Vladimir was the third son of Siridar-Baron Gunseng Harkonnen (10079 — 10130) and Baroness Muertana (later known as the "Black Widow"), a dark beauty with the disposition of a scorpion whom Gunseng had married to form an alliance with the then-powerful House Sarobella. The first son died in infancy. The second, Araskin, was a club-footed, simple-minded giant, standing two meters and weighing close to 110 kg in his prime. Araskin was noted for his ferocity of temperament and devotion to his mother. Both qualities can be ascribed to his physical impairment. He viewed himself as a potential champion, frustrated at birth. His doting mother encouraged this delusion, explaining that his condition was due to the genetic shortcomings of Gunseng, whom she loathed. Vladimir was born five years after Araskin, while Muertana reared the ostensible na-Baron herself, poisoning his mind against his father. Gunseng possessed a keen understanding of political realities, along with the necessary ruthlessness to manipulate them. Each of these qualities was passed on to Vladimir.
If qualities exhibited in childhood are any indication then Vladimir seemed the answer to his father's dream of improving his House. As he grew to manhood he received training in the arts martial, musical, and political from the best tutors his father could afford. He soon showed a high intelligence, an insatiable hunger for learning, and an extraordinary ability to absorb what he was taught. Although stocky of build, he was well-knit, darkly handsome with a full, round face, and charming in an earthy way. His baritone singing voice was notable for its strength, range, and suppleness. The footloose poet Sil, Reeve Perrin, provides a contemporary description:
And what a prodigy he was. Handsome and penetrating, with full lips and hearty features, at eighteen he was already a commanding presence, born to rule. And when he sang, even the cynical courtiers Gunseng had inherited produced crocodile tears of rapture. Perhaps only hindsight enables me to think I sensed something evil beneath the strong, manly appearance, especially during his most charming moments. Perhaps it was his voracious eyes, missing nothing, consuming you as they looked. But to witness his quality in fencing matches, cheops tournaments, and musical performances was simply to be impressed with the man himself. Even then he was commander of Harko's Praetorians and privy to Gunseng's deepest councils, which excluded his mother and older brother. It was obvious he was being groomed for the Barony, and how else could it be?
Muertana had been shunted to one side to play with her huge toy, Araskin — whom Gunseng did not acknowledge as his natural son, though he never denied it publicly. Gunseng's preference for Vladimir, an affection genuinely returned, cost him his life. At a state banquet, Araskin murdered his father and attacked Vladimir, nearly killing him before the mentat Chardin Klees stuck a poisoned needle into Araskin's neck. At that moment Vladimir changed. That night he strangled his mother. At the age of twenty he had become the Baron Harkonnen of folklore.
CAREER AS BARON. Vladimir consolidated his position ruling by the most drastic methods. The fate of his father taught him that weakness bore its own fruits. Although trained in the finer arts, the cunning brutality inherited from his grandfather and mother came to the fore and remained the outstanding characteristics of his Barony until his death. All Praetorians and planetary military officials were subjected to deep psycho-chemical interrogation and stress-analysis. Those who failed were murdered out of hand. Anyone with Sarobellan sympathies or connections was publicly beheaded. The minor aristocracy was shaken up and brought in line with the threat of extinction. Fear and power, power and fear — these became the Baron's most trusted tools.
Vladimir now aspired to a more favorable relationship with the Imperial monarch to further his financial ambitions. A CHOAM directorship was his immediate personal goal; from such a position it would be possible to build a Landsraad alliance aimed at the emperor. Vladimir apparently found this ambition worthy of his House. First he needed to place himself above suspicion in the emperor's eyes by demonstrating his complete loyalty. Then, if scheme-within-scheme was successful — well, who could not envision a Harkonnen on the Golden Lion Throne?
The young Baron began auspiciously by voluntarily donating twenty percent of the estimated annual ziradnium mine profits to the Imperial Sardaukar. Such a practice was not uncommon at the time, especially among new Great Houses. The Imperium had by then grown luxurious and its bureaucracy costly, often to the detriment of the Sardaukar. Military fief donations thus became an avenue to royal approval.
This was but one tactic in a larger campaign of simultaneous financial aggrandizement and Imperial wooing. Vladimir also played both ends against the middle, forming lucrative partnerships with lesser Houses while he channeled donations under various labels into Imperial accounts. He would buy out lesser House investments with the guarantee of a percentage (less depreciation and overhead) while lubricating his consolidations with advisory fees to the CHOAM directors themselves to secure their acceptance. House Corrino, naturally, received royalties under the table, along with military conscripts, raw materials and finished products on "negotiated terms," a euphemism for kickbacks. Indeed, much of Vladimir's success can be attributed to an unerring instinct for the timing and placement of bribes. When his financial practices were questioned by a Landsraad Delegation-of-Inquiry, he said:
"What benefits Harkonnen benefits the Landsraad. What benefits the Landsraad benefits CHOAM. And CHOAM benefits all. We must all work together. Economic fertility sustains us and I wish merely to manure that ground. Those who accuse me of corruptive practices simply envy my success. My only answer is, 'Why are they so poor?'"1
One can detect the mind of Chardin Klees in this smooth retort, and indeed the aged but redoubtable mentat was perhaps the Baron's most precious instrument during the first thirty years of his rule. After the trusted Klees died in 10162, the Baron employed a succession of Mentats, most twisted and distant, and he had them killed when they had outlived their usefulness. No one was ever able to replace Chardin Klees.
In the same year as Klees' death, the fortunes of House Harkonnen reached the top of the wheel. It acquired the melange rights of Arrakis, something Vladimir had worked long and hard to achieve. After more than three decades of careful maneuvering, he was rewarded with the richest planet in the empire: He was fifty-two years old.
The spice of Arrakis was an economic bonanza for House Harkonnen, which oversaw its production for a percentage, prorated according to yield. CHOAM received 20% of production to be apportioned among Landsraad Directors. The Spacing Guild received 15% (they were careful not to appear greedy). The Bene Gesserit received 5%, still a staggering amount in total annual yield. House Harkonnen realized 20 to 30%, and the remainder filled the emperor's coffers.
The melange contract contained incentive for maximum production, which meant applying the tightest harness and harshest whip to the subject population. Vladimir's slave-driver was his eldest nephew Count Glossu Rabban (10132-10193), legal son of his youngest demibrother, Abulurd, who had renounced the name and rights of Harkonnen for the subdistrict governorship of Rabban-Lankiveil. Nevertheless, Count Glossu proceeded to exercise his duties with Harkonnen enthusiasm, becoming known on Arrakis as "Beast" Rabban.
So successful was Vladimir's deputy that House Harkonnen realized great wealth on Arrakis, but at the cost of the everlasting hatred of the natives, most notably the wild Fremen, whom the Baron dismissed as "desert scum." He might have paid them more attention had he not then been involved in the only heterosexual affair of his life.
Vladimir won a breathing space with the attainment of Arrakis. Perhaps the romantic inheritance from Gunseng now reasserted itself. Perhaps he desired a change of taste — his pederasty awakening doubts about his masculinity or curiosity about sexual alternatives. Whatever the case, when the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Croesia offered him a consort trained in the erotic arts, Vladimir did not question her motives. He took one look at the willowy figure of Tanidia Nerus and was enticed. ("Tanidia Nerus" is now believed to have been a carefully selected, trai
ned and rejuvenated Gaius Helen Mohiam.)
Several accounts say Vladimir loved her. Others reject this uncharacteristic emotion out of hand. Still others advance the notion that Vladimir believed Tanidia to be his mother reincarnated. The truth may exist somewhere among these propositions. What is known is that the affair was stormy and brief. Tanidia fled or was spirited from Harko in the eighth month of her pregnancy under threatening circumstances and subsequently vanished behind the Bene Gesserit cloak of secrecy from which she had emerged. Only in Croesia's Memoirs can be found a short exchange from Tanidia's report to her superior shedding light on what occurred with the Baron:
CROESIA: You are aware how much this has cost us. There must be no question as to your child's parentage.
TANIDIA: There is none, though subliminal arousal techniques were necessary to overcome his impotence.
CROESIA: Such techniques weren't necessary with his boys.
TANIDIA: As our psychological profile indicated, his misogyny is deeply rooted but ambivalent. Inverted idealization of the anima reflects on his own childhood. Thus the love for the young boys — himself in his own mind. The murder of Muertana was a release, but there is strong reason to believe that before he murdered her they —
CROESIA: Now he channels it through repression and hatred, reverting to himself unconsciously. Good. It is a lever, should we ever need it. You have done well, my dear. You will bear a daughter, of course.
That daughter, born in 10154, was the Lady Jessica, who would become the consort of Duke Leto Atreides and the mother of Paul Muad'Dib.
Many centuries of enmity divided House Harkonnen from House Atreides. Now Vladimir, by the counsel of his latest Mentat, the infamous Piter de Vries, embarked upon a campaign both to advance the fortunes of his house and destroy the Red Duke Leto. The plan was bold, devious, and risky, but the ultimate rewards were incalculable.
No wise emperor allowed any Great House to grow too powerful. Therefore Shaddam IV had long been concerned with House Atreides which exercised much influence in the Landsraad. Shaddam understandably feared that a Landsraad alliance might coalesce around a powerful Great House, altering the balance of power at the expense of the Imperium. But Shaddam had his own ambitions: not only did he wish to maintain his own power, but he also desired dominance over the Landsraad through control of CHOAM Directorship votes. House Atreides stood in his way. In addition, the Red Duke had trained a small military force which, man-for-man, equaled the Sardaukar. Thus Shaddam's mind was decided in the course he and Harkonnen would take with his royal cousin.
Events on Dune at this point, except for the "poison tooth" incident, lie outside the discussion of Vladimir Harkonnen. But that one scene throws a grotesquely comic light on the Baron in his moment of victory.
After the death of his father, Vladimir turned from exercise to the arts of pederasty and eating for relaxation. By 10191, he would have been literally too fat to move had it not been for his suspensor units. During his interrogation of Duke Leto, those suspensors saved his life. The Red Duke bit down on a poison-filled tooth, spewing forth a deadly gas. One needs but to compare Vladimir's reputation for deadly efficiency with the picture of the huge body making a hasty, bouncing retreat — arms flailing as he bobbed backwards — to enjoy a grim chuckle. His own granddaughter, Alia, described him unsparingly a few years later: "He doesn't appear much, does he — one frightened old fat man too weak to support his own flesh without the help of suspensors."
It was an apt assessment of the Baron at the illusory height of his career. With the advent of Alia, his historical significance assumed a unique character. It is thus better to continue his biography after the Arrakis Revolution in terms of his relationship with Alia, rather than end it with his death at her hands.
THE BARON AND ALIA. Psycho-regeneration is a misleading term, though convenient in the image evoked. In Alia's case, only a fine line separates possession by genetic memories from an essential regeneration of Vladimir Harkonnen within Alia's unstable psyche. Preborn, Alia was bound to undergo an inner struggle with the ancestral figures whose DNA was intrinsic to her own genetic composition, like an unwanted but unavoidable inheritance. This struggle she ultimately lost, failing to achieve an alliance, such as Leto II's, which allowed the survival of her own independent identity. Vladimir Harkonnen's victory, quelling the other insistent inner voices, gradually subsuming Alia's psychic integrity, may almost be considered revenge. Yet not the Baron but merely his genetic essence manifested itself in Alia's mind. Poetic irony here waxes supreme.
What was the nature of Vladimir's postmortem manifestation to Alia's awareness? Most documents describe the reemergent Baron appearing in Alia's mind in the form he had at his death — grossly obese, speaking in a bass voice. Such a limited notion contradicts the foundation of possession itself, which is based on genetic essence, not on temporal definition or development. Would not a fat Baron dressed in red robes elicit hate and revulsion from Alia, no matter how well such a figure quelled the hosts of ancestors desiring a front seat in her mind? The best answer to the question comes from art, not from psychology: the keen insight of the great Harq al-Harba provided his audience with a stunning piece of stage business and at the same time gives us a key to understanding psychoregeneration.
The play Water for the Dead (10302) tells of the intertwined lives of Harkonnen and Alia. In Act I, we see Vladimir as a slim, athletic, handsome youth, but by Act III he has become the hulking monstrosity killed by the infant Alia. In the last Act, we see the gradual effects of her possession only through the actions of Alia; but in the climactic scene she begins to dance with an invisible partner. As she spins, her robes billow forth, gradually changing in color (through the use of a selective Holtzman Effect field) from black to red. As she completes her final turn, the face she presents to the audience is not that of Alia, but that of Vladimir from Act I. Here is the answer.
It is fatuous to assume that such a personality as Vladimir Harkonnen would attempt an enterprise without first determining the precise leverages over those he needed to use. Vladimir, existing within Alia, knew something about her. Indeed, he knew more, than enough about her to serve himself up in the handsome, charming guise of his youth when he thought it would do the most good — say, when political frustration reinforced her feelings of inadequacy, or when the power game led to sexual desires of questionable healthiness — Probably Vladimir often presented himself in his prime: masculine, forceful, with a rich baritone voice exquisitely coaxing, soothing, persuading by nuance, intonation, inflection. As both young lover and autocratic grandfather he insinuated his presence and possessed Alia, for this must have been the precise combination required.
One cannot imagine the vividness with which he was gradually able to manifest himself to Alia unless one wants to experience possession firsthand. But the impact was obviously powerful, justifying the Bene Gesserit fears of Abomination. Vladimir was an anomaly: a figure whose career lasted longer than his life; his ghost realized his great desire, to put a Harkonnen under his influence — Alia — on the Imperial throne. But in death as in life the Atreides continued to foil him. One last observation concerns the form in which the Baron was manifested before Alia threw herself out a window to her death: the form was the obese Baron's, the futile shouts, his basso voice. Did this guise aid in propelling Alia to her end? If so, then Alia's fall was also the fall of the House of Harkonnen.
S.T.
NOTE
1From The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: My Years with House Harkonnen by Rezhinaud Sagi, tr. Leewi Stiin (Giedi Prime: Trammel).
Further references: HARKONNEN, GUNSENG; NERUS, TANIDIA; Sil, Reeve Perrin, Notes of a Will-o-the-Wisp, tr. T.H. Erussus (Fides: Manx); R.M. Decius Nancy Croesia, Memoirs, tr. Ewan Gwaladar, B.G. Foundation Studies 3 (Diana: Tevis); Harq al-Harba, Water for the Dead, in Complete Works, ed. Blaigvor Ewanz (Grumman: Tern); Harq al-Ada, The Dune Catastrophe, tr. Miigal Reed (Mukan: Lothar).
HAWAT, THUFIR
> (10075-10196). Thufir Hawat, who many believe was the greatest Mentat of the Imperium, was born the first of nine children to Golani and Alwidi Hawat on Logi, third planet of Alpha Centauri B.
Hawat's mother Golani, herself briefly trained as a potential mentat, recognized the capability in her infant son and took the proper steps to begin his training. Golani scoured the Imperium for experts in muscle and mind control, and in sharpening the sensitivities and the awareness; and for teachers of languages and the physical and biological sciences. She sought to have her son well grounded not only in the fundamentals customarily given a potential mentat, but also in economics, communications, and military strategy.
When informed of his potential and given his options, Thufir chose to continue his training and was sent to an eminent school for Mentats on Ix. There, Thufir soon made two significant attachments. The first was to Kolinar, whose wit and charm immediately attracted Thufir; the two young men quickly became inseparable friends. The second was to the young woman Anyya with whom Thufir fell, for the first and last time in his life, in love. The daughter of a Bene Gesserit and an official of the Imperial court, the highly intelligent Anyya rivaled Thufir in scholastic accomplishments and returned his affection. By all accounts they shared for years a happy and fulfilling relationship.
The reports are notably sketchy, however, on the end of their affair. We do know that Anyya left Ix suddenly with Kolinar and is never referred to again in any of the Hawat papers. Rouse, the Mentat for House Dioscuri and Thufir's lifelong friend, reports (in his book, The Education of a Mentat) Thufir's moroseness following Anyya's departure, his adamant refusal to speak of her, and a cryptic remark Thufir made about this time, "The female of the species is without doubt incapable of fidelity." Seemingly, it was Camelot come again, but with a difference: rather than rising above his affliction to an Arthurian strength that could infuse his soul with iron, Thufir allowed his pain to debase his love for Anyya into a corrosive hate and to generate a deep, and lifelong, mistrust of all women, especially those connected with the Bene Gesserit. This anathema undoubtedly accounts for the fact that Thufir never again became seriously involved with a woman.
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