Dune: The Great Flaw in the Bene Gesserit Plan 

Read Frank Herbert's "The GodMakers".

Really nothing more than the logical extension of all the groups that made kings hoping that the king would be their puppet

@@hankrearden20 In a lot of ways The Godmakers is a like a bookend and logical extension of the Dune saga, with everyone having the potential to be a god ... Also, one of my personal favorite shorter SF stories. I also recommend The Eyes of Heisenberg.

Que the sad trombone

mda...

I've still never understood why the BG didn't just cause Paul to have a "fatal accident" shortly after he was born.

@@tobyvision Because what if they do that, and Feyd-Rautha gets himself killed? That's thousands of years of work lost. The whole reason the BG's Reverend Mother is so scared of Feyd and Paul fighting is that both bloodlines could be lost.

@@960456 absolutely, but they had over a decade before that ever happened, and Jessica and Leto we're still available. Jessica was already pregnant with a daughter by the time they tested Paul. Could have killed him right there. I get why they might want to observe him, but they had several options to replace him.

@@tobyvision Not at that time, when the Atreides were so vulnerable. Jessica could have been killed, she could have miscarried, the newborn infant could have been killed...

@@tobyvision too well guarded. And they needed a union with the Harknonnens. A sister of his was a possibility after. Patience is a virtue

The Duke was an impressive man.... ha ha ha

the Emperor did that more than anything. By assigning the Atredies stewardship of Arrakis he endangered Paul and any sister he might have had. Plus Baron Harkonnen ordering their deaths.

Legit though. Why not just update the plan and make the Harkonnen have a daughter and then bring her and Paul together? I mean talk about flushing a plan down the tube over a single hiccup.

Was Jessica punished by the BG?

@@stede9304 if that plan has been thousands of years in the making I don't think the schedule was particularly flexible by that point

To know the future is to be trapped by it, so every step that the BG took was actually a move to their having LESS power rather than more of it, strictly speaking. And this is what they did not see. And it's not just about the Kwisatz Haderach; that was only the tip of the iceberg. This is why Leto bred the anti-prescience gene into his breeding programme, and he was always aware that this also implied his downfall. What the BG did really was an important element of the Golden Path, which really started much earlier than with Leto - it was always there and Leto only put the concept into words, but it does not mean that it did not exist before. But they were only one small element in the huge equation, and they assumed that they had the equation as a whole, which they did not. And they did notm realize that one day they would have served their purpose and that it their reign behind the throne would be over.

Yes, that, and the possibility that they, the Bene Geserit, themselves could still be capable of human error or bad judgement, which they were

The Bene Gesserit prided themselves on being Absolute Stoics. In essence, being in total control of their emotions, and only making rational decisions, without fault. It takes an tremendous of pride and arrogance to make any kind statement like that. Which ironically enough, are unchecked expressions of emotion. They did wisen up a lot in the age after Emperor Muad'Dib though. And even more so after the Peace Of Leito, during the Scattering. Even letting go of some of their female chauvinism. I really like how Herbert envisioned great changes of any particular culture over several millenia. And IMO the Sisterhood is one of the most interesting examples.

I think they may have been more able to control the Kwisatz Haderach if the Kwisatz Haderach had not had a massive army of Fremen to call on in resisting that control. That was something they (and everyone else besides the Fremen themselves) completely failed to foresee.

To be honest, I don't think they wanted to "control" the Kwisatz Haderach in the way we think of control. They simply wanted to make sure the KH was trained in their way and had their morals instilled, so that this god-like being will lead mankind into the Golden Path, instead of using his powers for selfish gains. That was why the Gom Jabbar test existed - it was to make sure the candidate for KH can endure temporary pain and suffering for the purpose of a larger goal. It is a personality test. The KH needs to have the right personality and right moral values. This was the Bene Gesserit goal.

​@@abyrupusWait, did the Witches understand the golden path as Leto 2 did? How could they understand if they only had access to one side of genetic memory? Maybe an incomplete understanding at best....

​@jame 4:24 swells9403 that is what Leto II said

Or at least, convince Lady Jessica to only have one child? Every ruler should know the rule "an heir and a spare"

No. Within the "rules" of the Dune Universe, everyone-the BG, Lady Jessica, Duke Leto, Paul, Chani, Leto II-is operating under the oceanic compulsion of the genetic drive for survival. Paul and Leto II are the only ones who can recognize what's happening, but basically, the BG's own blindness to this "flaw" in their plan is just part of the species' need to preserve itself. Even Lady Jessica's love is an expression of this need, which can undermine even the strongest individual conditioning. They are all acting out the destiny of humankind. This destiny must produce Leto II and the Golden Path so that humanity will spread and diversify beyond any potential threat.

@@justinhowe3878 I love your answer! Thank you. It would also work as well for me like "Yes. Within the "rules"..." You say it yourself - "the BG's own blindness to this "flaw" in their plan..." They haven't met a man so awesome, he could derail a sister. And now they have, and you've explained why and how really really well.

@@wetterschneider That makes sense. As you say, the answer could just as easily be "Yes, they've never met someone so awesome" because human destiny was leading up to that point where someone like that would appear.

@@justinhowe3878 I appreciate your insight, flexibility and generosity in taking the time to write such a detailed response - thank you, I learned something.

He’s prepping the population to embrace the Dune movie and potentially save the franchise

@TryllaTröllMaistre Fictitious Fables of Europa, Zzz...

That is perfect.

His channel was foretold over thousands of years by the Missionaria agents crossing the galaxy and laying the foundations for his rise to power.

He will pass within and then he will understand Warner Bros 😱😆

The BGs still would have stayed behind the throne of the KH but would have much greater control over the galaxy through him. I imagine the BGs thought that once the KH had been born that with his prescience that they would have near total power through him. They could use the KH to accurately spy on all their enemies and crush them completely. Fot the BGs, I think it was always about manipulation as a means to power.

@@cernowaingreenman From a conversation between Frank Herbert and Willis E. McNelly in 1969: WM: Bene Gesserit. The...their whole mystique and so on is relatively unexplained. Why do they want the Kwisatz Haderach in the first place? You see, is relatively, at the time… FH: The name of the game is power. WM: Yes, and they want power. That…that explains it to a certain extent but… FH: They want power in a specific way. You know, I’ve always been amazed by the statement or by the label of psychological warfare. There can be no such thing as psychological warfare…if you develop a psychological weapon sufficiently that it is destructive to any potential enemy, it will destroy you with the enemy…it’s a two-edged sword without a handle, and if you grab it hard enough to wield it, you’re going to… WM: It’s self destructive. FH: Yes. WM: So we could have a variation of the Lord Acton notion: power corrupts both the user and the receiver of the power, both absolutely... FH: Right. Acton saw it. WM: How interesting. I hadn’t thought of the…who power corrupts… FH: Now the Bene Gesserit see this. You see how they keep themselves in the background. WM: Yes, that’s true. FH: They want a user of power they can control. WM: I see…with safety to them. FH: That’s right. It’s a safety device, you see, and I say this in several ways, not in this way, not in this blatant, you know, way, but implying it with all of its permutations, because there’s much more to this. We could go on for several hours discussing this aspect of it.

@@Langkowski Thank you for this.

One thing I would expect is that the Bene Gesserit would try to have their daughters when the BG was older. A BG can pass on knowledge to the daughter, so the older she gives birth the more knowledge that could be passed down. So there might be two 'strains' of BG. The young-born where the mother is in her mid 20s to see the genetic characteristics of the father, and the learned-born who are given as much knowledge from the mother as possible.

​@@LangkowskiHence why the God Emperor scorns them by his very being. 3500 years of what the witches thought they wanted. 3500 years of utter boredom and stagnation. And this is what the witches wanted-though they did not know it- for the rest of eternity. " Listen well, absolute prescience is completion and completion is death." - Leto 2- The stolen journals.

Everyone that matters in that universe knows that, though

I almost feel it's a pro if anything. The people who believe most in the plan are the BG and they are the memories imparted upon the KH.

but wouldnt that also make them see it as a good thing? because they would understand the BG motiviations from the inside and therefore be somewhat melded with them? In the same way that Alia's presonality was overwhelmed by her genetic memory on occasion?

would he though???? The BG were compartmentalized so they did not know their full mission AND they would seduce the ppl they wanted bred like the Barron and Feyd so they wouldn't know the mission.

Most cult members enjoy being controlled. I once dated a girl who grew up Pentecostal. As much as she chafed at their restrictions on her libido, she also craved some outside force to control her chaotic and confused impulses. After she broke her parents' hearts by losing her virginity, she begged me to "keep her on the straight and narrow" ... and was very angry when I refused to do that. Men who wrecked themselves with women and drugs in their 20s often develop the same relationship with whatever AA or religious group rescues them. Them they spend the rest of their lives pretending everyone in the world needs the same remedial guidance they did.

They wanted the genetics while ignoring environmental influence, which becomes permanent in racial memory. Bg should have kidnapped Feyd, raised him separate in another house, Maybe as a swordmaster- mentat. All signs point the Feyd Ruatha was also Full KH. He was a near match for Paul, after Paul was a revereend mother. They were one generation off. Feyd was likely a full KH given training and water of life. They made more than error here.

@@AdamBlack LOL. Feyd was smarter and more civilized than the other Harkonnens, and given a decent upbringing by a different guardian, he might indeed have made a decent swordmaster. But as we see, his focus was on martial arts of a different type.

​@@AdamBlackI suspect that if paul had been female he would have been raised as a bene gesserit on chapterhouse then sent to breed with a harkonen coming back to give birth outside of harkonen control. That would be logical considering that they fully understood the harkonen and knew how detrimental leaving a being to be raised by the baron. The baron completely distorted his nephews despite not having them since birth.

Warahmmer40k presents it better - "Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment"

That's why those signs on certain "outpost" read *abandon all hope*

If you mean the pain box test she performed on Paul - naturally she would, as he is after all her own grandson. Unlike some others, I do think that Frank Herbert intended Gaius Helen to be Jessica's mother (and that GH knew it but Jessica did not). There are some hints in the first book as to this, and certainly it was known at the time the David Lynch movie was made, as some scenes in it (which partly ended up on the cutting room floor) cannot be understood without that element. The Brian Herbert books go even further with her - Jessica is not the first daughter she bore/was pregnant with; she had one before that, whom she killed because she was "genetically unsuitable". And I doubt she ever told Jessica the truth...It may be that Jessica saw GHM during her water of life trance, but she probably did not recognize her as her mother; she thought that was just one of the Reverend Mothers before her.

@@christianealshut1123 NO. There is NO reason to believe that Mohiam is Jessica's mother. The Bene Gesserit do not normally form family units with their offspring unless ordered to. The breeders (this was Jessica's classification - to conceive children with whomever she was ordered to do so, and it turned out that she was ordered to conceive a daughter with Duke Leto Atreides). The BG see things like love and sentiment as weaknesses, and no BG would ever be put in charge of teaching or giving orders to her own offspring precisely because of the danger that love or sentiment could interfere with the necessity of what that offspring would have to do. The book states that Jessica's biological mother was Tanidia Nerus, and there is no reason to believe that this is not true.

@@christianealshut1123 I dunno, I figure Alia would have called her out on it when she was telling off the emperor.

I also thought it was both those things with the spice making those cold calculations of the mentat mix with the visions into psychedelic visions of the future

That's a good theory, but could he trully predict the future in such an extent that he did with only these two?

This.

Agreed But It would have to wait until the next movie. I hear one of the endings of this film that was tried out was just after Paul has taken the water of life and becomes prescient etc as a male BG.

Other Memory was dealt with in a scene in the miniseries, when Alia makes a comment about an event that happened in Sietch Tabr that she could not possibly have known about, as it happened years before the Atreides arrived on Arrakis and nobody told her about it. Harah is astonished that Alia could have this knowledge, and the other women of the sietch become even more frightened of her.

I don't think Paul was the first man to pass the gom jabbar, he was the first to successfully change the illuminating poison. Those who "tried and died" died when they failed to convert the illuminating poison and died from its toxicity. If they'd failed the gom jabbar they wouldn't have lived to be given the illuminating poison.

Uh, except that's the reason why all Bene Geserit go along with what they are doing. There's no brain washing or coercion from within their group. Their only faults are that they cannot see enough to do what's right, as indicated by The God Emperor.

@@DevinBowen They use voice. There is plenty of Coercion. The cost of failure in BG is often death.

I think the point is a female would have been trained as a bene gesserit from birth, making her marriage to an harkonnen as easy as issuing the order. Jessica was the first one to show them loyalty to the sisterhood isn't always absolute

@@Harakanis Ok, but again, there's this idea that Leto's gonna be cool with whatever, like, "Hm. No male heir, huh? Oh well. Such is life. Do whatever you want then."

@@briaryos1 I guess the plan was still "get him killed on dune, then the emperor will force the marriage to fix the feud"

@@Harakanis Not marriage. Likely a one-night stand of the daughter getting pregnant, then both are whisked away to a BG planet. Since Harkonnen's plan was to conquer Arrakis and destroy House Atreides, that one-night stand would certainly not be 'polite'

Having unquestioned authority and utterly devoted agents for centuries upon centuries deluded them and clouded their judgement I'd say.

Mitichlorians is Sci Fi!!!!!!!! 🥴

The Jedi are a totally nonsensical organization with a clumsily pasted-together belief system.

@@lochnessmonster5149 Lucas is a hack with good commercial instincts...

🧐 I mean... A lot of people consider and classify Dune as science-fantasy? Like sure Star Wars is straight up fantasy in a space opera setting, and the Bene Gesserit are better crafted than the Jedi, but there are still big holes in the world-building there that are filled with a fantasy, rather than a more "science-based", explanation. Like the whole "women can only access genetic memories from their mothers" doesn't hold up to scrutiny, since every human being should "technically" be able to access genetic memories from both parents, as we all inherit an even split of genetic material from both the mother and the father. The scifi novel Ammonite at least does a slightly better job with its own version of genetic memory by acknowledging this - then again I'm not a big fan of genetic memory as a concept, so I'm definitely biased, but even still I don't think Dune necessarily displays the best example of it. 🤷🏻‍♀️ To me Dune shines by its themes and exploration of politics, religion, etc... not so much by its sciency world-building or concepts.

@@ThePurpleBookWyrm Dune is 20k years in the future so it's going to seem like a fantasy in many ways, but your point is correct about genetic memory and sex separation. Re the harsh sexual division of abilities, I think Herbert was a fairly socially conservative person (it comes through in the writing quite a lot), and like quite a lot of sci-fi fans, it has to be said, not hugely socially advanced himself despite his interest in future human development. I'd also say that in such an advanced universe there would be obviously no need for 'spice' to extend anyone's life! Hell, even Today we are on the cusp of various genetic technologies to achieve a certain level of age reversal using cellular and epigenetic reprogramming, so.... I can, however, easily suspend my disbelief about this and other things that are slightly jarring about the books, for the great stories.

i hold in my hand before you a lump of purest green!

@@SENATORPAIN1 Oh, well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer the Doctor my most enthusiastic contrafibularities.”

But still, it was, a cunning plan.

@@joofbing As cunning as a fox holding a professorship for cunning at Oxford university!

rofl

And just like that my book list grows even longer

His Hyperion content is hype

The Chronicles of Amber, Ringworld and the monumental Hellicona trilogy

A Wrinkle in Time The book of course, not either of the horrid movies.

sprinkle in some cyber punk too. Neuromancer, Altered Carbon, Snow crash, or even Anathem.

When searching for anything Dune related, I found it. Quite a niche channel. Love it.

His channel is not being shadowbanned like he thinks.

Ask the Emperor about that. His BG-trained wife only seemed to bear daughters (all of which were BG trained). I guess his (BG Mother Superior) advisor told him that it was for the good of the human empire?

I’m sure it happened before. It would make sense that, for a plan spanning millennia, the BG would have contingencies upon contingencies in case something goes wrong.

@@biospark4758 Feyd-Rautha was birthed. So, yes. To "correct" the course, Alia could have married Feyd-Rautha...pity about the abomination brouhaha. And yet, Leto II was born after all. It all seemed to work out in the end

@@toddkes5890 LOL, I doubt the Bene Gesserit bothered to tell him why he was apparently incapable of fathering a son and had to make do with daughters who couldn't inherit in their own right. The Dune Encyclopedia relates the biography of Shaddam's wife, Empress Anuril. She was indeed a Bene Gesserit breeder who complied with the Bene Gesserit's orders to bear only daughters. She really didn't have a choice in that, however, as they fed her a poison and impregnated her favorite musical instrument with the antidote. If she failed to comply with their orders, they would withdraw the antidote and she would die. The Bene Gesserit had multiple reasons for the things they did. They weren't saving Irulan for Paul to marry; that was his idea, and she pointed out to her father that it was the only workable solution that would leave the Corrino family alive. At that time she didn't realize that Paul would absolutely refuse to allow her to be the mother of his heir. The BG demanded only daughters because they wanted to control who would be the next Emperor.

@@Shan_Dalamani What I never understood was why the need for a male heir would be so much of a problem in a society this far advanced in which women wielded so much power...What would have spoken against Irulan ruling in her own right as her father's heir. No doubt some of the BG could have told her from their ancestral memories that there were two queens in the history of Old Earth who ruled in their own right, and did so for a long time, and very successfully at that. Carrying on the name does not seem to be a sufficiently plausible argument in this universe... And no doubt whoever had become the husband of Irulan could have ruled as a Corrino at her side by taking the Corrino name (just as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen's brother took the last name of his wife, Emmi Rabban, to distance himself from the Harkonnen heritage). Similarly, why did Wensicia Corrino not make any moves to rule in her own right as Empress, but decided the best way to rule was by controlling her son, Prince Farad'n? Why this bar against women ruling in their own right? The BG did have a monopoly in female education, at least as far as the Great Houses were concerned, who were in the habit of having their daughters BG-trained. So a BG Empress on the Lion Throne would have stood a better chance of being controllable by the Order. I know they needed the view down the male line to have full prescient awareness of the future, because they could not look into that place themselves. But something tells me that this is more a case of not wanting rather than not being able to - they are terrified to looks there and this fear was bred into all BG for generations and eons down the line. So as far as this aspect was concerned they became the embodiment of their own litany against fear, illustrating that indeed "fear is the mind-killer"; it seems to have effectively killed a part of their mind that would have been usable otherwise.

I've never understood why they didn't simply eliminate Paul as an infant.

Eliminating Jessica would have eliminated some of those precious Harkonnen genes. The BG had more than one project going on. You don't honestly think that all they ever did was work on the Kwisatz Haderach program, do you?

He was surrounded by some of the deadliest men in the universe as his teachers, imagine trying to get through Thufir Hawat, Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho, let alone Lady Jessica.

@@tobyvisionBecause he was still a good option for them, they had few candidates to pass on the nessisary genes so they wouldn’t want to kill Jim for no real reason

If they killed Paul, Jessica would no longer obey them, given the love and humanity she acquired through her son and her husband. They could not kill her, she carried the harkonnen bloodline. So they could not actually threaten her. They thought that the training, like the sook doctors training, would make it all but impossible for her to disobey. Furthermore, they thought that knowing what was at stake, she would never risk the entire project and by extension the future of humanity for her Duke and son. But the compuction of life and desire is stronger and older than the witches.

Maybe their plan would have been to imprint him right at puberty like they tried with the Basher Miles Teg. If they could imprint him they could control him with love.

@@reggie7716 Until he read their minds for the lie it was XD

@@reggie7716 Except they failed with Teg, who is presumably a significant step down from the perfect KH.

@@tobyvision And they tried before he hit puberty. He was just a child (that is one of the most disturbing things about that book, next to what the Honored Matres tried with Duncan).

It could even have been a bit of both groups mistakes, either a person created in the gene program that fell into ixian (mabe their cells creating a ghola) hands or prehaps a machine created but abandened by the ixians found by that person from the gene program taking control of it. Leto II may have decided most of the blame lay with IX and not the sisterhood or they where just easier to deal with which im not entirely convinced of.

The Squeeze Hat Cataracts

@@paulconrad6220 quizes outside iraq

The Quiznos Half-a-Sack

The Queens at heart and rack

It feels like the author might pull a Robert Jordan on us.

all his son's stuff sucks

Im guessing when the movie comes out

You can notice Eagles and riders a lot easier than people skulking through forests. Then shoot them with arrows or tail them with crows or attack them in the air with fell-beasts. Then when you ascertain that the ring-bearer is making a beeline for Mount Doom, it becomes obvious he's going to destroy it. Then you just need an army of Orc archers to keep them from getting close until you can find some means to block the lava from an easy drop. Eagles make the job significantly more difficult. You might instead ask why didn't they use the eagles to cover more distance easier. Then stealth into Mordor once close. That still makes them easy to track. So in order to keep your plan shrouded in secrecy, you'd need to not just employ a few willing eagles but many of them to carry fake hobbits to many different places far and wide. Even then, Sauron would likely simply prioritize harassing the hobbit drops nearest his domain. Since he can't do much about a hobbit drop in Gondor or Mithlond or Forochel anyhow and from his point of view, hiding the ring in remote areas is meaningless since he will eventually take all the land anyway. So you still just end up raising alarm bells at all the entrances to Mordor anyway, then also making it fairly obvious you plan to destroy the ring. Which will likely spur Sauron to leave defense at Mount Doom itself. The reality is that Eagle flight just makes no sense for a stealth mission in which your enemy sits around your destination goal. Even simply using it to get closer will make it so that Sauron hardens his watch on the side you'd be coming from making it so that you have to trek all the way around his watch anyway to penetrate it effectively. Ostensibly traveling the same foot distance you would have either way or just getting caught. Making Sauron think the Ring-Bearer was traveling to Gondor to pass the Ring off the Aragorn at the head of a manly force was the best play. Gandalf remains more intelligent than you.

Take it a step further even. This is scifi. Why didn't they just grab DNA samples from Leto and Jessica and stick it in an axolotl tank, and then grab DNA from the resulting child and stick it in another tank with some Harkonnen DNA? If the genetics are all that mattered, it seems really silly to produce these children the old fashioned way...

Thoughts on the movie?

I saw what you did there!

Despite all of their abilities they are still human and humans have a need to be loved. The sisterhood sounds like a cold and cruel place to be raised.

It is implied more than once that the breeding program has many branches and backups. The BG are immensely patient and would certainly have dealt with unexpected failures many times over the millenia.

@@technopirate304 The BG attitude to parenting is akin to the Psi Corps in Babylon 5 ("The Corps is father, the Corps is mother"). The only time that a BG sister's biological father plays any kind of loving part in her life is in Heretics/Chapterhouse, with Teg and Odrade. This is in contrast to the Baron, who tries to kill Jessica (though to be fair, he has no idea she's his daughter).

Views hail!

I think it was an extension of their Prani Bindhu breathing exercises, like real martial arts all stemming from yoga.

true

I'm only a fan but I thought it was Duncan's deep humanity.. ie he regained his memories as a ghola through his love and care for Paul that went against his identity at that time.. he rebelled against Leto II through his sense of morality even if it cost him his life a few times? He proved to have an undying sense of what was good (this could be highly subjective though?).. maybe Leto saw these were qualities that were often burned away by breeding programs (even Paul lost his moral sense over time became hardened?) . Duncan seemed to prove over and over to not be influenced by outside factors? And when he is swayed it's through love for Murbella? (as Jessica acted through devotion to Duke Leto). Herbert seems often to contrast these warm feelings with the cold precision of the B.G. at least in early saga. Maybe warm human feeling equals unpredictability which is in many ways outside scope of prescience? (eg when Chani died Paul was blinded for a while, literally and vision sight?)

He said a couple of different reasons one was that he had the genetic material of ancient man outside the beeeding programmes of his or the bg . And the other was that he was practically family leto paul and leto the second and Jessica all knew and loved him . But he probably saw him in the golden path also

His Mother was a BG, but paired with Wild Genes outside the BG breeding program. And no BG indoctrination. A Human, and naturally occurring KW possible/potential. Much how Miles Teg is a Leto genetic copy... and has powers the BG didn't even know about. One of the two main flaws of the BG breeding program, a failure to understand they can't pick the correct genes to aim for.

The counting only takes the ruling members of the family. There were many Henrys in the history of England but only kings got their number

@@R3stor Thank you for the explanation. I never knew how they counted those things.

Oh, FFS. No. Paul and Chani's first child was killed in toddlerhood, so he never ruled anything and he was for damn sure not Leto II's father. So there were three Letos, only two of whom lived to rule anything.

I wonder if Herbert was aware of the role of the Y-chromosome when he wrote Dune. Its role in sex determination was only discovered in the few years between the time he first conceived the novel and the time of its publication.

I feel like that's going to sound retarded to anyone who is actually really knowledgeable in science but you know what that sounds a good enough reason to me.

The irony is that the KH was born of a daughter of house harkonnen and a son of house atriedes. Just a bit out of the expectation of the BG. Then, there was the Leto II, who excerted his own genetic and memetic control of the BG breeding program.

It is likely that as soon as the potential KH was born, he would be stolen and relocated to a BG world.

People keep assuming that just because a child is born of a particular mating, that the child would be raised by either of his/her biological parents. That's not how the BG do things, unless ordered - which rarely happens. Even Shaddam's empress wouldn't have been much of a mother to her daughters. Irulan was basically brought up by governesses, tutors, and BG trainers. She did have contact with her father, who did what he could to teach her about rulership even if she would never be allowed to rule in her own right.

@@Shan_Dalamani This isn't Lady Fenring banging Feyd for his sperm. The BG aren't going to be able to swoop in and take away the child. So this isn't about how the BG do things, it's about how the Houses Major do things. And House Harkonnen wouldn't turn its heir over to the BG to be raised. And Irulan was supposed to rule in her own right. "When my father, the Padishah Emperor, heard of Duke Leto’s death and the manner of it, he went into such a rage as we had never before seen. He blamed my mother and the compact forced on him to place a Bene Gesserit on the throne."

Mentat

Quinn totally should be reading for Audible!