A second quotation from The Stolen Journals will serve well as an illustration of this point:
When I set out to lead humanity along my Golden Path, I promised them a lesson their bones would remember. I know a profound pattern which humans deny with their words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet, the condition they call peace. Even as they speak, they create the seeds of turmoil and violence. If they find their quiet security, they squirm in it. How boring they find it. Look at them now. Look at what they do while I record these words. Hah! I give them enduring eons of enforced tranquility which plods on and on despite their every effort to escape into chaos. Believe me, the memory of Leto's peace shall abide with them forever. They will seek their quiet security thereafter only with extreme caution and steadfast preparation.
Within this passage are all four personages. Here can be seen the cynicism of the Atreides, the delight in gamesmanship of the Harkonnens, the harsh world view of the Fremen, and the laughter of Shai-Hulud. No wonder then that so many scholars propose so many different versions of Leto Atreides II. Some would see him as a blood-thirsty tyrant who loved to toy with his Duncan Idaho gholas through a perverted sense of "the good old days." Others would see him as a corrupted politician whiling away his time in obscene pleasure with Hwi Noree. Yet others would see Leto as the compassionate but harsh teacher of mankind, instructing Siona Atreides to take on his mantle and lead mankind further on to the Golden Path. And still others would see him as God laughing at all his creation simply because he wanted to.
When Leto toppled from the bridge to be dissolved in the water below, who or what is it that died? It is House Atreides that died, and House Harkonnen, and the Fremen, and Shai-Hulud, and that being that was the synthesis of them all, the Kwisatz Haderach. Each died singly and as a unified entity because that is how Leto lived. He was warrior, pleasure-seeker, teacher, and God. No one thing he did was for a single reason, for each action was done to please each personality that lived within him. No human will ever know Leto Atreides II, the God Emperor of Dune. The very best that can be hoped for is that mankind will understand why such knowing is impossible.
S.G.
Further references: ATREIDES, PAUL MUAD'DIB; KWISATZ HADERACH; Leto Atreides II, Journals, RRC 65A-302, RRC 70A-392; Herk Elanus, The Tree of Atreides 5 v. (Caladan: Apex); Gwenewera Apturos, Home-Life of the God Emperor (Tleilax: Mentat).
ATREIDES, LETO II, Journals of
The collection of 2,126 ridulian crystal volumes, secreted in a primitive Ixian no-room, contains the preserved writings of Leto II, the God Emperor; this is the central find of the library discovered at Dar-es-Balat and known as the Rakis Hoard. Each of the Journals consists of one thousand 50 x 30 cm sheets of ridulian crystal paper imprinted by an Ixian dictatel and bound between covers of ridulian-based hardboard. Owing to the extreme thinness of the paper (ridulian crystal can be processed into sheets only several molecules thick) the volumes are only 1.5 cm thick from cover to cover. Static charges prevent the pages from touching each other and aid the automatic page turner embedded in the spine. In sheer size — each of the ridulian crystal originals requires forty paper volumes of ordinary size to reprint — such a single-author collection is awe-inspiring; given the nature of that author, however, it becomes historically overwhelming. First to last, these books record 3,500 years of history and autobiographic ruminations set down by the one being who has survived such a period of time. Their importance cannot be overstated, as is evident from their frequent citing as source material throughout this encyclopedia.
It is impossible to summarize, no matter how briefly, the contents of even a fraction of the Journal volumes. Until such time as it becomes possible to issue a full translation (and a hundred-volume set of excerpts will not be ready for publications for a minimum of three years) overviews such as this one will have to suffice. Regrettably, only the most significant items can be discussed in so short a space; deeper analyses are certain to come later.
Perhaps the most fascinating revelations contained in the Rakis Hoard are those pertaining to the God Emperor himself. Because of the Oral History and the teachings of the Church of the Divided God, humanity has already been given two views of Leto II: inhuman tyrant and omnipotent God. Now his Journals offer a third view, one that will undoubtedly be difficult to reconcile with those proceeding it. The Lord Leto, it appears, did not possess infallible prescience; he could suffer distortions of his future vision not only when dealing with the "missing" persons his breeding program produced, but also when attempting to view the extreme future as well.
He also feared that time would distort his reputation. Many references show his anxiety to explain himself and his reign, as we read in a soliloquy from Rakis Reference Catalog 1-A42:
You, encountering my chronicles after thousands of years, beware. Do not feel honored in reading the revelations of my Ixian storehouse. You will find much pain in it.... I am not sure what the events in my journals may signify to your times. I only know that my journals have suffered oblivion and that the events which recount have undoubtedly been subjected to historical distortion for eons....
Much of the material making up the Journals was composed in the same introspective mode, and by studying samples taken at random from the collection, we can observe a trend in the Lord Leto's writings. While the earliest writings noted even the most trivial events — minor rebellions quelled for example, in cities whose names became meaningless within the God Emperor's lifetime — later volumes contained more autobiographical material and anecdotes concerning the "inner voices," or ancestral memories with whom Leto often shared consciousness.
Another shift can be observed when such excerpts are carefully read. For several centuries after his acceptance of the sandtrout skin which changed his form, the God Emperor avoided writing much about the transformation itself, or about his own reaction to it. Self-descriptions become more frequent in those writings covering the second and third millennia of his rule, and remain clinical until well into the third. Not until the volumes written during the last two hundred years of Leto's reign does the reader discover the God Emperor's own feelings about his changed body. One of the best examples also comes from RRC 1-A42:
I have ordered all mirrors removed from the Citadel. My servitors wonder at this, but say nothing; they know the foolishness of questioning God.
How much greater their wonder would be if had followed my initial impulse after catching glimpse of myself in the great entry hall mirrors yesterday, and smashed them to slivers with a single blow from this many-segmented body which traps me. But this grotesquery has its purpose, as surely as do the centuries I have spent this way. They prevent a greater smashing, an irreparable smashing.
I must remember that.
As more evidence of the God Emperor's slipping humanity comes to light, his reference to his Journals causing pain for their reader may well be proven right. It is difficult to avoid sympathizing with one who could fear his own reflection although he controlled the known universe.
Information concerning other members of House Atreides — in particular, the God Emperor's father, Paul Muad'Dib, and his aunt, the Lady Alia — has also surfaced during the Journals' translation. Leto reveals, for example, that he was not the first to be shown the Golden Path or to be offered the transformation he accepted. His father, he states, faced the same choice several years before Leto's birth but picked a different way. (The effects on humanity of Muad'Dib's Jihad and Leto's Peace may have to; be evaluated before an informed opinion of the better choice can be offered.)
He also delivers one of the few sympathetic opinions of Lady Alia Atreides. He was in a better position than any other historian to do so; not only had he escaped the possession that befell his aunt by forging an internal alliance in which he was the controlling force (a method which differed from hers less than might be supposed), but he had access to the same ancestral personality that had ruined Alia. In Leto's community of
voices, the Baron Harkonnen was kept firmly under control, but Leto could appreciate how his aunt had been taken over.
As a treasure trove of historical data the Journals are completely unparalleled. For example, the Oral History abounds with descriptions of the Atreides descendants' extreme sensitivity to melange and its effect on their ancestral memories. The reason for this sensitivity had been shrouded in mystery since the earliest centuries of the Lord Leto's reign (at least from the general public; the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, it was said, never forgot it) and not until the Journals were discovered was it relearned. A full description can be found in the entries pertaining to the God Emperor and to his mother, the Lady Chani, but the phenomenon known as pre-birth was brought about by a combination of genetic factors and maternal addiction to melange. Because they were descended from one who had been preborn, all of the later generations of Atreides possessed the ability to achieve contact with their "inner voices" when under the influence of the spice. Records found in the Journals indicate that this forced awareness was part of the testing Leto conducted when choosing his Atreides administrators, and that nearly a third of those who underwent the spice test died or went mad when the new awareness was thrust upon them. (This percentage dropped only slightly through millennia of careful breeding, and Leto therefore kept a number of second-choice candidates in reserve whenever testing one of the breeding lines.)
The eventual publication of all the Journals, and the influx of new findings, will not only affect the scholarly world but also the Oral History, which has served in conjunction with the Stolen Journals as a basis for law and custom on all of the known worlds, will undergo probing reconsideration. The Church of the Divided God, and by extension its billions of followers, has already been profoundly affected by the information unearthed at Dar-es-Balat, as witnessed by its new directives concerning the status of Holy Sister Quintinius Violet Chenoeh and Nayla the Betrayer.
The full effects of the Rakis Hoard on society as we have known it will not be seen in our lifetimes — and possibly not in the lifetimes of many generations of our posterity. As regards their continuing effect, a still-popular Bene Gesserit expression comes most readily to mind: "Each day, sometimes each hour, brings change."
C.W.
Further references: ATREIDES, LETO II; ATREIDES, LADY CHANI; ATREIDES, LADY ALIA; RAKIS FINDS, DISCOVERY; DICTATEL; CHENOEH, HOLY SISTER QUINTINIUS VIOLET; NAYLA; STOLEN JOURNALS; Alan Bartke, Survey of Ixian Technology, 10900-13500 (Finally: Mosaic); T.B. Jones, Past Horizons: The Discovery of the Imperial Library on Rakis, Arrakis Studies 1 (Grumman: United Worlds); Adib'l-Haddad, I Fell Into the Past, Arrakis Studies 17 (Grumman: United Worlds).
ATREIDES, MINOTAUROS
(10059-10163). Popularly called by his nickname, Duke Mintor, called in his later years "The Old Duke," also Siridar-Duke of Caladan, Count Chalcedony, Count Thuestes, and Lord of Tantalos, 266th Head of the House of Atreides, son of Duke Minos IX by his concubine, (Lady) Katlin Kalun, demi-brother of Duke Paulos XVIII, awarded the Emperor's Cross in 10109, named Count Chalcedony and Heir Presumptive in 10077, named to the special panel convened by the emperor in 10134 to decide the succession of House Khumali.
Born in the Old Palace on Caladan in the year 10059, one of seven brothers and sisters by different wives and concubines, Mintor was raised by his mother in her own household on the small island of Nagge on the eastern continent of Caladan. He rarely saw his father, and had little converse with his brothers and sisters, except for his full sister, Io, with whom he grew up. Gerasimos Herakleidos, gardener at the Nagge manor, was fond of recalling Mintor's early years during the ducal reign of his son, Leto I; when interviewed by an oral history project of the Atreides School on Caladan, he recalled: "Yes, I remember the lad well. It was in '76, or maybe '77, not long before his father died, that he began asking me questions about my greens, what this one did, how I could make them grow higher, that kind of stuff. I was surprised, really, let me tell you that. Here was the Duke's son taking an interest in what a gardener was doing. And he was serious, too, all wrapped up in it. But it didn't last. Couldn't hold his interest, you know. He happened upon my friend, Serapheim Hippodes, working his horse through his paces in the field next to my rows, and he was caught up, you know, by the action. I could see it in his eyes — and I knew then that this Duke's son was one of a kind."
Mintor quickly learned all he could about horses, soon becoming an excellent rider. He was also entranced by Serapheim's bulls, watching their majesty as they stalked around their domains. Serapheim was happy to teach Mintor to ride horses, but was loathe to let the boy near the bulls; he didn't want to be responsible for injury to the Duke's son. But Mintor was as persuasive as he was determined to handle the bulls as he had so often watched Serapheim do — with nothing but a colored cloth and his own agility. Eventually, Serapheim relented and introduced young Mintor to the thrills of the bullring, to which Mintor became forever devoted.
In 10077, Duke Minos died suddenly, choking on a piece of beef, and his eldest son Paulos succeeded. Mintor, the next eldest son, was heir presumptive but never expected to reach the throne, since his brother was young, vigorous, and likely to have children of his own. Therefore, he requested his brother's permission to represent the Duchy as a roving ambassador, and to receive military training at various academies throughout the Imperium. His request was readily granted. He spent the next ten years learning about weapons, shields, self-defense, politics, and bullfighting. One of his companions from that period recalls: "He was tall, not quite handsome, a bit of a rake. I remember that he had a very queer sense of humor: he would laugh at things that none of the rest of us thought were funny, and would scarcely crack his lips at a side-splitter. Still, we all wanted him at our parties — he was a good conversationalist, and all the women loved him. It was a great surprise to everyone when he married Louise." Louise was Lovisa Rogier, the 25-year-old bastard daughter of a duke; she was short and plain, but very bright, with the kind of intelligence that makes even a beautiful woman somehow undesirable to most men. Mintor was captivated by her wit, and abruptly gave up the joys of sampling fillies for a quieter life. Before they were married, Mintor brought his betrothed home to Caladan and rarely left the planet thereafter. Mintor and Lovisa had no children. After Lovisa's death in 10135, however, Mintor took a concubine — Bekah — who bore Mintor's only son, Leto, in 10140. Along with the grand Corrida, he had had built near his old home at Nagge, of course, Leto was Mintor's greatest source of joy in the last decades of his long life.
In 10116, Duke Paulos XVIII died of a lingering ailment without ever having officially married, although he spawned several unacknowledged bastards with no legal rights to the throne. Mintor succeeded to the Ducal throne and ruled with great sagacity and integrity for forty-seven of the most stable, peaceful, prosperous and expansive years of Atreidean history. He died in the bullring at the age of 104.
S.G.
Further references: ATREIDES, DUKE LETO; Jason Iorga, The Bull by the Horns: The Duke as Mentor (Caladan: Apex), a popular biography of Duke Mintor; Virgo Hopman, The Old and the Young Dukes: Mintor and Paul, tr. Zhaivz Aultan (10388; Caladan: Apex).
ATREIDES, MONEO IBN FUAD AL-LICHNA
(13606-13724). Born to Lichna Ibn Fuad al-Kala Atreides and her mate, Jesen Carrand, this remarkable man was eventually to become the last majordomo in the service of Leto II, the God Emperor. In many ways, Moneo would prove himself the ablest administrator of all who had filled that position in the thirty-five centuries of Leto's reign, as well as one of the longest-tenured. (He served the God Emperor for eighty-nine years, the last seventy in the capacity of majordomo.)
Prior to his entry into Royal Service Moneo had used his formidable talents for organization and planning in quite a different cause: from 13626 to 13634, he ran a highly efficient group of rebels dedicated to removing the God Emperor from his throne. It was a tribute to Moneo's skills that the rebellion achieved as many small successes as it did agains
t the prescient Leto II.
Moneo had been trained in logic and pragmatism by masters — as an Atreides, heir in name if not in flesh to Leto II himself, he had suffered no scrimping in his education — and had selected his position regarding the God Emperor with great care. Leto, he reasoned, was a monstrosity; one look at the gross pre-worm body proved that. Humankind, whatever its faults, deserved better than the tyrannic rule of a monster. Leto, then, had to be eliminated.
But Moneo was no usurper. The genius of his scheme was that he never once suggested that he or any other mortal could take up the Imperial Godhead. Instead, he explained to all who would listen that ridding humanity of its despotic ruler would plunge it into anarchy and chaos. From that maelstrom, he insisted, would emerge a new race once again in control of its own destiny.
Lichna was disturbed by her eldest son's heresy and often discussed it with the God Emperor. He assured her, in turn, that Moneo was merely demonstrating those traits which would eventually make a competent administrator of him and that her only duty to the boy lay in advising him of the possible outcome of his actions. (He also pointed out that he would not be considering Moneo as her replacement at all if he had not shown this sort of initiative; Leto's complete lack of interest in her two younger, more docile children convinced Lichna that the God Emperor was telling her the truth.)
There is much evidence in Leto's Journals to support the idea that Leto found the young rebel's activities a source of genuine entertainment. There are references to several of Moneo's exploits during his rebellious years: of particular interest to the God Emperor, for example, was his success in subverting a group of twenty-five Fish Speakers from the Onn garrison in 13631. No other rebel — and Leto had watched hundreds of them in the course of his reign — had managed to convince so many of the warrior/priestesses at one time to abandon their beliefs.
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