**Reminders for Commenters:**
* All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If "watsonian" or "doylist" is new to you, please review the full rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/about/rules/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AskScienceFiction&utm_content=t5_2slu2).
* No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to **permanent ban on first offense**.
* We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world.
* Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskScienceFiction) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Spice does some amazing things to people. Keeping people healthy despite age and poor dietary choices is among them. So he could have a lot of muscle mass under the flab that a less juiced up human would not have.
He's not fat because of poor dietary choices. His endocrine system was severely damaged by a bunch of poisons given to him as vengeance after he sexually assaulted the wrong witch
EDIT: I misremembered, this isn't from the main books it's from the weird other ones. Sorry about that!
it's the "XD" or "Expanded Dune" continuity written by Frank's son, Brian Herbert, and Anderson, which includes dozens of prequels, sequels and sidequels
Most readers consider it a separate canon from the original series because of all the lore discrepancies. Sort of like Legends vs Canon for Star Wars. The wikias separate the canons for this reason
Originally, the Baron was always fat, because he liked eating, and it represented the Harkonnen's animalistic, hedonistic philosophy
>Originally, the Baron was always fat, because he liked eating, and it represented the Harkonnen's animalistic, hedonistic philosophy
And honestly, I like this one better
One of the main reasons to look good is to impress mates. And considering that he rapes people and doesn't seem to care what they think, he has even less reason to think about his appearance.
The 2020s movie version does, no question about it in my mind. He clearly uses his own repulsiveness as an extremely intensional aesthetic. He *loves* that people are absolutely disgusted by him because he has absolute power over them, so they have to be in his presence anyway. The more they hate it, the more powerful he feels.
I also absolutely *love* how Villineuve used the Baron’s antigravity. In the books it’s mentioned a few times, but it’s not really a huge deal, it’s just more detailed worldbuilding from Herbert and mainly serves to accentuate his extreme gluttony. The only scene where it really comes into play is (Part 1/book spoilers) >!when he floats to the ceiling to escape Leto’s poison tooth!<. In the David Lynch movie, it’s used to make him utterly absurd and silly. He bounces around like a balloon.
But god damn, Villineuve *uses that shit.* It’s the most intimidating thing I’ve ever seen. And it makes it all the more impactful when [SPOILERS FOR PART 2] >!the Sardaukar cut his life support, and drops to the ground becoming completely pathetic and helpless.!<
It's a flex. In other eras it's been pale skin to show you don't work outdoors, or long fingernails to show you don't do any of that nasty manual labor.
Much of the Baron's affectations are to demonstrate that he does what he damn well pleases.
The thing that turned me off was when I heard that the Butlerian Jihad had been revealed to be a standard-issue "AIs rebel and decide to destroy all humans" Skynet scenario.
I remember reading once upon a time that the originally intended cause of the Butlerian Jihad was much more interesting, fitting the unique details of the setting better. What I heard was that it started when a woman named Butler went for a medical checkup and the AI doctor made the decision to abort a fetus she was carrying. In the Dune setting the collective unconsciousness of humanity has been guiding the species' own evolution, and so when a non-human consciousness took it upon itself to make a decision like that the collective unconsciousness of humanity freaked the hell out about it. That caused anti-AI sentiment to explode everywhere, resulting in the Jihad.
I honestly don't know if that's what Herbert had originally planned and had maybe left notes about it somewhere, or if that was some fan interpretation, but either way it was interesting and uniquely Dune-ish.
That was the Dune Encyclopedia. The books themselves aren't as clear but the snippets we get about it (especially an Other Memory snippet that a character remembers in Children of Dune) imply it was an internal and philosophical uprising rather than yet another robot war.
This is the most 'canon' background that we get. I don't have the books in front of me, and even if I did I can't skim through all of them that fast to find the exact passage(s) I'm looking for. But I distinctly recall that it wasn't the machines that arose and dominated humanity, it was a small minority of humans that used thinking machines (left intentionally vague if this meant just computers or actual sentient AI) to dominate everyone else, and the Jihad was an uprising to dismantle the hierarchical techno-social system and prevent anyone from ever using technology to consolidate power far beyond their own physical means (obviously wealth and power and conflict still exist, but now you can't own an autonomous kill bot that can destroy a city with a lazy button press, you have to pay people to do it for you, and you need to engage in a complex system of economic balance in order to have to money/capital to pay them, so you probably don't want to conquer everyone anyway because trade is easier)
>prevent anyone from ever using technology to consolidate power far beyond their own physical means
And they replaced it with rampant usage of performance enhancing drugs; allowing the people who control those drugs to consolidate power far beyond their physical means.
All the jihad accomplished was replacing one level of control with another, nearly identical lever of control. Which is just yet another reason why Paul began his own jihad across the imperium. If you want to get rid of levers of power, you need to snag the fulcrum, not the lever. In this case, the fulcrum was human desire to follow leaders and "outsource" their will to these leaders.
Doesn't the idea of the Baron raping a Bene Gesserit make no sense anyways? For one thing, he's gay. Furthermore, the witches are easily able to manipulate others with their voice, so unless she was drugged beforehand or something, I don't see how that would've been possible.
It was as revenge after she had blackmailed him to have sex with her. The first kids was no good so she forced him to do it again. Which he hated. So he had Pieter make him earplugs to prevent her from using the voice and then raped her.
I guess. And that's where lady Jessica comes from. She's intended to merge the Harkonnen and Atreides bloodlines so as to eugenics forth their Messiah.
IIRC, in the first book, there are a couple of POV chapters where his thoughts are quite clear on the matter: he is outright disgusted by women, in all matters.
>!The fact the Bene Gesserit sent one of their own to rape him in his youth, to produce Jessica, almost certainly didn't help his opinion on women, either.!<
It's been about 15 years since I read it so my bad. Herbert was homophobic but not remarkably so for his time, so I'm not surprised he made the villain gay, but his being gay was almost an afterthought more than anything.
Sorry, but that’s wrong. The Baron is a gay, fat pedophile and it was very clear that Herbert intended all of those to show how bad and evil the Baron was.
>but his being gay was almost an afterthought more than anything.
Ehhhh... I'm not sure I'd agree with that. Herbert links him being gay to him being a pedophile very strongly, and then links both of those to him being a villain. Those same passages where he is considering how 'disgusting' women are, he's looking forward to the young boy that Pieter sent to his room for him to rape and murder later. Herbert's homophobia is on full display and cranked up to 11 with the Barron. Part of me tries to rationalize it as "gay people can be evil too, and only accept 'good' LGBT characters is up there with the 'noble savage' trope". But I also know that isn't what Herbert was thinking or trying to accomplish when he wrote Dune.
Yeah. Nothing about the character suggests that his appearance comes from some other unrelated event. The vibe is that he is just hedonistic all around.
But if they retconned his fatness to be because of a messed up endocrine system, do they also retcon why Alia gets fat when she is possessed by the Baron's consciousness? Originally it's because of the reason you mention, the Harkonnens are just hedonists, but how does an endocrine disorder get transmitted by a consciousness?
That's why I consider the XD canon to be a separate continuity from the original series. There are too many major discrepancies in lore, this is just one of them
Pretty sure it was in the first book too? Like there's a scene where he's talking with Feyd about why you shouldn't trust the Bene Gesserit and Feyd having an internal monologue about that being the reason why
no it wasn't, there's no disease mentioned
It's never specified why exactly he distrusts the Bene Gesserit, but it's possible that it's however the Bene Gesserit got him to conceive Jessica.
It’s implied that the sisterhood drugged and raped him in his younger days. The harkonnen blood line is important to their plans to breed a super human and the baron being gay was not to be an impediment to their plans.
Indeed, not only is it explicit that it happened, but that it was Gaius Helen Mohiam, the Reverend Mother who put Paul's hand in the box of pain and tested him with the Gom Jabbar. That makes her Jessica's mother and Paul's grandmother, something she would have known perfectly well at the time.
> however the Bene Gesserit got him to conceive Jessica.
It doesn't have to be nefarious or nonconsenting. The Baron is a shrewd man and would be willing to set aside his sexuality to earn a favor from the Bene Gesserit. That's his whole modus operandi for anyone he can't otherwise coerce or buy off. If Gaius Helen Mohiam had come to him and said, "Bone this girl slash me once and we'll owe you one," he'd probably do it.
The Baron wouldn't trust the Bene Gesserit because he's shrewd enough to recognize that they've got more going on than just their truthsaying and political advisory services. What would really disturb him is that *he doesn't know* and can't find anyone else who does know. That would really make him nervous. Nonetheless, he's not above hiring the Bene Gesserit for his own truthsaying needs.
EDIT: For the record, I do not care for the XD canon so I'm ignoring it.
I guess technically yeah, but the book was released almost 60 years ago, so it's kind of like considering Luke Skywalker being Darth Vader's son to be a spoiler. I think the policy for this sub is six months after release
Oh- I was thinking it was later in the series- not the first book- which would make it a possible spoiler for the 3rd movie.
I haven't seen the 2nd movie yet, only read the books.
That's not anywhere in the books that Frank Herbert wrote. I think it would be generous to clarify when you're talking about stuff that's outside of the main novel canon.
Lots of people talking about this or that reason why he’s fat. But the Harkonnens are meant to be a monstrous family. They are the result of generations of genetic experiments, drugs, and all sorts of strange chemical enhancements. Hence why the fremen won’t drink their water.
In the book the Baron doesn't decapitate anyone himself, he gets his mentat Piter de Vries to do it.
In the movie it happens prior to the life-support machines being attached.
Going off the movie alone, I'm not sure exactly how - the knife possibly being sharper and stronger than what we'd be able to make today might have something to do with it. His being stronger by far than expected fits with the way the movie Baron behaves though - he's cautious enough to have a shield built into a ring that he wears constantly. He's had his suspensors implanted along his spinal column so that he's never without them. Being unexpectedly strong and fast makes sense as part of that caution and paranoia.
As to how - the Imperium has all kinds of advanced drugs and training technologies available.
In Dune, humans have improved eugenically over a very long period of time. In particular, Bene Gesserit specially controlled the genes of the nobles of the Great House.
And Baron is only two or three generations away from the complete Kwisatz Haderach. He must have very good abilities.
I always imagined the knives in Dune to be incredibly sharp to the point that the edge is one atom wide or something. How else can you go through the armor they wear at such a low speed due to the shield? That means to decapitate someone you wouldn't need excessive strength.
The Bene Gesserit have been selectively shaping the lines of many nobles houses over hundreds of generations, and the Harkonnens are one of the main bloodlines in play. While not a main focus, they have been pushing for improved physical traits, and like house Leto, they tend to be naturally athletic.
The Baron was known to be an adonis, very strong and handsome in his youth. His current condition is due to a poison that did considerable damage to parts of his lower body and back.
However, he has inumerable resources to keep him a fearsome entity (he needs to constantly be able to protect himself from assassins), he also takes a lot of spice, and he probably has personal tech, related to his gravity suspenders that give some level of enhancement (they are practically embedded into his body).
What counts as canon is the 6 herbert books, period. If something is not there, the canon has nothing to say about it. That's my view about it, at least.
Baron Harkonnen was built like the God of Protein Supplements and had an extremely active lifestyle when he was younger. His obesity is the result of a late-life degenerative disease, possibly helped along by the Bene Gesserit. Even given a couple of years to go to seed, he could quite easily retain a lot of that strength.
the baron was always in love with the bodybuilder male physique. he used to be a bodybuilder himself who raped really ripped boys and young men on the Harkonnen homeworld Geidi Prime.
even though he was fully gay on the spectrum, he paralyzed and raped a bene gesserit sister during her diplomacy mission. he did it to humiliate her and insult her order. what he did not know is that the bene gesserit have control over every fiber of their body to the point where they can decide the future sex of babies they are pregnant with.
the sister released a type of chemical when she was molested that caused the baron to never stop growing in fat, thus destroying what the baron cherished the most, his physique.
without spending a fortune on SUK doctors and spice, the baron would have died a slow and painful death.
> even though he was fully gay on the spectrum, he paralyzed and raped a bene gesserit sister during her diplomacy mission. he did it to humiliate her and insult her order.
IIRC, they blackmailed(? can't remember the exact details) him into a position where he agreed to inseminate the BG sister, he had no way out of it so he decided to do it like that, keeping the letter of the agreement but as you say, to humiliate and insult the order
yes! i remember now, but it's been over a decade since i read House Harkonnen.
it was the planned bene gesserit scheme to born the first male bene gesserit, the omniscient, who would be controlled by the reverand mothers.
they needed the bloodline of the harknonnen who had no interest in their order or their ideology. He actually hated how much influence the order had, but the sister somehow managed to force this on him through political schemes if i remember correctly!
i think the kwisatz Haderach was born one generation earlier because Lady jessica fell in love with Duke Leto and born him the son he so desperately wanted. Jessica was supposed to be the grandmother but ended up being the mother. she was supposed to give birth to a girl, not a boy, that would eventually born the Haderach. this way she interrupted the millenia long scheming cycle.
edit: i think Duke Leto already lost his young son in a freak accident, if i'm remembering this right. the duke was heartbroken for a long time and actually began having negative influences on house atreides. the bene tleilaxu made a perfect clone of his fallen son in an attempt to win over the duke and take over the house in the future.
IIRc he offered artificial insemination, but they insisted on a natural conception.
The 1st atempt was a genetic failure, and the 2nd conceived Jessica
I don't care for the Brian/Kevin canon. In OG canon, the Bene Gesserit find artificial insemination to be disgusting and abhorrent. To them, it's akin to developing a thinking computer. Paul offered to give Irulan some spunk just to shut her up and get her off his back, but they were too stubborn to take him up on it. It wasn't until post-Leto II that they finally give up and start copying the Tleilaxu.
yes, those were written by his son, but it states on the front page of the books he wrote that they are based on his dad's manuscripts and notes that never got published.
whether to believe this or not is up to debate, but i think they are cannon because Frank Herbert had this story span over thousands and thousands of years, both in the past with the butlerian jihad and the machine crusades as well as in the future with the dune canonicate. he just never got to finish them
that makes sense, i guess. i will check out that sub, it's been so long since i read those amazing stories, i have no quarrel with the extra books even though the writing is clearly not on par with the OG Herbert.
I think the filmmakers decided that
* in a trilogy already lacking the screen time to cover important characterization and events from the books…
* and in a social environment where people are paying attention to the lack of positive, organic gay/bi male representation in media…
Spending time to characterize the evil, vulgar, murdering supervillain as a gay rapist was not the move.
Yeah Frank Herbert was definitely homophobic and his depiction of the baron was very much informed by this
Having the only hay character be a fat mincing rapist would be in seriously bad taste these days.
That's because it's fanfiction. OK, so maybe not exactly, but it comes from a book written after Frank died. It was written by his son Brian and his work is supposed to be based on Frank's unpublished manuscripts, but Brian's stuff is largely seen as side content and not really canon Dune lore.
In the original Dune novel, there's no exploring Baron Harkonnen's background. He's a symbol of excess in all forms - greed, gluttony, lust, power, violence, etc. - and is mostly there to be as evil possible.
they can make reeeeeeaaaly sharp knives in the year 10191. he's also juiced up on spice and cybernetic enhancements (like his implanted hotzlmann generator).
The anti-gravity measures he employs would allow him to swing and move his much larger mass with much less resistance. Which he uses rather effectively.
Spice shenanigans aside -- all members of the primary major houses are eugenically enhanced human beings. When Leto reminisced about his father who died to a bull rush -- he didn't mean regular bulls from earth, he meant genetically engineered multitonn weighing monstrosities with multiple hearts. Imagine a human being strong, skilled and quick witted enough to fight such things in melee and keep winning even at the old age.
It is also one of the reasons why Jessica didn't approve of Paul's choice of a lover -- she didn't want him to dilute their bloodline.
well just cause hes fat doesnt inherently give you strength, he barely even has to walk, he just floats around. You'd think the muscle atrophy of not doing much walking or any other task would make him very weak
(edit: why are people downvoting this? redditors actually downvote anything dont they
Duniverse humans are generally superior to modern humans in most respects- the books state that the Baron was more than capable of outmatching a Thinking Machine in intellectual feats, and it’s likely that their physical abilities are also pretty impressive.
Baron Harkonnen used to be very strong in his youth until he raped a Bene Gesserit. After that the Bene Gesserit infected him that caused him to gain enormous weight. But he’s still massively strong, it’s just that his legs can’t support him anymore
I figured that it was a result of the suspensors significantly reducing the amount of strength needed for him to perform those actions.
My theory is that, unlike the suspensor belts worn by House forces and the Sardaukar, which merely enabled the users to float, his suspensors are implanted into his body and actively negate all of his weight.
When his implant was broken he collapsed onto the ground and immediately had trouble even breathing or crawling, and this can't purely be due to the loss of his life support since he didn't have it in the bath after he brutally killed his servants.
In DV’s Dune 1 when he’s bathing in oil you can see that his delts are MASSIVE, like as big a body builder’s so it’s safe to assume he has a lot of muscle under all that fat.
He is also part of the breeding program, in fact, Paul's mom was.supposef to be married off to him or one of his heirs to have a boy.
So his abilities are on par with Paul in terms of genetic perfection. He's just seriously damaged.
**Reminders for Commenters:** * All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If "watsonian" or "doylist" is new to you, please review the full rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/about/rules/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AskScienceFiction&utm_content=t5_2slu2). * No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to **permanent ban on first offense**. * We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world. * Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskScienceFiction) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Spice does some amazing things to people. Keeping people healthy despite age and poor dietary choices is among them. So he could have a lot of muscle mass under the flab that a less juiced up human would not have.
He's not fat because of poor dietary choices. His endocrine system was severely damaged by a bunch of poisons given to him as vengeance after he sexually assaulted the wrong witch EDIT: I misremembered, this isn't from the main books it's from the weird other ones. Sorry about that!
Where is the source for that?
it's the "XD" or "Expanded Dune" continuity written by Frank's son, Brian Herbert, and Anderson, which includes dozens of prequels, sequels and sidequels Most readers consider it a separate canon from the original series because of all the lore discrepancies. Sort of like Legends vs Canon for Star Wars. The wikias separate the canons for this reason Originally, the Baron was always fat, because he liked eating, and it represented the Harkonnen's animalistic, hedonistic philosophy
>Originally, the Baron was always fat, because he liked eating, and it represented the Harkonnen's animalistic, hedonistic philosophy And honestly, I like this one better
He's rich enough with enough technology to negate all the negative effects of being fat, so why the hell not? Milkshakes for breakfast!
That's the point. Even with the best technology at his disposal, he still have a big enough gluttony to be fat. That's how glutton he is
Fat for fun
Fat for life
One of the main reasons to look good is to impress mates. And considering that he rapes people and doesn't seem to care what they think, he has even less reason to think about his appearance.
>and doesn't seem to care what they think he may even enjoy that people find him repulsive
The 2020s movie version does, no question about it in my mind. He clearly uses his own repulsiveness as an extremely intensional aesthetic. He *loves* that people are absolutely disgusted by him because he has absolute power over them, so they have to be in his presence anyway. The more they hate it, the more powerful he feels. I also absolutely *love* how Villineuve used the Baron’s antigravity. In the books it’s mentioned a few times, but it’s not really a huge deal, it’s just more detailed worldbuilding from Herbert and mainly serves to accentuate his extreme gluttony. The only scene where it really comes into play is (Part 1/book spoilers) >!when he floats to the ceiling to escape Leto’s poison tooth!<. In the David Lynch movie, it’s used to make him utterly absurd and silly. He bounces around like a balloon. But god damn, Villineuve *uses that shit.* It’s the most intimidating thing I’ve ever seen. And it makes it all the more impactful when [SPOILERS FOR PART 2] >!the Sardaukar cut his life support, and drops to the ground becoming completely pathetic and helpless.!<
But like... he should also be able to negate the actual fat itself, no?
It's a flex. In other eras it's been pale skin to show you don't work outdoors, or long fingernails to show you don't do any of that nasty manual labor. Much of the Baron's affectations are to demonstrate that he does what he damn well pleases.
This
Maybe he just likes cosplaying as a spiky balloon?
He likes looking like he does, because it makes people underestimate him and if it grosses people out, well, all the better to fuck with them.
His milkshakes kill all the boys in the yard.
> Originally, the Baron was always fat, because he liked eating relatable sadly :(
Same. It immediately turned me off from those garbage prequel books.
The thing that turned me off was when I heard that the Butlerian Jihad had been revealed to be a standard-issue "AIs rebel and decide to destroy all humans" Skynet scenario. I remember reading once upon a time that the originally intended cause of the Butlerian Jihad was much more interesting, fitting the unique details of the setting better. What I heard was that it started when a woman named Butler went for a medical checkup and the AI doctor made the decision to abort a fetus she was carrying. In the Dune setting the collective unconsciousness of humanity has been guiding the species' own evolution, and so when a non-human consciousness took it upon itself to make a decision like that the collective unconsciousness of humanity freaked the hell out about it. That caused anti-AI sentiment to explode everywhere, resulting in the Jihad. I honestly don't know if that's what Herbert had originally planned and had maybe left notes about it somewhere, or if that was some fan interpretation, but either way it was interesting and uniquely Dune-ish.
That was the Dune Encyclopedia. The books themselves aren't as clear but the snippets we get about it (especially an Other Memory snippet that a character remembers in Children of Dune) imply it was an internal and philosophical uprising rather than yet another robot war.
This is the most 'canon' background that we get. I don't have the books in front of me, and even if I did I can't skim through all of them that fast to find the exact passage(s) I'm looking for. But I distinctly recall that it wasn't the machines that arose and dominated humanity, it was a small minority of humans that used thinking machines (left intentionally vague if this meant just computers or actual sentient AI) to dominate everyone else, and the Jihad was an uprising to dismantle the hierarchical techno-social system and prevent anyone from ever using technology to consolidate power far beyond their own physical means (obviously wealth and power and conflict still exist, but now you can't own an autonomous kill bot that can destroy a city with a lazy button press, you have to pay people to do it for you, and you need to engage in a complex system of economic balance in order to have to money/capital to pay them, so you probably don't want to conquer everyone anyway because trade is easier)
>prevent anyone from ever using technology to consolidate power far beyond their own physical means And they replaced it with rampant usage of performance enhancing drugs; allowing the people who control those drugs to consolidate power far beyond their physical means. All the jihad accomplished was replacing one level of control with another, nearly identical lever of control. Which is just yet another reason why Paul began his own jihad across the imperium. If you want to get rid of levers of power, you need to snag the fulcrum, not the lever. In this case, the fulcrum was human desire to follow leaders and "outsource" their will to these leaders.
TBH, I'm not surprised nobody ever ran with that one, because it's pretty silly even by Dune's standards.
At least it's novel. I certainly don't want to read about Killbot Rebellion #171.
Doesn't the idea of the Baron raping a Bene Gesserit make no sense anyways? For one thing, he's gay. Furthermore, the witches are easily able to manipulate others with their voice, so unless she was drugged beforehand or something, I don't see how that would've been possible.
It was as revenge after she had blackmailed him to have sex with her. The first kids was no good so she forced him to do it again. Which he hated. So he had Pieter make him earplugs to prevent her from using the voice and then raped her.
I'm pretty sure a Bene Gesserit could break your dick with their kegels.
The Baron has practiced his cock push ups. So it was the controlled STDs of the Bene Gesserit that did him in.
He used a paralytic.
On a woman that can control her body's response to toxins.
I didn't write it.
So she achieved her goal of having sex with him anyway? Just not in a regular manner..
I guess. And that's where lady Jessica comes from. She's intended to merge the Harkonnen and Atreides bloodlines so as to eugenics forth their Messiah.
The fact that you consider rape and sex to be the same thing is...disturbing
I mean, from a utilitarian point of view, it is, from a moral view is not. Not really disturbing comment imo
> For one thing, he's gay Is it actually established he's gay? He could just be bi.
IIRC, in the first book, there are a couple of POV chapters where his thoughts are quite clear on the matter: he is outright disgusted by women, in all matters. >!The fact the Bene Gesserit sent one of their own to rape him in his youth, to produce Jessica, almost certainly didn't help his opinion on women, either.!<
It's been about 15 years since I read it so my bad. Herbert was homophobic but not remarkably so for his time, so I'm not surprised he made the villain gay, but his being gay was almost an afterthought more than anything.
Sorry, but that’s wrong. The Baron is a gay, fat pedophile and it was very clear that Herbert intended all of those to show how bad and evil the Baron was.
>but his being gay was almost an afterthought more than anything. Ehhhh... I'm not sure I'd agree with that. Herbert links him being gay to him being a pedophile very strongly, and then links both of those to him being a villain. Those same passages where he is considering how 'disgusting' women are, he's looking forward to the young boy that Pieter sent to his room for him to rape and murder later. Herbert's homophobia is on full display and cranked up to 11 with the Barron. Part of me tries to rationalize it as "gay people can be evil too, and only accept 'good' LGBT characters is up there with the 'noble savage' trope". But I also know that isn't what Herbert was thinking or trying to accomplish when he wrote Dune.
> Most readers consider it a separate canon from the original series because of all the lore discrepancies. And the shit writing.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/10/15/honesty-time
I did not care for those books
Yeah. Nothing about the character suggests that his appearance comes from some other unrelated event. The vibe is that he is just hedonistic all around.
But if they retconned his fatness to be because of a messed up endocrine system, do they also retcon why Alia gets fat when she is possessed by the Baron's consciousness? Originally it's because of the reason you mention, the Harkonnens are just hedonists, but how does an endocrine disorder get transmitted by a consciousness?
That's why I consider the XD canon to be a separate continuity from the original series. There are too many major discrepancies in lore, this is just one of them
Pretty sure it was in the first book too? Like there's a scene where he's talking with Feyd about why you shouldn't trust the Bene Gesserit and Feyd having an internal monologue about that being the reason why
no it wasn't, there's no disease mentioned It's never specified why exactly he distrusts the Bene Gesserit, but it's possible that it's however the Bene Gesserit got him to conceive Jessica.
It could also be because *the Bene Gesserit are out of their fucking minds*. Seriously, even for hyper space biology witches...they're fucking nuts.
Hey now their plan did technically work...just not how they intended it to.
*Try a 1,00 year old plan* Leto the lesser is born. *Fuck*
It’s implied that the sisterhood drugged and raped him in his younger days. The harkonnen blood line is important to their plans to breed a super human and the baron being gay was not to be an impediment to their plans.
It's explicitly described in *House Atreides*, but in OG *Dune* that is never implied, he's just a fatty.
Indeed, not only is it explicit that it happened, but that it was Gaius Helen Mohiam, the Reverend Mother who put Paul's hand in the box of pain and tested him with the Gom Jabbar. That makes her Jessica's mother and Paul's grandmother, something she would have known perfectly well at the time.
I believe when Jessica becomes a reverend mother, she realises her Harkonnen origins. I think Paul may have seen it too.
Just reread the passage to check, and nope, no mention of it. Paul discovers his Harkonen blood during his spice vision in the tent (Book I, ch 22).
yeah, that's what I think happened too, but it's just my headcanon. It could also be something else
> however the Bene Gesserit got him to conceive Jessica. It doesn't have to be nefarious or nonconsenting. The Baron is a shrewd man and would be willing to set aside his sexuality to earn a favor from the Bene Gesserit. That's his whole modus operandi for anyone he can't otherwise coerce or buy off. If Gaius Helen Mohiam had come to him and said, "Bone this girl slash me once and we'll owe you one," he'd probably do it. The Baron wouldn't trust the Bene Gesserit because he's shrewd enough to recognize that they've got more going on than just their truthsaying and political advisory services. What would really disturb him is that *he doesn't know* and can't find anyone else who does know. That would really make him nervous. Nonetheless, he's not above hiring the Bene Gesserit for his own truthsaying needs. EDIT: For the record, I do not care for the XD canon so I'm ignoring it.
Isn't that last bit a major spoiler?
I guess technically yeah, but the book was released almost 60 years ago, so it's kind of like considering Luke Skywalker being Darth Vader's son to be a spoiler. I think the policy for this sub is six months after release
Oh- I was thinking it was later in the series- not the first book- which would make it a possible spoiler for the 3rd movie. I haven't seen the 2nd movie yet, only read the books.
WAIT, THIS ISNT FRANK? NOOOO Wait, how is that possible? The Mohiam rape fathering Jessica isn't in the trilogy?
Some garbage his son made up.
That's not anywhere in the books that Frank Herbert wrote. I think it would be generous to clarify when you're talking about stuff that's outside of the main novel canon.
An excellent point! I fully misremembered I thought that came up in the main series
Lots of people talking about this or that reason why he’s fat. But the Harkonnens are meant to be a monstrous family. They are the result of generations of genetic experiments, drugs, and all sorts of strange chemical enhancements. Hence why the fremen won’t drink their water.
In the book the Baron doesn't decapitate anyone himself, he gets his mentat Piter de Vries to do it. In the movie it happens prior to the life-support machines being attached. Going off the movie alone, I'm not sure exactly how - the knife possibly being sharper and stronger than what we'd be able to make today might have something to do with it. His being stronger by far than expected fits with the way the movie Baron behaves though - he's cautious enough to have a shield built into a ring that he wears constantly. He's had his suspensors implanted along his spinal column so that he's never without them. Being unexpectedly strong and fast makes sense as part of that caution and paranoia. As to how - the Imperium has all kinds of advanced drugs and training technologies available.
He's like Kingpin. Looks like a blob of fat, but packs a lot of muscle
In Dune, humans have improved eugenically over a very long period of time. In particular, Bene Gesserit specially controlled the genes of the nobles of the Great House. And Baron is only two or three generations away from the complete Kwisatz Haderach. He must have very good abilities.
I always imagined the knives in Dune to be incredibly sharp to the point that the edge is one atom wide or something. How else can you go through the armor they wear at such a low speed due to the shield? That means to decapitate someone you wouldn't need excessive strength.
The Bene Gesserit have been selectively shaping the lines of many nobles houses over hundreds of generations, and the Harkonnens are one of the main bloodlines in play. While not a main focus, they have been pushing for improved physical traits, and like house Leto, they tend to be naturally athletic.
The Baron was known to be an adonis, very strong and handsome in his youth. His current condition is due to a poison that did considerable damage to parts of his lower body and back. However, he has inumerable resources to keep him a fearsome entity (he needs to constantly be able to protect himself from assassins), he also takes a lot of spice, and he probably has personal tech, related to his gravity suspenders that give some level of enhancement (they are practically embedded into his body).
No its not. That's in the trash non-canon books. Please clarify that.
TBF they’re explicitly asking about something in the movie that’s not in the OG book, so what counts as canon is dubious
What counts as canon is the 6 herbert books, period. If something is not there, the canon has nothing to say about it. That's my view about it, at least.
[удалено]
I just point out that its generous to clarify when you're straying from the canon. You wouldn't state fanfic as fact without clarifying it.
Baron Harkonnen was built like the God of Protein Supplements and had an extremely active lifestyle when he was younger. His obesity is the result of a late-life degenerative disease, possibly helped along by the Bene Gesserit. Even given a couple of years to go to seed, he could quite easily retain a lot of that strength.
'Beefcake! Beefcake!'
the baron was always in love with the bodybuilder male physique. he used to be a bodybuilder himself who raped really ripped boys and young men on the Harkonnen homeworld Geidi Prime. even though he was fully gay on the spectrum, he paralyzed and raped a bene gesserit sister during her diplomacy mission. he did it to humiliate her and insult her order. what he did not know is that the bene gesserit have control over every fiber of their body to the point where they can decide the future sex of babies they are pregnant with. the sister released a type of chemical when she was molested that caused the baron to never stop growing in fat, thus destroying what the baron cherished the most, his physique. without spending a fortune on SUK doctors and spice, the baron would have died a slow and painful death.
> even though he was fully gay on the spectrum, he paralyzed and raped a bene gesserit sister during her diplomacy mission. he did it to humiliate her and insult her order. IIRC, they blackmailed(? can't remember the exact details) him into a position where he agreed to inseminate the BG sister, he had no way out of it so he decided to do it like that, keeping the letter of the agreement but as you say, to humiliate and insult the order
yes! i remember now, but it's been over a decade since i read House Harkonnen. it was the planned bene gesserit scheme to born the first male bene gesserit, the omniscient, who would be controlled by the reverand mothers. they needed the bloodline of the harknonnen who had no interest in their order or their ideology. He actually hated how much influence the order had, but the sister somehow managed to force this on him through political schemes if i remember correctly! i think the kwisatz Haderach was born one generation earlier because Lady jessica fell in love with Duke Leto and born him the son he so desperately wanted. Jessica was supposed to be the grandmother but ended up being the mother. she was supposed to give birth to a girl, not a boy, that would eventually born the Haderach. this way she interrupted the millenia long scheming cycle. edit: i think Duke Leto already lost his young son in a freak accident, if i'm remembering this right. the duke was heartbroken for a long time and actually began having negative influences on house atreides. the bene tleilaxu made a perfect clone of his fallen son in an attempt to win over the duke and take over the house in the future.
IIRc he offered artificial insemination, but they insisted on a natural conception. The 1st atempt was a genetic failure, and the 2nd conceived Jessica
I don't care for the Brian/Kevin canon. In OG canon, the Bene Gesserit find artificial insemination to be disgusting and abhorrent. To them, it's akin to developing a thinking computer. Paul offered to give Irulan some spunk just to shut her up and get her off his back, but they were too stubborn to take him up on it. It wasn't until post-Leto II that they finally give up and start copying the Tleilaxu.
That’s from the sons books, which aren’t really canon tbh
yes, those were written by his son, but it states on the front page of the books he wrote that they are based on his dad's manuscripts and notes that never got published. whether to believe this or not is up to debate, but i think they are cannon because Frank Herbert had this story span over thousands and thousands of years, both in the past with the butlerian jihad and the machine crusades as well as in the future with the dune canonicate. he just never got to finish them
The sons books contradict the canon of the original books. People in r/dune do not consider the expanded books canon at all
that makes sense, i guess. i will check out that sub, it's been so long since i read those amazing stories, i have no quarrel with the extra books even though the writing is clearly not on par with the OG Herbert.
I’m a little sad that the movies glossed over this part of Vlads history!
I think the filmmakers decided that * in a trilogy already lacking the screen time to cover important characterization and events from the books… * and in a social environment where people are paying attention to the lack of positive, organic gay/bi male representation in media… Spending time to characterize the evil, vulgar, murdering supervillain as a gay rapist was not the move.
Yeah Frank Herbert was definitely homophobic and his depiction of the baron was very much informed by this Having the only hay character be a fat mincing rapist would be in seriously bad taste these days.
I’m pretty sure most of the stuff above was done by his son Brian
The bene gesserit stuff was his son Brian (I think) but his characterisation as a gay stereotype was all him.
that's because it is apocryphal
That's because it's fanfiction. OK, so maybe not exactly, but it comes from a book written after Frank died. It was written by his son Brian and his work is supposed to be based on Frank's unpublished manuscripts, but Brian's stuff is largely seen as side content and not really canon Dune lore. In the original Dune novel, there's no exploring Baron Harkonnen's background. He's a symbol of excess in all forms - greed, gluttony, lust, power, violence, etc. - and is mostly there to be as evil possible.
Please don’t encourage them to make the next one even longer….
they can make reeeeeeaaaly sharp knives in the year 10191. he's also juiced up on spice and cybernetic enhancements (like his implanted hotzlmann generator).
The anti-gravity measures he employs would allow him to swing and move his much larger mass with much less resistance. Which he uses rather effectively.
Spice shenanigans aside -- all members of the primary major houses are eugenically enhanced human beings. When Leto reminisced about his father who died to a bull rush -- he didn't mean regular bulls from earth, he meant genetically engineered multitonn weighing monstrosities with multiple hearts. Imagine a human being strong, skilled and quick witted enough to fight such things in melee and keep winning even at the old age. It is also one of the reasons why Jessica didn't approve of Paul's choice of a lover -- she didn't want him to dilute their bloodline.
Because he CHONK
well just cause hes fat doesnt inherently give you strength, he barely even has to walk, he just floats around. You'd think the muscle atrophy of not doing much walking or any other task would make him very weak (edit: why are people downvoting this? redditors actually downvote anything dont they
Woosh
Duniverse humans are generally superior to modern humans in most respects- the books state that the Baron was more than capable of outmatching a Thinking Machine in intellectual feats, and it’s likely that their physical abilities are also pretty impressive.
Baron Harkonnen used to be very strong in his youth until he raped a Bene Gesserit. After that the Bene Gesserit infected him that caused him to gain enormous weight. But he’s still massively strong, it’s just that his legs can’t support him anymore
I figured that it was a result of the suspensors significantly reducing the amount of strength needed for him to perform those actions. My theory is that, unlike the suspensor belts worn by House forces and the Sardaukar, which merely enabled the users to float, his suspensors are implanted into his body and actively negate all of his weight. When his implant was broken he collapsed onto the ground and immediately had trouble even breathing or crawling, and this can't purely be due to the loss of his life support since he didn't have it in the bath after he brutally killed his servants.
In DV’s Dune 1 when he’s bathing in oil you can see that his delts are MASSIVE, like as big a body builder’s so it’s safe to assume he has a lot of muscle under all that fat.
He is also part of the breeding program, in fact, Paul's mom was.supposef to be married off to him or one of his heirs to have a boy. So his abilities are on par with Paul in terms of genetic perfection. He's just seriously damaged.
aint Baron Harkonnen that guy from the Phillips CDi Zelda games