No, I totally understand that, but it’s definitely a case of where I’m realizing that the Dune universe is a little more grimdark across the board than I first realized
I got the impression that Dune was a dark sci fi setting. Not depressingly dark like it is in 40k what not with 40k's prevalence of eldritch horrors from another dimension, but still I could see that Dune could be a dark setting. Especially when you read up on how screwed up the Harkonnen are. Then I found out about the Bene Tleilaxu and the Axolotl tanks.
That's why it's such a shame they removed navigators guild from the movies, it also shows how much dune isn't really more inspiration but how 40k is a fan fiction
It's very grim dark that these people take so much drugs they mutate and force others to mutate so much they become horrors that have to live in vats to keep control over space travel
Because that's what makes it good writing, it's still grim dark but has layers and different perceptions and messaging
40k is a fun wide world but it's literally just dune if someone went "I don't want to think about context and layers and still have everyone be bad and foucs on action with my own flavour"
listen to the radio channels in the Dune: Awakening game, and you get a very clear sense of this. The Atreides' radio channel has stuff that's all 'yes serfs! I have rescued you from your ILLEGALLY IMPOSED LORD so NOW your money and taxes can go to your PROPER LORD!'
Part of their good reputation comes from a history of collaboration, fairness, and general playing nice with the other great houses. House Atreides is who the others run to when they want/need something they can’t count on the Imperial House to do for them
Herbert seems to imply Leto I is about as good and just a ruler that common people could hope for, and the only real advantage he had was to leverage that reputation as propaganda to get people to believe in and fight for him. Kynes remarked after the spice crawler incident that he could understand why Leto’s followers were so fanatical, because the Duke cared about them more than the expensive equipment. In other words, he treated people like people and not as a means to an end.
It’s Paul who really went off the rails (to the degree that Jessica was shocked by his willingness later in the story to sacrifice people for equipment), but part of the point there is that it was really not up to Paul at the end of the day. He was consumed by his own cult of fanatics and fell into the trap of their expectations. He wasn’t a classical Great Man dictating history, he was a figurehead that legions rallied around. He knew how trapped he was fairly early on. He wouldn’t kill Stilgar, he wouldn’t allow himself or Jessica to die, and most importantly he wouldn’t allow the Harkonnens to continue ruling Arrakis or his father’s death to be unavenged, and so was pushed onward by prescience and expectation until he unhappily realized right after defeating the Emperor that the Jihad would continue with or without him. At least to a point, Paul was also a decent man like his father but his intentions mattered very little at the end of the day.
I've always thought it was so interesting how Paul becomes a prisoner of the cult he leads. He gains a ton of power and influence, but he's steering a missile. He can't stop it, he can only decide who it hits, and he's along for the ride no matter what. We typically see cult leaders as charismatic, cunning, and vicious (which Paul is). But we rarely see their cult become so fanatical that the leader becomes powerless to stop it. We kinda see it in midnight mass, but not to such a degree
Yeah, if you discount that they wrought insane levels of destruction upon galaxy.
Paul Atreides's Jihad and Leto II's Golden Path are two biggest crimes against humanity commited in entire history of humanity, without any comparison.
Jihad kills 61 billion people, and Leto II during his 3500 years of reign and subsequent collapse kills infinitely more.
Atreides in Dune are intentionally used to subvert expectations and show that - in the brutal society of Dune, they are still awful, and by Prophecy, are clearly the worst dynasty to ever exist.
Of course, Golden Path of Leto II saves humanity, but that matters little hundreds of billions of people he kills
Yeah killing a portion is better than killing them all. You literally have zero game theory to say he did wrong. He is still the best because he saved humanity
But prescience isn't infallible, and depends on person using it. You cannot be 100% certain that it was truly the only way, hence it isn't actually as neccessary as it seems.
Herbert never even tries to present prescience as an infallible superpower. One can argue that greatest threat to humanity, existence of prescience could be prevented by simply spreading the gene that stops it.
It's a question of dying under the evil harkonnens reign focused on power and industry, or die (either fighting in, or being a victim) of the Atreides whole genocide thing. Pretty bleak for any average person.
Its not implied, the beginning of the first book is basically paul lamenting the fact that due to his birth he is incapable of doing good and mainta8ning his family's future (because when he becomes the head he is a fuedal kord)
Almost all sci fi fits in this equation. Rarely will you find one side altruistic like Star Trek or Star Wars. And even they gave up and followed the rest of sci-fi. Dune, Warhammer 40k, Starship Troopers, etc.
If the sci-fi is popular, you can bet that its universe is dystopian.
And even in Star Wars, it's arguably rarely one side altruistic in-universe. Like, the "High Republic" had little representation for Outer Rim worlds and overlooked atrocities in the Outer Rim, the Late Republic sponsored atrocities in the Outer Rim (see Grievous's species and Jango Fett's Mandalorian group), and was literally taken over by an evil wizard, and the New Republic was too busy arresting the people who built it to prevent that evil wizard from resurrecting and trying to conquer the galaxy.
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u/YungCash204 8h ago
Basically Dune, the Atreides’ are implied to be authoritarian, just not on the level (or with the same level of grotesque) as the Harkonnens