ATREIDES, LETO II: GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE (10209-13724).
Older
than the fabled Noah, more godlike than any previous messiah, be it Maometh,
his father Paul Muad'Dib, or even Jehanne Butler, Leto II has proved more mercurial,
more difficult of understanding, even in the centuries since his timely/untimely
death than any other figure in the entire history of humanity on hundreds of
star systems or thousands of planets. He is a myth enshrouded in legend, and
it may be that he himself created both myth and legend. It may be, in fact,
that we will never know the truth about this erratic genius, this predator of
the galaxy, this wormlike, wormy god…the epithets could be multiplied exponentially
and we will never come near the final truth.
What then are the facts of his life? Born to Paul Muad'Dib, the first Atreides
emperor, and his consort, Chani Liet-Kynes, he overthrew the tyrannical rule
of the Abomination, Alia Atreides, his aunt, took on the sandworm skin in a
move that fundamental religionists have always hailed as the Incarnation, and
ruled as God Emperor for over 3,500 years. He died in a fall from a bridge,
although the Church of the Divided God claims that the stunted sandworms that
still may be found in one small spare desert on Rakis are embodiments of Him-they
use the capital letter-and that He will return as the fully grown, terrifying,
majestic Shai-Hulud, Old Father Eternity, to restore Arrakis, His home world,
and the Fremen, His faithful disciples, to greatness.
We know of course, of the anarchy that followed his death, the Starvation and
the Scattering that eventuated in our present civilization. But we do not know
Him. The Rakis Finds, of course, have been immensely helpful in our quest for
knowledge of his era. We had long since studied and restudied the invaluable,
priceless Stolen Journals, but they pale to virtual insignificance beside the
richness of the materials in the Dar-es-Balat diggings. So voluminous are they
that several decades will elapse before even their cataloging is completed,
to say nothing of their analysis.
Of the God Emperor, several things are certain. His voluminous dictatel recordings
are largely self-serving and completely lacking in objectivity. Consider his
famous statement, one he reiterated again and again, before any audience: "Only
fools prefer the past!" Yet has there been any person-if one may refer
to Leto as a person-in the thousands of years of recorded history who was so
totally dominated by the past as Leto himself9 Did not his conversation continually
concern the knowledge he had derived from his thousands of ancestral voices?
Did he not refer, again and again, to legendary, perhaps mythic Terran figures
such as Chaucer or Alexander? Have we forgotten the wisdom-for such it was,
no matter our final assessment of Leto- contained in The Stolen Journals: "if
you know all of your ancestors, you were a personal witness to the events which
created the myths and religions of our past. Recognizing this, you must think
of me as a mythmaker."
What then did Leto mythologize? First of all, himself. He created more legends
concerning his immutability, his omniscience, his omnipotence, indeed, his eternal
nature, than anything else. Yet, in reality, it was the brute physical strength
of the biologic adaptation of the sandworm that he had become that was the original
source of his imperial power. He capitalized on that strength-and how many legends
he created of his inhuman abilities! -to cement his position as emperor and
to terrify entire populations. From that moment on, religious awe and blind
superstition, combined with the longevity of the sandworm he was becoming, made
his rule inevitable.
An early Duncan Idaho, the consummate Atreidean supporter, rebelled against
Leto's increasing authoritarianism and questioned Leto's abuse of that same
loyalty. Idaho-11099 initiated the last, sad Sardaukar campaign against the
emperor, a move that resulted in Idaho's death, the final destruction of the
Imperial Legions, and the founding of the Fish Speakers. Historians, perhaps
some of those incinerated by Leto on the pyre of their own works, have remarked
on the almost tragic irony involved in this abortive campaign. To be sure, the
very notion of any Duncan Idaho leading the hated Saudarkar in an ill-fated,
yea, grandiose, campaign battle against an Atreides is the stuff of which a
latter-day Harq al-Harba could have made great tragedy. Yet we cannot simply
dismiss that Idaho's action as a mere mental aberration and classify it in the
same breath as the infamous Dr. Wellington Yueh's treason. Rather we should
consider what colossal emotions were required to enable Idaho to overcome his
ingrained, almost genetically inculcated, loyalty to any Atreides. And yet just
as some revisionist historians have been able to explain even Yueh's triumph
over his pyretic conscience by adducing the incalculable passion of his love
for his beloved Wanna, so we should now examine Leto's treason-not Duncan-13724's-to
the Atreidean way, his treason to his grandfather Leto I, the Red Duke, to his
father Paul Muad'Dib, and to himself.
Leto, then, was false to himself and to the ancient Atreides line and its sense
of truth, honor, and devotion. It is imperative to remember that he was but
an adolescent when he assumed both the throne and the sandworm skin. He never
had the opportunity to grow up, to mature. He had never enjoyed a normal life.
He was forced to overcome temptation, test after test. Struggles for his very
life were for him simple rites of pas- sage even before he was a teenager. And
as an early teen, he exhibited all of the outlandish, ridiculous activity we
have associated with both adolescence and adolescents for centuries. In fact,
one psychologist, Professor Istrafan Koye of the University of Ix, has maintained
quite cogently in his monumental The Last of the God Emperors (subtitled There
But For the Grace of God Goes God, 3 vol., Salusa Secundus: Karshak) that the
key to Leto's character is quite simply that he was an adolescent for the entirety
of his 3,500-year reign and that if one wants to understand "His Annelidity"
(the phrase is Koye's) one must approach him as one might approach any other
juvenile delinquent, with birch rod firmly in hand. How else can we understand
Leto's repeated temper tantrums over the fact that his Duncans might disagree
with him on even trivial matters or that his majordomos might dare to suggest
that "His Ouroborosity" might occasionally have feet (or is the proper
word "segments"?) of clay.
Who but a classic "brat kid" could be so unaware of the discrepancy
in his own life between appearance and reality, between shadow and substance?
We know, for example, from his last dictatel messages recorded shortly before
his demise, that he had developed a mad-some would call it "adolescent"-passion
for the "incomparable" Hwi Noree. While he admitted that sexual union
with her was impossible because his wormself had subsumed his human genitalia
many centuries earlier, he nonetheless mooned over her like a teenage boy in
heat. To be sure he had his ancestral memories of rampant sexuality to sustain
him, he said again and again and again and again, until an Idaho or a Moneo,
even a blindly adoring Nayla, might not wonder if he were protesting a bit too
much. In fact Koye cogently argued that if memory of sexuality could sustain
Leto, why did he not apply the same principle to food and refuse to eat. Surely
if memories of ancestral licentiousness could satisfy his sexual need, so also
memories of gluttonous banquets stretching back in time for thirty or more centuries
should satisfy his physical self.
Koye also was the first to articulate the incredible contradictions between
Leto's famed Golden Path and the breeding program he had taken over from the
Bene Gesserit. The two seem at opposite ends of the scale: you cannot plan to
breed humanity into some higher type and at the same time give humanity the
essential freedom which is supposedly at the heart of the Golden Path. Koye
even argued, with some accuracy, that the Bene Gessefit were far more successful
with their ages-long breeding program than Leto was with his. The Sisterhood,
we now recognize, had twice nearly produced the Kwisatz Haderach: according
to all indications Jehanne Butler's aborted baby, Sarah Butler, would have produced
the Kwisatz Haderach, but, tragically, her death delayed his arrival until Paul
Atreides, Leto's father, was born.
How then can we explain the eccentricities, the foibles, the genuine accomplishments
of the famous/infamous God Emperor? Because he was worm, he no longer seems
human. Because he was human, we tend to forget he was worm. However, we must
never forget that he was also, in the grand mythic sense of a long-abused word,
King. He ruled over his desert kingdom for nearly four millennia, attempting
to birth a civilization, a people and a culture that did not need to fear itself.
One persistent myth, perhaps dozens of centuries old, from legendary Terra,
may help explain him. It is the myth of the Fisher King who ruled over a Waste
Land, a land so desolate that crops did not grow, humans did not reproduce,
and despair was endemic. Wounded in the genitals, the Fisher King's kingdom
was sterile, with both ruler and subjects awaiting a Redeemer, a pure Knight
who would heal the King and return fertility to the land.
Leto Atreides II was that Fisher King. His Arrakeen desert made any historic
or mythic Waste Land seem fertile by comparison. Yet his vision of Arrakis was
inevitably limited, perhaps because of his youth, perhaps because of incarnate
nature, perhaps because of his very perversity, perhaps because of his essential
lack of humanity as evidenced by his lack of genital activity. If his vision
for his home planet was limited, so was it also for the Imperium. Because he
fancied himself as the Redeemer of his planet and the Imperium, he attempted
to become the Knight of particular purity who would heal himself.
He failed in one sense.
He triumphed in another.
He was the once and future King. His vision for his planet and his kingdom failed
because, as Leto himself was more than once forced to admit, he was not God
in any ultimate sense.
Yet he succeeded because he died, and Redeemers must die for their people. When
he died, his limited vision of the Golden Path also died. Thus after the Starvation
and the Scattering, we are now free-free from Leto, free from the Golden Path,
and free from the threat of ourselves.
Who knows what waits beyond the stars?
W.M.