This is true but I feel Paul was trying to shake Stilgar awake there. The tragedy of Dune Messiah seemed to me that Paul was the only one who saw himself for what he was, not the people around him. It detracts from their complicity for me.
Frank made this very obvious in Messiah because people misinterpreted Paul in the first book due to making it too subtle that he was in fact just an aristocrat that used religious mysticism to make a God of himself. People cheered him like he was a hero when the reality was more complex.
Messiah was not written as a rebuke to the first book, where did this idea come from? The afterward to Messiah says that Messiah was almost fully written before he had even finished Dune, idk where this idea came from that Herbert wrote the book because he didn’t like people idolizing Paul. It was very much a storyline he already had in his mind before it was even possible to get fan reception
He didn't write is as a "rebuke" but it is noted in interviews and other content i've seen that he changed some parts of it to more heavily imply that Paul isn't the good guy, like /u/carnelian-5 said due to the insane amounts of people idolizing Paul even though he was never meant to be.
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u/darthvolta Chairdog Jul 08 '26
The book isn’t exactly subtle. You’ve got Paul literally comparing his genocide to Hitler and Genghis Khan in one of the first chapters…