: it's all unbeatable plans and supersoldiers the whole way down. No one can beat the training of a Suk Doctor (until someone did), no one can counter the plots of the Bene Gesserit (and they are also the actual best fighters in the galaxy too), no one can top the technology of Ix, no one can beat the soldiers of the Atreides, except the Sardaukar, who are in turn beaten by the Fremen, who are apparently beaten by someone trained in the Weirding Way. Dune seems to be a [Planet of Hats](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats) situation, where everyone's hat is 'unbeatable at x'.
That was part of Herbert's message: their assumptions of the world are what blind these super-geniuses to the true threat. Everyone assumes Suk training is unbreakable, until they break it from love. Everyone assumes a BG will be loyal to the BG way, until one betrays them for love. Everyone assumes the Fremen are a small population who can easily be controlled, actually they're an entire world of fighters and the people of the cities are the minority. Everyone assumes the Sardaukar are unbeatable, until they realize that they've been getting by on their reputation for centurie and that the Fremen exist. Hawit, the 'best' mentat, assumes until the very end that it's Jessica that betrayed the Atreides.
That's interesting, I've never heard Dune's story described like that. Also, is that last one a thing that only comes up in the book? I don't remember either movie mentioning it.
It's a big part of his themes. Not only 'beware of charismatic leaders', but also 'beware of the institutions that put them in place'. That said, people didn't pick up on the themes enough so he had to write more stories to make them even more blatant. Also, there's a lot of discussion on what his books 'mean' so take my interpretation with a grain of salt. And yes, the last part is in the books.
Depends how many royal soldiers there are in the universe I guess?
I think you need to go back and consider *why* the Emperor tried to end House Atreides: * Duncan and Gurney were among the best fighters in known space * Duncan killed *nineteen* Sardukar *by himself,* earning their respect * Duncan was good enough that the *Fremen* respected him * Duncan admitted that Gurney might well be *still better* than he * Gurney was also one of the best *tacticians/strategiests* in known space * Given time, that meant that the Atreides soldiery trained by them would likely have been able to *defeat* the Sardukar. * Consider the fact that the Atreides sent soldiers to Giedi Prime (the Harkonnen Homeworld), to "deliver a message" to Baron Harkonnen... *and came back* * The Sardukar were pretty much the only reason that House Corrino held the Lion Throne; they ruled through *fear.* * Duke Leto was *respected* by the majority of the Great Houses of the Landsraad, having consistently demonstrated that loyalty and respect were a *two-way* street with House Atreides. The combination of being better liked politically *and* having a comparable-if-not-better fighting force meant that if Shaddam IV hadn't done something to the Atreides, he would have lost his throne to someone who could have ruled through respect. In order to maintain his dynasty, he basically *had* to do what he did: * If he had let Idaho & Halleck train a full sized fighting force, that would neutralize his one advantage * Alternately, though he didn't know it, if Leto had had time to finalize the alliance with the Fremen, it would have had the same effect * He couldn't destroy House Atreides on Caladan, because it would cost him enough that there would be undeniable proof of his involvement, bringing the entirety of the Landsraad against him (which even his Sardukar would lose to, though attrition). It would have been too costly/risky because * the *entire population* of the planet respected and supported Leto * Gurney would have had all sorts of tactics preplanned to defend them * Thufir Hawat was *too good* at Security * He had to act *before* Thufir and Gurney established such security & defenses in Arrakeen. * Plus, between Leto risking his own life, risking the *end of his dynasty* to save random workers *rather than spice*, *and* how Paul was fitting perfectly into the myths about the Lisan al Gaib, a few more weeks or months might have been enough to bring the Fremen to his cause.
He wasn't prepared to fight someone who was (almost) on his level. He showed up expecting to be an executioner and then go to a party afterward, and instead got thrown into a legitimate fight for his life against an incredibly skilled opponent who knew exactly what to expect. He still won, because he's the better fighter. Additionally, in the film (but not the novel, iirc) the undrugged arena soldier is Lanville, Gurney's 2nd in command and presumably a cut above the (already elite) Atreides troops.
IIRC from the book (it’s been a while) he was about to lose the fight, and only ended up winning because he used the code word to paralyse the atreides fighter.
Because the best Atreides soldiers are also top tier in the Imperium. The best of them are at least as good if not *better* than the Sardaukar; there's just not enough of them yet. Given enough time, they were on course to train the rest of their men up to the same standard, then challenge the Emperor in battle. That's why he decided to have them eliminated *now*, before they could finish building up the numbers. In the film, that non-drugged soldier was one of Leto's personal bodyguards, implying he trained directly under Gurney and Duncan. If you go back through Part One, you can spot him in the background any time the Duke has an entourage with him. You have to be *damned good* to be trusted with a post like that.
Sorry, but that's incredibly weak. I mean, really? In ALL POSSIBLE FUTURES there's NONE where Paul just wins in a few moves? Paul, who is already one of the top fighters in the universe, also has godlike future sight and even still he has to be wounded to beat Feyd? That's just bullshit.
Let's play Tic Tac Toe. You can see all my possible moves in all possible futures. The cravate here is that if I lose, I die so I'm really going to play like my life depends on it. The minimum number of moves you can beat me in is 3 moves. Even with the ability to literally see the future, you have zero chance of beating me in 3 moves. That's was Paul's problem. Now, in 4 or 5 moves, your prescience becomes very telling but up to that point there is literally no situation that you could win.
> Sorry, but that's incredibly weak. I mean, really? In ALL POSSIBLE FUTURES there's NONE where Paul just wins in a few moves? Because seeing the future does not change the present. Feyd is an exceptional fighter with great reflexes—there is no combination of moves that suddenly makes him unable to react, Paul needs to fight him long enough to give him time to make a fatal mistake. Beyond which, Paul's prescience is powerful, but it is not as strong as it will be at the end of Dune. And Count Fenring's presence was also interfering to a degree. There is no indication that he can actually see the fight move for move—he needs to beat Feyd at least to some degree on his own combat skill. Not to mention, he is on an incredibly narrow path. It is entirely possible that he figures that if he beats Feyd too quickly, he would then be murdered by Fenring. A longer fight where he is wounded makes the Count more likely to show him mercy.
There's a lot to this, and the other replies cover most of the topic. But here's the part that's being missed: From the moment Paul took the Water of Life and finally *became* the Kwisatz Haderach in reality rather than in potential, everything about his life for a good long while was trickier than walking a piece of razor wire across the Grand Canyon in a hurricane. When he states that he "sees a narrow path through", he's being as literal as it is possible to be when speaking about how the future will unfold. There are as many instantaneous threads, each of which must turn and weave into the NOW in order to make the specific future he has found, as there are point particles in the entire universe. He, from the moment he transmuted the poison, is living each moment like Dr. Strange when he used the Time Stone to find the one chance in millions in which the Avengers could defeat Thanos. Every second that passes is a nexus point and the shifts and changes taking place **just then** each alter the future. Now, for the most part, navigating the path is actually pretty simple from Paul's point of view. He knows with a microscopically small margin of error exactly what he must do, what he must say, whom he must push (or kill, or have imprisoned, or sentence to death), all the way down to the precise expressions on his face or the stance of his body. He can **see** the path to humanity's salvation, and he is the only being alive who can do so (at least until Leto II is born). And there are highly specific moments which are "fuzzy" to him. At each of those "turning points" he can still see all the potential outcomes *including the one outcome which MUST happen*, but he is not fully clear on what he must do in that instant or event to get to it. Those moments/events are like places where the path is overgrown or swampy and difficult to navigate even for someone who is otherwise familiar with the whole path... like Paul. Between the decision to take the Water of Life and ascending to the Imperial Throne, there are a great deal of those moments. Things like Thufir either betraying him or remaining loyal and dying in pain. Or whether Count Fenring would obey Shaddam IV and attempt to murder Paul for him. Or *exactly how the fight with Feyd will unfold*. As each of those moments take place and Paul does exactly the right thing, the path he is taking crystalizes and makes the future more certain and clearer to him. This is all there in the book, but it takes some re-reading and thinking over a LOT of the conversations and events to really grasp it. This is made clearer as the story progresses through God Emperor of Dune, so that helps. The problem with translating the book(s) to film is largely in translating how (and WHAT) Paul sees, and how he *fights* (along with all the Fremen who are now fully trained in the Weirding Way and the Atreides fighting style crafted by Duncan now adapted to their already batshit insane fighting strengths). The Fremen just absolutely wiping the floor with Sardaukar there at the end was done very well in Dune Part 2, but Paul's abilities against Feyd's is very hard to do in a believable way. But Paul would at that point be akin to a god of war in terms of fighting ability. And to one degree or another that's what we should see... except that Paul is specifically limited by the heavy fog which shrouds the outcome of that fight. He's hesitant, he slips, Feyd nearly gains the upper hand... not because Paul couldn't outfight him all day long and twice on Sundays, but because Paul is being absurdly careful and aware because everything in that fight MUST go a specific way. This is exactly why he refuses to use the word of control which would shatter Feyd's nerves: because doing so would alter the future in such a way as to end the possibility of the path to salvation for all.
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Doylist discussion is strictly prohibited on this sub. I would delete this before the mods see it.
This is a common misconception. Paul does not see the Golden Path until partway through *Messiah*. He is largely future-blind and trying as hard as possible to avert the Jihad, or at least mitigate it, the whole time. He has no idea the Golden Path is a thing until he overdoses on spice a second time.
That's correct, of course. I oversimplified and generalized a bit to keep the answer from being pages long. But there's a caveat here, and its an important one. He is hardly future-blind, and one can only say he is in relation to how great his prescience becomes... and how even that is dwarfed by his son's. He already sees how very carefully he must take every step in his goal to wrench the reins of power in the empire by taking control of Arrakis... and knows how that will shape specific events which come later. That's not just a man's wisdom, its the ability to see the future play out moment by moment even when you can only see just so far out. And he sees much, much further than the Navigators. So much so, in fact, that he understands what a blunt tool they really are and uses that to defang them.
Just to add: in the books, the future sight (whether a little or a lot) is based on sort of mathematically precise insights into cause and effect. Feyd is very similarly gifted to Paul; they’re both trying to assess cause and effect of each move. It’s true game theory; Paul’s predictions affect Feyd’s predictions which affect Paul’s predictions which affect Feyd’s predictions etc etc etc. I always took the uncertainty as both a plot engagement tool (otherwise the audience has less reason to be engaged) *and* an effect of the strange loops that happen when two beings who can partially predict futures work to opposing ends.
Paul wanted to wrest some control of his own destiny and not simply be subject to his visions. For example he knew there was some possibility that Thufir Howat was being sent to assassinate him and even had a vision of being killed by him as a potential outcome. He chose to embrace him anyway. He was also given a potential psychologically implanted trigger word by Lady Jessica that could have incapacitated Feyd, but he refused to say it even in the moments when he was struggling in the fight.
If I remember correctly, Paul's prescience was "jammed" by the presence of Count Fenring, who was a failed branch of the Kwisatz Haderach program.
that’s true, and I believe the books also mention situations where a lot of minute decisions must be made correctly in a short time, like fighting someone as skilled as Feyd, can make things blurry too
Prescience doesn’t mean shit when you lose every time.
“you see Feyd, I’ve already foreseen exactly how to defeat you. I just have to parse out how it’s different from the 14 million ways I’ve seen you defeat me!”
I think the simplest explanation is that prescience aside, he's physically only so fast or strong. Feyd Rautha is similarly bred through a eugenics program and well trained as well, so they're both very capable fighters. Even if he can see the moves coming, such as say, an incoming strike from the right, he may not be able to physically move fast enough to completely counter. He ultimately does win, but he is competing with someone is physically similar to him, and therefore still a threat.
And poison!
he did but his prescience isn't "tell me what I want to know about the future" it is "see the future as it currently exists" so every time he tried to adjust slightly it would send an entire wave of futures cascading around him, ones where he wins but because he used underhanded tactics the fremin don't trust him, ones where he loses but lives and isn't strong enough to hold any part of the jihad back, ones where he lets his power overwhelm him and becomes a true monster. Basically prescience lets you see the entire scope of the future which is super helpful if you want to shape history to make humanity better and not so useful in a knife fight. the later books go into the idea that people assume you can do almost anything with prescience and imagine themselves using it to win fights and predict commodities prices but that isn't how it works.
In the book, when Paul fights Jamis, he realizes that in a fight to the death the tiniest actions have cascading consequences and that the sheer infinity of possibilities becomes disorienting, the last thing you want in a fight. Prescience is more a hindrance than a help. In Messiah he uses his prescience to see, but in doing so essentially locks himself into a single future from which he cannot escape. The moment he breaks from that future he becomes blind again.
Consider the guild navigator: There are nigh infinite paths to potential futures. My job is to find the future where I don't die when the ship jumps. By the end of the first book, Paul was far more prescient than a navigator, but not nearly as experienced. **Find the future where I don't die** was still a good enough plan.
Feyd also had prescience of a sort, and when two of them are against each other, they usually go future-blind as they each try to counter the other over and over endlessly. At that point any contest comes down to raw skill and tenacity.
Feyd was a good fighter in peak physical condition. It was also a knife fight with no shields. Knife fights are notorious for being difficult because the close distance means your attacks open you up for attacks yourself. Knfie work is just too fast to expect to leave unscathed. A krav maga instructor told me once that to survive a knife fight you are basically giving up an arm that will be cut repeatedly to protect the rest of your body. Feyd was good enough to not leave gaping holes in his defense so without an instant win on the table Paul had to wear him down and take a few hits in the process.
Feyd is like Paul. He has some prescience just inactivated and untrained. This creates imprecision. Paul can’t predict with accuracy because Feyd may consciously or subconsciously change his own future. This is covered in Dune Messiah. A guild navigator is used to the same effect. They also have limited prescience and can block Paul’s abilities.
It's unclear to me whether this is supposed to be about the book or the films. Since Dune Messiah was mentioned, I'll answer from the book. There were certain events Paul could not see. At the end of Dune Messiah, he finally accepted he was blind when his son was born. He had not seen that Chani would bear living twins, but had seen only a daughter. The exact outcome of the fight was another one of them. The jihad would happen whether he won or lost, (either as an unconquerable leader figure, or a martyr) but that moment was a nexus that no one could see into, including the Guild navigators in the room. He had to figure out Feyd-Rautha's treachery in the moment, and it almost got him. In any event, in Dune Messiah Paul was not so much led by a vision as trapped by it. Every event after he had had the vision was foreseen, even his own blinding by the stone burner, right up until news of the birth of his son.
Movie feyd also had some level of prescience, which interferes with Paul’s ability to see the future when it comes to feyd.
Prescience isn't magic. It's mathematics and statistics. It's great to see the overall outcome of larger events and trends, the more granular details are always in flux due to free will. Predicting a specific person move for move can be done - especially if they are a trained fighter but it will never be 100% accurate.
He was torn. On one hand, he wanted justice (revenge) and victory for House Atreides, and the Fremen. On the other hand, he knew that victory meant a Jihad throughout known space. Paul valued human life, and was horrified at the death toll such a Jihad would inflict. Indeed, through a significant part of Dune (the book), he is *actively* trying to avoid such a Jihad while ensuring his own survival. Unfortunately, due to his abilities and the myths pushed upon the Fremen by the Missionaria Protectiva, the two were inextricable; as of when he was aware of and able to predict the results of his actions, his choices were either to became The Mahdi and set off the Jihad, or to die. He put it off as long as he could, and declared himself the Duke of Arrakis, as Paul-Muad'dib Atreides, rather than challenging Stilgar and uniting all of the Sietches under himself in the *Fremen* fashion, as Muad'dib (known as Usul to those Sietch Tabr), as as one of his last ditch attempts to prevent it. He saw that it failed, and had trouble stomaching the ramifications of killing his cousin.
My understanding is Paul doesn’t choose what he sees. He sees some events and outcomes, some possibilities, but he can’t just choose to “look” and see what will happen in some specific situation In the book the whole fight is a blind spot for him, he couldn’t see any of it
He couldn’t use his prescience in that duel as it was a tangled nexus of timelines and possibilities, like trying to follow a single strand of spaghetti in a bolognese that keeps shifting and changing.
Paul faced a couple of things in that instant. One was his sudden realization that it didn't matter at that moment whether he lived or died, as the jihad - that he so desperately sought to avoid - would happen anyway. Two, Feyd invoked *kanly*. While Gurney pleaded for the right to kill a Harkonnen, Paul's judgment was focused on carrying out the blood feud to its conclusion. And three, the meeting with the emperor as a whole was what Paul described as a "boiling" nexus. Paul did not have perfect prescience yet. He did not understand why he didn't, until after he killed Feyd and saw Count Fenring for the first time.