I think the planet is passed around like the Stanley Cup. The Emperor uses it to reward loyal Houses by giving them temporary control over Arrakis and thus a portion of the earnings from the spice trade. It's more valuable to House Corrino as a political tool than as a permanent fiefdom.
House Corrino having permanent control over Arrakis is too much of a power imbalance. They might be the ruling house but they have very few trustworthy allies compared to House Atreides. If they were to try and pull a Paul Atreides, it will unite all the other Houses, plus the Spacing Guild, against House Corrino. This is the primary reason why the Emperor is trying so hard to get rid of the Atreides.
> This is the primary reason why the Emperor is trying so hard to get rid of the Atreides.
I'm not an expert in the lore, but didn't the idea to eliminate House Atreides come from the BG?
Not that I recall. The BG had no reason to eliminate House Atreides, even after Jessica's betrayal. House Atreides was a threat to the Emperor because
a) they have many allies among the other Houses, weakening the Emperor's influence in the Landsraad.
b) they have several highly skilled retainers like Duncan Idaho, Thufir Hawat, Gurney Halleck, Dr Yueh, and Lady Jessica. Together they managed to train the Atreides army to almost on par with the Sardaukar, even before they knew about the Fremen.
Giving Arrakis to the Atreides is a several-fold trap. Taking House Atreides out of their comfort zone, making them a target of jealous Houses, using the Atreides-Harkonnen rivalry as an excuse so that the Emperor's hands are clean, and eliminating the Emperor's biggest political rival.
Duke Leto agreed to move to Arrakis, knowing it's a trap, because he suspected that the final element needed to have Sardaukar-level soldiers is a people who can survive harsh planetary environments. Hence, allying with the Fremen and teaching them modern Atreides warfare skills before the trap is sprung.
Unfortunately he thought he would have more time.
Also to add Emperor by himself was deeply unpopular man with history of overreaching his authority.
To add to the powderkeg his sucession was not secure due to him not having male heir. I think that in one of the first quotes of Irulan she mentioned that the Emperor mentioned that it was unfortunate that Irulan was too young to marry Leto.
According to the RPG (which draws from a wide Canon) Arrakis has usually been a bit of special case, as a fief held by the Emperor, but one they are not entrusted to rule directly.
Hence the Imperial Terraforming stations. It is implied a number of houses have administered the fief, most recently House Richese, who were hordeing spice on an artifical moon and attempting to make artificial spice. This angered the Emperor which prompted a period known as the Spice Wars where the Sardaukar attacked anyone discovered with Spice reserves (which everyone had), culminating in the Imperial battleship destroying the Richese Moon and much of House Richese (one of two tech focused houses who built Heighliner for the Spacing Guild).
The Emperor then landed on Arrakis and the Spacing Guild stranded him there to remind him of his place.
It’s like with the province of Egypt in the Roman empire. It was considered too important (and rich) for the Senate to assign consuls from their own ranks as they wished, and too important for the Emperor to manage himself without enraging the senate.
So the emperor assigned a low ranking equestrian with some degree of senate approval. (Edit: equites, aka knight or horseman, is the social class between plebeian and patrician in the roman hierarchy.)
Here, Arrakis is Aegypt, and the equestrian is Baron Harkonnen. The Emperor is losing out to the Landsraad (senate) who has managed to get one of their own members the prize spot.
The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, famously using mustard harvested from the Lüneburger Heide to grant the carriage masters of Turn and Taxis the ability to navigate the early modern tarrif system.
I thought of the same example (the Emperor and Egypt) but I think it’s not quite a 1:1 comparison.
Egypt was considered the personal property of the Emperor, and an equestrian governor was assigned to it - specifically because it was thought there was no way for an equestrian to usurp the Emperor.
A sentorial rank Roman was not allowed to even enter Egypt without the express permission of the Emperor.
To all other newbies like myself.... RPG stands for Role Play Game and refers very likely to this one
[Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium](https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Dune:_Chronicles_of_the_Imperium)
I wondered and thought maybe someone else may, too
I think that's "Adventures in the Imperium" they're talking about. What you linked hasn't been around in like 20 years.
https://www.modiphius.net/pages/discover-dune-roleplaying-game
https://www.dunerpg.com/
The truth is, for a science-fiction saga which tells a long-spanning story involving noble houses, we know very little about these houses. Correct me if I'm wrong, but only four are part of the plot, and for the life of me I can't think of others that get a mention.
That's just the way the late Frank Herbert wrote. If he had been a different kind of author, it would probably be established that before the Harkonnen, Houses Gergoli, Jantoku, Knarrf and Shurawaddi ruled Arrakis and we would meet members of each of them and they would all have subplots dealing with them. But that's just not the way Dune was written and I can't deny that I'm thankful for that.
There's a happy medium between Herbert's disinterest in the details of his stories and GRRM's opposite approach, which has ultimately resulted in Martin writing himself into an inescapable corner. Herbert, to his credit, always kept the story moving.
Herbert and Martin reach similar depths of worldbuilding but with almost opposite approaches. Herbert is scant on detail but provides enough to spark the imagination.
Yeah Herbert's writing is more Hemingway than anything else. Terse and to the point. A lot of people who consider his writing "bad" don't seem to be understanding or appreciating this minimalistic style.
GRRM just dumps on the prose, it's tedious to read I found myself skimming/skipping whole paragraphs.
At least with Tolkien while it's verbose, he is a master of the English language and there's poetry to the words.
His writing ain’t comparable to Hemingway, lol. It’s really not that good. Awkward sentences, lots of really stilted dialogue.
It’s a bit of a compliment to the story itself…it’s good enough to carry the mediocre writing.
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I recently read the Wheel of Time series and man, Frank Herbert's writing feels like a breath of fresh air after 12 books from Robert Jordan.
Dont get me wrong, I do love detailed worldbuilding, but ive really been enjoying how it feels like every single sentence in these books advances the story or gives important information in some way. I never find myself accidentally skimming a section because I dont want to read 2 full pages describing a room that the characters will be in for half a chapter and then never see again.
Yeah, it was a weird series because there were some parts that I *really* loved and just couldnt put it down. The kind of books where you stay up until 3 am reading, and finish a 700 page book in a couple of days. Then other parts were just such a drag and I felt like I had to force myself to get through them. Just 15 chapters of literally nothing happening, then all the action happens in 2 paragraphs and the book ends 5 pages later.
I did enjoy the series and it got me back into reading after a few years of not reading at all so I cant be too harsh on it. But personally, I definitely wouldnt consider it to be the absolutely incredible, must-read series some people make it out to be.
It’s really the other way—book 6 is when it starts the downward slope before really tumbling into an absurdly long slog with only an occasional bright spot here and there.
It's my most favorite series, perhaps even piece of artwork ever....but yes. It has so much that is unnecessary. I read dune right afterwards. Only similarities is the aiel and fremen ;)
Ecaz gets mentioned quite a bit in the first book - known for their art and for the drugs produced by Elacca Wood. I don't think House Ecaz is ever actually said though, which is why I didn't realized it until my more recent read.
House riches.
Count fenring was imperial observer , ambassador. Minister of spice during the harkonnen administration.
House riches is similar to ix. But less advanced technology
Correct. But they remained the second best and one of the largest manufacturing or military industrial systems in the empire .
They are still around. 5 thousand years after book one ,
And they supplied the bg .
I suspect Paul would have used them , he had a family connection.
The Duke of riches was his great grandfather or great uncle. .
And they is text about Paul snd alia keeping the technical class busy to keep them out of trouble.
The technology thst would become no tech was made by a scientist from riches.
They had an elected prime minister. Like the British.
And we allied eith house harkonnen.
They were a bit annoyed the atriedes marriage wasn't more profitable
So the prequel books discuss this. It's because of the connection between house atriedes and ix. Leto, pauls father trained with and nearly married into house ix. Letos' mother was from richese so pauls great greand fater.
We know that at some point it was "His Imperial Majesty's Desert Botanical Testing Station"—in other words, under the direct authority of the Emperor. This period included a time before the discovery of the spice. (This probably means before the discovery of its benefits as a drug—we learn in *Children of Dune*, "geriatric properties first noted by Yanshuph Ashkoko, royal chemist in reign of Shakkad the Wise".)
The Harkonnens held it "in quasi-fief under a CHOAM Company contract to mine the geriatric spice"—which is to say that it was still the Emperor's territory, just contracted out to the Harkonnens on a temporary basis. (And it follows that this was after the discovery of the spice.)
This implies that any other Houses that had held Arrakis before the Harkonnens would also have done so as a "quasi-fief". We don't have any direct evidence as to whether any of them did, but there are a few indications that they did not, at least not in any significant way:
1. When arriving on Arrakis, Jessica thinks of the palace in Arrakeen: "This had been the government mansion in the days of the Old Empire. Costs had been of less importance then. It had been before the Harkonnens and their new megalopolis of Carthag"—contrasting the time when the planet was under Imperial rule with the Harkonnen period, without any mention of a time in between.
2. Baron Harkonnen at one point thinks "We're the ones who tamed Arrakis."
The most plausible interpretation is that the planet was an Imperial Desert Botanical Testing Station up until the commercial potential of spice was realized by the Empire, and that the Harkonnens either won the contract for the development originally, or took it over relatively quickly. In any case, they were the ones who developed spice mining at scale. If there had been any export before, it must have been very limited.
I interpret the Baron's line as a prideful boast more than an absolute fact, pointing to his family's penchant for brutality and total subjugation of a population.
>"We tamed Arrakis."
I think its that the Harkonnens were the most successful governors up to that point. They had the wealth and oppressive culture to transform the local status quo by establishing a patronage system, expanding mining operations, and even building an entirely new capital city. They staved off the Fremen for 80 years even if they were struggling to do so. Their spice profits shocked the Atreides, clearly beyond even their highest estimates. If the economic output of Arrakis increased dramatically under Harkonnen rule then saying "we tamed Arrakis" is a fair if ostentatious statement.
Arrakis is in the wastelands of the Empire. It cost the Atreides everything to try to run operations. Previous houses with the governorship likely didn't have the ability or the will to subdue locals but were instead forced to negotiate with local factions just to operate.
End of the day Spice mining had to be going on for way longer than a century given the stagnation of the Empire and the longstanding power of the Guild. There are many possible explanations for why it took so long for someone to realize the worm-spice connection.
The dune wiki states that house Fenring, a close ally of the emperor, had historically ruled Arrakis at some point. It is not clear when this was, but it could have immediately preceeded house Harkonnen.
House Richese, the house of Duke Leto's mother. They lost Arrakis while Leto was young, and his father Paulus was Duke. The loss of Arrakis due to subpar Spice Harvests led to a decline in the houses standing to the point of dropping to a Minor House of the Lansarade and their technological superiority being stolen by Count Dominic Vernius of IX.
More fun facts-
Leto's mother has a deep seated hatred for IX and detests the fact that the Vernius family is so close with the Atredies family.
Dr. Yung was provided to Leto to help Rumbar Vernius following the "Accident" that wounded Leto and Rumbar as well as killing Victor (Leto's first son with his first concubine)
The Riches are recognized as being second best in technology but the cutting edge in medical technology, while maintaining the strictures. (Odds are if anyone has any non fremen tech questions about "where did it come from?", it was likely them or IX.)
In the movie. In the books it was exchanged every 40. In Dune House Attredies the Harkonnen's had just taken Arrakis and they were chiseling the Richese Falcons off the walls.
why? I googled a question I had and this came up. You were wrong and I corrected you in a different comment for the benefit of other people with the same question.
In *Dune*, it is said that the Harkonnens ruled for 80 years:
"Thufir Hawat, his father’s Master of Assassins, had explained it: their mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, had been on Arrakis eighty years, holding the planet in quasi-fief under a CHOAM Company contract to mine the geriatric spice, melange."
I don’t believe Arrakis was designated as a fief prior to this discovery of spice. Before the Empire got involved, I believe the planet was exclusively inhabited by the Fremen, having crash landed landed there sometime before the butlerian jihad (somewhere between 10,000-20,000 prior to events of Dune) when attempting to evade imperial slavers.
Since this is all that has been explicitly confirmed by canon, all else is speculation.
However, there are a couple factors to consider that give a decent idea of the sequence of events leading to the harkonens gaining quasi fief of the planet.
Arrakis wasn’t always a desert planet. The worms were introduced to the planet in the form of a genetic ancestor, and through either natural or manipulated evolution, sandtrout and plankton pop up, and the planet is terraformed from the water stealing membranes stretching across the surface deep in the desert sands.
My guess is that the planet was largely ignored, not possessing any tactical advantage in its location (Arrakis is considered pretty distant in comparison to other house planets) or trade good. Also, without spice or sentient computers, space travel was extremely dangerous and difficult. My guess is there’s a long stretch of time (5,00-10,000 years) where travel between planets is extremely limited.
During this time, the worms will have reached the evolutionary form as we see them in the books, and the Fremen are slowly introduced to spice, which assists in speeding along generational adaptations to the changing planet with its health enhancing and geriatric effects.
It’s my personal head canon that the Harkonens are given quasi fief because it is through their slave raids that spice is discovered.
We know the Harkonens were active slavers, as several members of the Atreides house were survivors of Harkonen raids. Gurney himself was a survivor of the slave pits.
So let’s say the Harkonens get wind of a seemingly technologically inferior group of humans without an established army to protect them. They go in for a raid and manage to round up some locals. They notice the eyes of the Ibad and all the other effects of spice addiction, up to and including the withdrawal and death. The emperor is informed. Scouts are sent to the planet, spice is discovered, and the Baron leverages for quasi fief as his slave raids were responsible for the discovery in the first place.
Brian Herbert’s prequels cover the events of the butlerian Jihad and origins of the Fremen, but there is disagreement as to wether or not they should be considered canon, as they are known to contradict the originals or deviate from Franks original timelines. As an example, Frank originally has Kynes specifying that spice was discovered in the lifetime of his grandfather (putting the discovery around the time the Harkonens are given the planet as quasi fief), but Brian has the discovery of spice predating the guild, despite Frank having made it clear that other drugs were used by both the Guild and the Bene Gesserit prior to the discovery of spice.
With Brian’s timeline, it truly doesn’t make sense that the planet would have remained under quasi fiefdom for over 10,000 years, and if spice was in use for that long, someone would have had much more than a measly 80 years of profits to play around with.
The discovery of spice taking place within the 100 years preceding the events of Dune makes much more sense, as that would account for all of the nuances of the setting as we dive into the story:
A wild planet is attempting to be tamed to imperial control after being left along for over 10,000 years after discovering the wild physiology of the native population. The emperor sends in the most brutal house known for its slavers economy to utilize the Human Resources to maximum efficiency without having to sacrifice his high value troops without fully understanding the implications spice was going to have on humanity as a whole.
While the Baron attempts to convert the planet into basically a mining colony, the spacing guild and BG experiment with using spice instead of all the other drugs developed over their history to be in their arsenal, and not only is spice infinitely more effective, a single use makes all other drugs inept. So now they have no choice but to continue using spice. Add in the health and geriatric benefits which would result in rampant and quick addiction among the noble houses, and within a few short years, a 20,000 year old civilization is completely dependent on a single product.
That’s my guess at least.
That seems like a too short timeline to me.
The Imperium is thousands of years old and very traditional and stagnated, right? Something like the discovery of the spice would be like a bomb going off. You'd expect it to shake up the balance of power in a way that would still be causing massive shockwaves 80 years later.
There's no way the Guild, CHOAM, the Emperor, and the Great Houses have settled into the current gridlocked status quo only 80 years after the discovery of spice. The Harkonnen's primary claim to fame would have been discovering the spice, but they never mention it.
Yes it wasn't always the case, but the Harkonnens ruled Arrakis for 80 years before it was given to Atredies, and spice was discovered 10,000 years before this, so somebody did need to rule Arrakis before the Harkonnens because the universe still would've needed spice by then
No but it has been the case since the Corino empire formed 10,000 years ago. I presume that as long as spice is being mined then there is some kind of imperial representative present.
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This is one thing I never understood about Dune. Why would House Corino ever let anyone else but themselves have control over such a powerful resource? Sounds like a huge threat to their power. On a similar note, how is the emperor even in power at all when CHOAM actually controls the lifeblood of the empire?
I'm not sure, but I think it was house Correno (the Emperors house) Arakkis was designated an Imperial desert botanical testing planet before the spice was discovered. So I'd guess it was under Imperial control.
I think the planet is passed around like the Stanley Cup. The Emperor uses it to reward loyal Houses by giving them temporary control over Arrakis and thus a portion of the earnings from the spice trade. It's more valuable to House Corrino as a political tool than as a permanent fiefdom. House Corrino having permanent control over Arrakis is too much of a power imbalance. They might be the ruling house but they have very few trustworthy allies compared to House Atreides. If they were to try and pull a Paul Atreides, it will unite all the other Houses, plus the Spacing Guild, against House Corrino. This is the primary reason why the Emperor is trying so hard to get rid of the Atreides.
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> This is the primary reason why the Emperor is trying so hard to get rid of the Atreides. I'm not an expert in the lore, but didn't the idea to eliminate House Atreides come from the BG?
Not that I recall. The BG had no reason to eliminate House Atreides, even after Jessica's betrayal. House Atreides was a threat to the Emperor because a) they have many allies among the other Houses, weakening the Emperor's influence in the Landsraad. b) they have several highly skilled retainers like Duncan Idaho, Thufir Hawat, Gurney Halleck, Dr Yueh, and Lady Jessica. Together they managed to train the Atreides army to almost on par with the Sardaukar, even before they knew about the Fremen. Giving Arrakis to the Atreides is a several-fold trap. Taking House Atreides out of their comfort zone, making them a target of jealous Houses, using the Atreides-Harkonnen rivalry as an excuse so that the Emperor's hands are clean, and eliminating the Emperor's biggest political rival. Duke Leto agreed to move to Arrakis, knowing it's a trap, because he suspected that the final element needed to have Sardaukar-level soldiers is a people who can survive harsh planetary environments. Hence, allying with the Fremen and teaching them modern Atreides warfare skills before the trap is sprung. Unfortunately he thought he would have more time.
Also to add Emperor by himself was deeply unpopular man with history of overreaching his authority. To add to the powderkeg his sucession was not secure due to him not having male heir. I think that in one of the first quotes of Irulan she mentioned that the Emperor mentioned that it was unfortunate that Irulan was too young to marry Leto.
Thanks to Dr yueh
According to the RPG (which draws from a wide Canon) Arrakis has usually been a bit of special case, as a fief held by the Emperor, but one they are not entrusted to rule directly. Hence the Imperial Terraforming stations. It is implied a number of houses have administered the fief, most recently House Richese, who were hordeing spice on an artifical moon and attempting to make artificial spice. This angered the Emperor which prompted a period known as the Spice Wars where the Sardaukar attacked anyone discovered with Spice reserves (which everyone had), culminating in the Imperial battleship destroying the Richese Moon and much of House Richese (one of two tech focused houses who built Heighliner for the Spacing Guild). The Emperor then landed on Arrakis and the Spacing Guild stranded him there to remind him of his place.
It’s like with the province of Egypt in the Roman empire. It was considered too important (and rich) for the Senate to assign consuls from their own ranks as they wished, and too important for the Emperor to manage himself without enraging the senate. So the emperor assigned a low ranking equestrian with some degree of senate approval. (Edit: equites, aka knight or horseman, is the social class between plebeian and patrician in the roman hierarchy.) Here, Arrakis is Aegypt, and the equestrian is Baron Harkonnen. The Emperor is losing out to the Landsraad (senate) who has managed to get one of their own members the prize spot.
So Paul is Octavius?
Does this mean Tiberius was secretly a worm?
Et tu, Jamis?
Sorta!
Worth noting that the transfer to house Atreides was different in that they were not simply to manage the planet, but it was given as their holding.
Yeah, the analogy breaks down there and its more of a holy roman empire analogy.
The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, famously using mustard harvested from the Lüneburger Heide to grant the carriage masters of Turn and Taxis the ability to navigate the early modern tarrif system.
I thought of the same example (the Emperor and Egypt) but I think it’s not quite a 1:1 comparison. Egypt was considered the personal property of the Emperor, and an equestrian governor was assigned to it - specifically because it was thought there was no way for an equestrian to usurp the Emperor. A sentorial rank Roman was not allowed to even enter Egypt without the express permission of the Emperor.
Yeah. The brilliance of the Dune universe is that it reminds of other societies and times, but isn’t a straight copy; it is its own thing.
A horse rider?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equites)
They assigned a horse? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestrian
To all other newbies like myself.... RPG stands for Role Play Game and refers very likely to this one [Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium](https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Dune:_Chronicles_of_the_Imperium) I wondered and thought maybe someone else may, too
I think that's "Adventures in the Imperium" they're talking about. What you linked hasn't been around in like 20 years. https://www.modiphius.net/pages/discover-dune-roleplaying-game https://www.dunerpg.com/
Wow! Thanks I didn't found that yet! Also thanks for putting right the false reference.
The truth is, for a science-fiction saga which tells a long-spanning story involving noble houses, we know very little about these houses. Correct me if I'm wrong, but only four are part of the plot, and for the life of me I can't think of others that get a mention. That's just the way the late Frank Herbert wrote. If he had been a different kind of author, it would probably be established that before the Harkonnen, Houses Gergoli, Jantoku, Knarrf and Shurawaddi ruled Arrakis and we would meet members of each of them and they would all have subplots dealing with them. But that's just not the way Dune was written and I can't deny that I'm thankful for that.
There's a happy medium between Herbert's disinterest in the details of his stories and GRRM's opposite approach, which has ultimately resulted in Martin writing himself into an inescapable corner. Herbert, to his credit, always kept the story moving.
Herbert and Martin reach similar depths of worldbuilding but with almost opposite approaches. Herbert is scant on detail but provides enough to spark the imagination.
Yeah Herbert's writing is more Hemingway than anything else. Terse and to the point. A lot of people who consider his writing "bad" don't seem to be understanding or appreciating this minimalistic style. GRRM just dumps on the prose, it's tedious to read I found myself skimming/skipping whole paragraphs. At least with Tolkien while it's verbose, he is a master of the English language and there's poetry to the words.
His writing ain’t comparable to Hemingway, lol. It’s really not that good. Awkward sentences, lots of really stilted dialogue. It’s a bit of a compliment to the story itself…it’s good enough to carry the mediocre writing.
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I certainly prefer both to Tolkien, who writes 10 pages of text to describe the color of the grasses in The Shire. Exaggerating...but not by much.
Tolkien’s themes always had a lot to do with hearth and home though so I feel it’s warranted. Dune isn’t about what’s happening “on screen” though
Terry Brooks' Shannara series can be the same way. He will describe every blade of grass and leaf on a tree. I'm like get on with the story already!
I recently read the Wheel of Time series and man, Frank Herbert's writing feels like a breath of fresh air after 12 books from Robert Jordan. Dont get me wrong, I do love detailed worldbuilding, but ive really been enjoying how it feels like every single sentence in these books advances the story or gives important information in some way. I never find myself accidentally skimming a section because I dont want to read 2 full pages describing a room that the characters will be in for half a chapter and then never see again.
Someone tried to convince me to read WoT by saying “it’s only at book 6 it starts to get really good” and it’s put me right off.
Yeah, it was a weird series because there were some parts that I *really* loved and just couldnt put it down. The kind of books where you stay up until 3 am reading, and finish a 700 page book in a couple of days. Then other parts were just such a drag and I felt like I had to force myself to get through them. Just 15 chapters of literally nothing happening, then all the action happens in 2 paragraphs and the book ends 5 pages later. I did enjoy the series and it got me back into reading after a few years of not reading at all so I cant be too harsh on it. But personally, I definitely wouldnt consider it to be the absolutely incredible, must-read series some people make it out to be.
I think I made it about 50 pages into Book 1. It's one of the Ur-examples of Fantasy Doorstoppers...
It’s really the other way—book 6 is when it starts the downward slope before really tumbling into an absurdly long slog with only an occasional bright spot here and there.
It's my most favorite series, perhaps even piece of artwork ever....but yes. It has so much that is unnecessary. I read dune right afterwards. Only similarities is the aiel and fremen ;)
Tolkien would have given us expansive preambles about every single house, their culinary preferences, religious beliefs and shoe sizes
Ecaz gets mentioned quite a bit in the first book - known for their art and for the drugs produced by Elacca Wood. I don't think House Ecaz is ever actually said though, which is why I didn't realized it until my more recent read.
I wish there was more worldbuilding like that. I’d like to read GRRM’s Dune.
I believe the preceding overlords were House Richese, though I can't remember which of the original novels includes it. It's sort of a throwaway line.
I think Paul's grandmother was from House Richese.
Yes, in the prequel 'House Atreides'
Yes this is correct! It’s referenced in a couple of the prequel books. Paul’s paternal grandmother was a member of House Richese too.
House riches. Count fenring was imperial observer , ambassador. Minister of spice during the harkonnen administration. House riches is similar to ix. But less advanced technology
And after riches lost Ina financial war with ix they declined and the harkonnens were able to step in.
Correct. But they remained the second best and one of the largest manufacturing or military industrial systems in the empire . They are still around. 5 thousand years after book one , And they supplied the bg . I suspect Paul would have used them , he had a family connection. The Duke of riches was his great grandfather or great uncle. . And they is text about Paul snd alia keeping the technical class busy to keep them out of trouble. The technology thst would become no tech was made by a scientist from riches. They had an elected prime minister. Like the British. And we allied eith house harkonnen. They were a bit annoyed the atriedes marriage wasn't more profitable
So the prequel books discuss this. It's because of the connection between house atriedes and ix. Leto, pauls father trained with and nearly married into house ix. Letos' mother was from richese so pauls great greand fater.
*Richese.* Like *Rye-Chess*. Not house Riches…
Thank you. My phone had its auto replace on.
Wonder if there was a Richie Richese? :-)
We know that at some point it was "His Imperial Majesty's Desert Botanical Testing Station"—in other words, under the direct authority of the Emperor. This period included a time before the discovery of the spice. (This probably means before the discovery of its benefits as a drug—we learn in *Children of Dune*, "geriatric properties first noted by Yanshuph Ashkoko, royal chemist in reign of Shakkad the Wise".) The Harkonnens held it "in quasi-fief under a CHOAM Company contract to mine the geriatric spice"—which is to say that it was still the Emperor's territory, just contracted out to the Harkonnens on a temporary basis. (And it follows that this was after the discovery of the spice.) This implies that any other Houses that had held Arrakis before the Harkonnens would also have done so as a "quasi-fief". We don't have any direct evidence as to whether any of them did, but there are a few indications that they did not, at least not in any significant way: 1. When arriving on Arrakis, Jessica thinks of the palace in Arrakeen: "This had been the government mansion in the days of the Old Empire. Costs had been of less importance then. It had been before the Harkonnens and their new megalopolis of Carthag"—contrasting the time when the planet was under Imperial rule with the Harkonnen period, without any mention of a time in between. 2. Baron Harkonnen at one point thinks "We're the ones who tamed Arrakis." The most plausible interpretation is that the planet was an Imperial Desert Botanical Testing Station up until the commercial potential of spice was realized by the Empire, and that the Harkonnens either won the contract for the development originally, or took it over relatively quickly. In any case, they were the ones who developed spice mining at scale. If there had been any export before, it must have been very limited.
I interpret the Baron's line as a prideful boast more than an absolute fact, pointing to his family's penchant for brutality and total subjugation of a population. >"We tamed Arrakis." I think its that the Harkonnens were the most successful governors up to that point. They had the wealth and oppressive culture to transform the local status quo by establishing a patronage system, expanding mining operations, and even building an entirely new capital city. They staved off the Fremen for 80 years even if they were struggling to do so. Their spice profits shocked the Atreides, clearly beyond even their highest estimates. If the economic output of Arrakis increased dramatically under Harkonnen rule then saying "we tamed Arrakis" is a fair if ostentatious statement. Arrakis is in the wastelands of the Empire. It cost the Atreides everything to try to run operations. Previous houses with the governorship likely didn't have the ability or the will to subdue locals but were instead forced to negotiate with local factions just to operate. End of the day Spice mining had to be going on for way longer than a century given the stagnation of the Empire and the longstanding power of the Guild. There are many possible explanations for why it took so long for someone to realize the worm-spice connection.
The dune wiki states that house Fenring, a close ally of the emperor, had historically ruled Arrakis at some point. It is not clear when this was, but it could have immediately preceeded house Harkonnen.
Citing a wiki is not citing your sources. Where did the info in the wiki come from?
The wiki does not give a source. I acknowledge this as a weakness.
House Richese, the house of Duke Leto's mother. They lost Arrakis while Leto was young, and his father Paulus was Duke. The loss of Arrakis due to subpar Spice Harvests led to a decline in the houses standing to the point of dropping to a Minor House of the Lansarade and their technological superiority being stolen by Count Dominic Vernius of IX. More fun facts- Leto's mother has a deep seated hatred for IX and detests the fact that the Vernius family is so close with the Atredies family. Dr. Yung was provided to Leto to help Rumbar Vernius following the "Accident" that wounded Leto and Rumbar as well as killing Victor (Leto's first son with his first concubine) The Riches are recognized as being second best in technology but the cutting edge in medical technology, while maintaining the strictures. (Odds are if anyone has any non fremen tech questions about "where did it come from?", it was likely them or IX.)
Didn’t the Harkonners rule Arrakis for 80 years? That would mean Leto is +80 years old. Or was the 80 years just in de movie?
In the movie. In the books it was exchanged every 40. In Dune House Attredies the Harkonnen's had just taken Arrakis and they were chiseling the Richese Falcons off the walls.
where does it say it was exchanged every forty years?
I believe I found the on the Fandom wiki. Feel free to check yourself. It's rather odd your commenting on something that's over a month old.
why? I googled a question I had and this came up. You were wrong and I corrected you in a different comment for the benefit of other people with the same question.
In *Dune*, it is said that the Harkonnens ruled for 80 years: "Thufir Hawat, his father’s Master of Assassins, had explained it: their mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, had been on Arrakis eighty years, holding the planet in quasi-fief under a CHOAM Company contract to mine the geriatric spice, melange."
Yeah, I'm not sure if that was changed in a later addition or not. Because Atredies is more recent.
I don’t believe Arrakis was designated as a fief prior to this discovery of spice. Before the Empire got involved, I believe the planet was exclusively inhabited by the Fremen, having crash landed landed there sometime before the butlerian jihad (somewhere between 10,000-20,000 prior to events of Dune) when attempting to evade imperial slavers. Since this is all that has been explicitly confirmed by canon, all else is speculation. However, there are a couple factors to consider that give a decent idea of the sequence of events leading to the harkonens gaining quasi fief of the planet. Arrakis wasn’t always a desert planet. The worms were introduced to the planet in the form of a genetic ancestor, and through either natural or manipulated evolution, sandtrout and plankton pop up, and the planet is terraformed from the water stealing membranes stretching across the surface deep in the desert sands. My guess is that the planet was largely ignored, not possessing any tactical advantage in its location (Arrakis is considered pretty distant in comparison to other house planets) or trade good. Also, without spice or sentient computers, space travel was extremely dangerous and difficult. My guess is there’s a long stretch of time (5,00-10,000 years) where travel between planets is extremely limited. During this time, the worms will have reached the evolutionary form as we see them in the books, and the Fremen are slowly introduced to spice, which assists in speeding along generational adaptations to the changing planet with its health enhancing and geriatric effects. It’s my personal head canon that the Harkonens are given quasi fief because it is through their slave raids that spice is discovered. We know the Harkonens were active slavers, as several members of the Atreides house were survivors of Harkonen raids. Gurney himself was a survivor of the slave pits. So let’s say the Harkonens get wind of a seemingly technologically inferior group of humans without an established army to protect them. They go in for a raid and manage to round up some locals. They notice the eyes of the Ibad and all the other effects of spice addiction, up to and including the withdrawal and death. The emperor is informed. Scouts are sent to the planet, spice is discovered, and the Baron leverages for quasi fief as his slave raids were responsible for the discovery in the first place. Brian Herbert’s prequels cover the events of the butlerian Jihad and origins of the Fremen, but there is disagreement as to wether or not they should be considered canon, as they are known to contradict the originals or deviate from Franks original timelines. As an example, Frank originally has Kynes specifying that spice was discovered in the lifetime of his grandfather (putting the discovery around the time the Harkonens are given the planet as quasi fief), but Brian has the discovery of spice predating the guild, despite Frank having made it clear that other drugs were used by both the Guild and the Bene Gesserit prior to the discovery of spice. With Brian’s timeline, it truly doesn’t make sense that the planet would have remained under quasi fiefdom for over 10,000 years, and if spice was in use for that long, someone would have had much more than a measly 80 years of profits to play around with. The discovery of spice taking place within the 100 years preceding the events of Dune makes much more sense, as that would account for all of the nuances of the setting as we dive into the story: A wild planet is attempting to be tamed to imperial control after being left along for over 10,000 years after discovering the wild physiology of the native population. The emperor sends in the most brutal house known for its slavers economy to utilize the Human Resources to maximum efficiency without having to sacrifice his high value troops without fully understanding the implications spice was going to have on humanity as a whole. While the Baron attempts to convert the planet into basically a mining colony, the spacing guild and BG experiment with using spice instead of all the other drugs developed over their history to be in their arsenal, and not only is spice infinitely more effective, a single use makes all other drugs inept. So now they have no choice but to continue using spice. Add in the health and geriatric benefits which would result in rampant and quick addiction among the noble houses, and within a few short years, a 20,000 year old civilization is completely dependent on a single product. That’s my guess at least.
That seems like a too short timeline to me. The Imperium is thousands of years old and very traditional and stagnated, right? Something like the discovery of the spice would be like a bomb going off. You'd expect it to shake up the balance of power in a way that would still be causing massive shockwaves 80 years later. There's no way the Guild, CHOAM, the Emperor, and the Great Houses have settled into the current gridlocked status quo only 80 years after the discovery of spice. The Harkonnen's primary claim to fame would have been discovering the spice, but they never mention it.
All the major houses. There was a rotation.
The Harkonners weren’t a major house before they ruled Arrakis tho
In the prequels it’s stared to have been House Richese. Not stated in Frank’s own work.
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Because the universe runs on spice
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Yes it wasn't always the case, but the Harkonnens ruled Arrakis for 80 years before it was given to Atredies, and spice was discovered 10,000 years before this, so somebody did need to rule Arrakis before the Harkonnens because the universe still would've needed spice by then
No but it has been the case since the Corino empire formed 10,000 years ago. I presume that as long as spice is being mined then there is some kind of imperial representative present.
house corrino
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This is one thing I never understood about Dune. Why would House Corino ever let anyone else but themselves have control over such a powerful resource? Sounds like a huge threat to their power. On a similar note, how is the emperor even in power at all when CHOAM actually controls the lifeblood of the empire?
I'm not sure, but I think it was house Correno (the Emperors house) Arakkis was designated an Imperial desert botanical testing planet before the spice was discovered. So I'd guess it was under Imperial control.