Harq al-Ada died in 10419. At his funeral service, Leto II (who presided over the rite) declared that "as he gave so much of history to his posterity, so history will give a posterity to Harq al-Ada".6
It was a fitting, and accurate, epitaph for a man who died without a legal spouse or children, but whose literary "children" would influence the farthest reaches of the Imperium for generations.
J.A.C. and C.W.
NOTES
1Harq al-Ada, Testament of Arrakis (Work-in-Progress, Arrakis Studies Temp. Ser. 180, Lib. Conf.); The Story of Liet-Kynes (Work-in-Progress, Arrakis Studies Temp. Ser. 109, Lib, Conf.).
2Cybele Harik, The Prince/The Playwright (Zimaona: Kinat), pp. 76-77.
3Leto II, Journals, Rakis Ref. Cat. 20-A115, Area 73.
4Ibid.
5Ibid.
6Leto II, Journals, Rakis Ref. Cat. 20-A115, Area 80.
Further references: Arrakis, the Transformation; The Arrakeen Catastrophe (alt. title, The Dune Catastrophe); The Book of Leto (a folk-style biography with epigrams); The Butlerian Jihad; The Holy Metamorphosis; House Atreides: A Historical Overview; Lectures on Prescience; Leto II (the official Imperium biography of Leto's first two hundred years); Leto II to his Memory Voices; The Mahdinate, an Analysis; Philosophers for All Times; The Prescient Vision; Notes to My Life; Riddles of Arrakis; The Story of Liet-Kynes; Testament of Arrakis; The Words of My Father; An Account of Muad'Dib (reconstructed by Harq al-Ada).
CORRINO, PRINCESS RUGI
(10175-10272). Though she was Shaddam IV 's youngest daughter, the Princess Rugi Corrino is rarely remembered as part of the royal family. Arkum Valentine, for example, gives her only two paragraphs in Golden Lion in Exile, the standard work of the Padishah's government following Shaddam IV's deposition. Aside from hard biographical facts, he does offer some dimension to her character when he writes:
She is a slender wisp of a girl, but strikingly beautiful. Her waist-length brown hair complements the light-gold of her complexion perfectly. Her face is basically triangular and her features finely-chiseled, but her most compelling attribute is her eyes. Large and almond-shaped, they are the color of strong tea. Almost umber in shadow, they change to orange when the light strikes them at just the right angle. She moves about the Court with the grace and agility of a cat and just as silently. Even so, there is something about her demeanor that insists, "I know who I am." Very different from her four sisters, she is a strange child in many ways. (p. 205)
Valentine attributes this description to a Bene Gesserit report filed in 10193 by Sister Molly Basutu, who spent nearly twenty years standard at the Padishah Emperor's Court training the girl. The description is confirmed in Zaiwar Migiin's Life of Rugi.
Born in 10175, one year before her mother died, Princess Rugi is generally regarded as the most intelligent and talented of Shaddam IV's daughters. Why she fled Salusa Secundus immediately after her father's death in 10202 for Wallach IX is not known. She claimed not to trust Count Hasimir Fenring, though no record of her specific concerns has ever been uncovered. Nonetheless, she remained under the protection of the Bene Gesserit until 10205, when she married Duke Aberne Moritani, Siridar of the tropical and remote planet Grumman. It is not known whether this marriage was part of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, but light may be shed upon this period of the Princess Rugi's life when the order's Master Breeding Records and Mating Index have been more thoroughly studied.
Under the protection of a powerful and wealthy Major House, her life was secure, and she eventually became heavily involved in the development of Grumman's arts, for which she is best remembered. Credited with opening a "Golden Age" for the planet's writers, artists, and musicians, she established a national museum, exhibitions, and a performing arts program and enticed other wealthy families on Grumman's two continents and seven major islands to become heavily involved in the regional arts of their own areas. She is credited with introducing the works of Harq al-Harba to Grumman.
Rugi bore two children. Her daughter, Amertine Moritani Harkonnen, was born in 10228 and educated at Amber Academy, Indresloch University, and Kilderry Medical School, all in Indresloch, Grumman's Capital city. Her son, Armund, was born in 10230 and educated at Amber Academy and the Indres School of Fine Arts. He became a master of the native painting style known as Ti-bak, and his pictures, which are highly valued as epitomizing the form, still hang in the National Museum at Indres.
As the daughter of Shaddam IV and the wife of a powerful Duke, the Princess had unlimited opportunity to travel through the empire. The remoteness of Grumman protected it and her from the worst social changes that swept over planets closer to Arrakis once Muad'Dib's jihad began to spread. Rugi enjoyed the privilege of playing observer to the Regencies of her sister Irulan and of Saint Alia of the Knife, and even the beginning of the reign of Leto II, the God Emperor. Rugi recorded not only her observations of but her subsequent insights into the behavior of the Imperium's many peoples in her diaries.
Further references: CORRINO, SHADDAM IV; ATREIDES-CORRINO, PRINCESS IRULAN; Arkum Valentine, The Golden Lion in Exile (Kaitain: Linthrin UP); Zaiwar Migiin, Life of Rugi, tr. A.D. Doel (Salusa Secundus: Kiski).
CORRINO, SHADDAM IV
(10134-10202). Eighty-first Padishah Emperor of House Corrino. Born to Elrood IX and Fasrille, Lady Corrino, the boy who would eventually become the last of the Corrino Emperors was given no premonition of his unfortunate destiny. Instead, he alternately enjoyed and endured his place in Elrood's court, a place which provided possible Corrino heirs with both the greatest luxuries available in the Imperium together with the most rigorous training and testing imaginable.
From his earliest childhood, Shaddam was befriended by Hasimir Fenring, a distaff cousin whose shrewd and agile mind almost certainly kept the na-Emperor alive during the years of intrigue and violence which preceded his reign. Fenring possessed the ability to manipulate, without antagonizing, those in power; by helping his companion to cultivate similar skills, and by giving him the benefit of his own advice, the na-Count performed a function for which Shaddam was permanently grateful.
Shortly after his friend's assumption of the Fenring title, Shaddam was removed from court, in the company of three other aspirants, to the Corrino's private testing grounds. The young Count's advice is believed to be one of the factors responsible for Shaddam's surviving the training-and-intrigue ritual administered to him there and returning to Kaitain, the sole survivor of his group, after only nine months.
The na-Emperor, as was the custom, was immediately installed as leader of the Sardaukar. His travels and duties often kept him far from court, though official reports to his father and unofficial communiques to his mother and Count Fenring regularly appeared there. Records kept by the Hegemon of the Sardaukar, as well as those of various officers set to observing the royal heir, indicate that Shaddam was an acceptable, if not a brilliant leader, and that the Sardaukar approved of serving under him.
In 10155, during a leave on Kaitain, Shaddam was told of an assassination plot against him. The details were provided by Count Fenring, who also provided his friend with a suitable countervail. Acting on Fenring's counsel, Shaddam took action against the plotters before the entire court, thus making it impossible for any secondary intrigue to be set into motion against him without its source becoming immediately obvious.
In addition to providing a degree of safety for the na-Emperor, this exposé served two other purposes: it made public the existence of the hunter-seeker, until then known only to members of House Corrino; it also gave subtle notice to Elrood IX that his son was aware of his own involvement in the scheme.
Following the execution of an unimportant member of the royal House who was elected as scapegoat for the crime, Shaddam returned to his troops. In his absence from Kaitain, his father was killed, a victim of chaumurky, and Shaddam IV was the new Corrino Emperor.
Like all rulers, Shaddam IV found after assuming power that many of his actions were influenced, if not
dictated, by those of his line whom he had succeeded. The triangular balance of power, for example, which distributed control of the Imperium among the royal House, the Landsraad, and CHOAM, set limits on the legal power which could be exercised by an emperor. Certain writings which have survived from the period of Shaddam's reign indicate that this restraint occasionally angered him; he preferred that greater control be available to him.
Particularly chafing, however, was a far more personal restriction, this one resulting from negotiations between the late Elrood IX and the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. In a rare dovetailing of interests, House Corrino, as represented by the emperor, and the B.G. had mingled their breeding plans. The inducements offered by the Sisterhood must have been impressive, even by Imperial standards, for the result of their bartering with House Corrino left Shaddam in the position of accepting an arranged marriage to one Lady Anuril, a Bene Gesserit of Hidden Rank. The ceremony was carried out three months after the new Emperor's coronation.
The terms of the marriage gave Shaddam additional reason to resent its having been arranged. Only those children born by Anuril could be considered to succeed the emperor; none of those mothered by the Imperial concubines could be placed in the succession. To one accustomed to the usual wide range of choice given in selecting an heir to House Corrino, such a restriction seemed intolerable.
That the emperor chose to lose himself in the intricacies of court functions and in the pleasures of his harem may be seen as directly inspired by his matrimonial situation. The number of Bursegs, Sardaukar officers of command rank, was doubled in the first sixteen years of Shaddam's reign, while the population of the royal harem underwent a similar explosion. Earlier rulers had insisted on detailed reports concerning every action of the Imperial troops, as well as those of the soldiers of each of the Great Houses; Shaddam IV, on the other hand, preferred to busy himself with Landsraad intrigues, leaving much of the actual running of his empire to his advisors and to the higher-ranking Sardaukar officers. That the Imperium ran as smoothly as it did in the years preceding the Arrakis Revolt is due almost entirely to the efforts of these two groups.
Shaddam's melancholia and withdrawal became even more pronounced over the two decades of his marriage. Anuril bore five daughters — Irulan, Chalice, Wensicia, Josifa and Rugi — and no sons before her death in 10176. The emperor spent far less time mourning her passing than in mourning that of his line: by permitting him only female children, the Bene Gesserit had wrested control of his House from him. The man who married the Princess chosen to receive her father's throne would be the next Corrino emperor.
The emperor spent increasingly more time and energy in intrigue, much of it skirting the dictates of the Great Convention. In 10182, he was supposed (though the charge was never proven sufficiently to allow the Landsraad to act against him) to have interfered in a War of Assassins between House Harkonnen and House Kalifi, preventing the assassination of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Three years later, an Imperial minion kidnapped the twin daughters of one of the Houses Minor of Yorba, delivering them to Shaddam as a gift. The unfortunate young women were eventually freed, owing to their success in sneaking a message to a visiting diplomat from their homeworld in 10189; the Emperor's protest of ignorance of their true identities was not widely countenanced, particularly in private, but the unimportant position of the House involved again saved Shaddam from any disastrous consequences.
In 10191, Shaddam embarked on his most serious departure from the role permitted him by the Great Convention: he sent Imperial Sardaukar to fight in Harkonnen livery against the forces of House Atreides. This act, which must have seemed an ideal opportunity to expand his own power, was also the frustrated emperor's undoing. Instead of providing him with an easy profit from a discreet partner (the Harkonnens, even as they provided Shaddam with the huge amounts of melange he demanded in payment for his aid, would not dare to admit the reason for that payment) and a rumor-based surge in respect from the Landsraad, the Arrakis gambit ultimately cost Shaddam his throne, his eldest daughter, and his much-cherished comforts. Not even the patient and determined efforts of Count Fenring, whose billions of solaris in spice bribes helped maintain order and allay suspicion in the months following the defeat of House Atreides, could save Shaddam when Paul Atreides and his Fremen pitted themselves against him and his Sardaukar.
Bitter and defeated, Shaddam IV went into involuntary exile on Salusa Secundus in 10196, accompanied by his three remaining daughters, Count and Lady Fenring, and the majority of his courtiers from Kaitain. Until his death in 10202, he exhibited such an aversion for the name of Paul Atreides that even his letters from Princess Irulan were screened on arrival by Count Fenring and all references to the new Emperor carefully deleted.
C.W.
Further references: ATREIDES, LETO; ATREIDES. PAUL MUAD'DIB; FENRIG, COUNT HASIMIR; HARKONNEN, BARON VLADIMIR; SARDAUKAR; SALUSA SECUNDUS; Princess Irulan Atreides-Corrino, Count Fenring: A Profile, Temp. Series 243, and In My Father's House, tr. Rebeth Vreeb (Kaitain: Linthrin UP).
CORRINO, WENSICIA
(10170-10227). The third daughter of the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV and his wife the Lady Anuril; House Corrino regent for her son Farad'n (Harq al-Ada) until his alliance with House Atreides. It seems that Wensicia was the only member of a highly literary family who left no writing of her own. Thus, sources for her life are the unfinished autobiography of her son, Notes to My Life; her sister Irulan's autobiography, In My Father's House; and the Lady Anuril's journals, all found in the Rakis Hoard. The information paints a portrait of a woman who strove all her life to be her father's only son.
The third of five girls, Wensicia was raised and trained at home primarily by her father, her sister Irulan, and their tutors. She had little contact with her mother, more from Anuril's expressed preference than from her mother's death when Wensicia was six. The Lady Anuril has little pleasant to say about her daughter, and one journal entry, made when Wensicia was four, shows that Anuril regretted having ever given birth to the child. Anuril complained that Wensicia practiced cruelty for pleasure and was heard to laugh only when she had caused suffering. Apparently the only person who could influence the child's behavior at this state was her father, and Anuril records that he took little interest in Wensicia, being primarily concerned with his oldest child, Irulan.
Harq al-Ada, rather than seeing aimless cruelty in his mother, instead saw a life-long attempt to become the ruthless family leader her father was unable and her sister Irulan unwilling to be:
My mother's motto was "Always pay attention to detail." She had a solid sense of self and place, even after my grandfather had been deposed by the Atreides. She had always been the strongest supporter of the Sardaukar in the family, even when it meant arguing fiercely against Shaddam's somewhat lackadaisical neglect of them. She saw more clearly than he did that the Sardaukar were the strength of House Corrino. Unfortunately, whenever she had power, her methods were more often expedient than humane and her manners more often imperious than decorous.
As a child, Wensicia imitated the Bene Gesserit regimens her mother taught to Irulan. When their mother died, Irulan's training was assumed by a tutor, the Reverend Mother Agrippa Jeunne Masi, a woman who was, apparently, far more attracted to Wensicia than to her formal student. R.M. Masi is the only female companion ever mentioned who accepted Wensicia enthusiastically (Irulan seems almost jealous in her accounts of the relationship). From R.M. Masi, Wensicia learned many of the Bene Gesserit martial arts, the accumulation of data techniques, and the use of poisons. Wensicia was particularly interested in the history of the Assassins. Irulan records the household gossip that the death of their sister Chalice, quite soon after the death of their mother, was the result of the novice Wensicia's experimentation with simple poisons. Both Irulan and al-Ada, however, stoutly deny the validity of this rumor.
Wensicia, with the rest of the household, followed her father into his exile on Salusa Secundus. When she was in her late twenties, he
r father arranged a liaison between her and Dalak Fenring, second cousin to his close friend Count Hasimir Fenring. Though Wensicia and Dalak lived together for two years and though their liaison produced Farad'n and his sister Jeunne, the couple never married. Irulan offers several theories about their separation. First of all, she thought that Wensicia's long-standing involvement with various Sardaukar Bashars intimidated Dalak. She also notes that both Wensicia's temper and her hobbies upset Dalak, particularly referring to an incident involving Harkonnen Roulette which deprived Dalak of his jewel collection and almost deprived him of his life. The only direct comment she records from Wensicia, however, is that Dalak was a "mealy-mouthed historian" who wanted to read about combat rather than participate in it. From al-Ada's comments, though, it seems that Dalak and Wensicia maintained a relatively amicable if distant relationship for the rest of their lives.
Wensicia apparently continued a far more active and intimate relationship with her Sardaukar commanders, never at a loss for companionship when she lived on Salusa Secundus. Somewhat maliciously, Irulan reports Wensicia's boast that she was never without one man in the shadow of another. From al-Ada's notes, however, it seems that the Bashars' view of his mother was not wholly favorable. Her constant nagging at details while paying scant attention to the consequences of overall strategy annoyed her military and political advisors. She had learned the Bene Gesserit skill of data collection, but she had never been able to master the companion skills of analysis and synthesis necessary for effective use of the data. Her nickname among the Bashars was "Lady Ghafla," but her temper and her reputation for swift and vicious action forestalled the use of the title in her presence. Obviously, Wensicia spent little time worrying about ethical conduct, whether it was with her Sardaukars or with the world. Her fabled attempt to assassinate the Atreides twins using methods unsanctioned by the Dictum Familia is evidence of her disregard for other people's rules.
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