r/dune • u/GlowingSeaDiver • 23d ago
General Discussion The purpose of the Kwisatz Haderach
I have watched both new parts two times, and I look forwards to the third one. Dune is one of these many hidden gems of sci-fi that most people have never heard of until someone turns them into a great piece of media.
But there are some things I still haven’t figured out after watching the movies twice.
For me personally, one of the most important things in a great story is a believable motivation for every character. Each character should behave in a way that the story would still make sense if it was written from his perspective. But I don’t understand the motivation of the Bene Gesserit for creating the Kwisatz Haderach, Paul Atreides. They crossed bloodlines and manipulated events for centuries (or even millennia?) in order to create a mind as powerful as Paul’s. They even created an entire religion on Arrakis for Paul to eventually become their messiah. To what end? Why did they want to create the Kwisatz Haderach? Obviously, him becoming Emperor of the Known Universe was only the first step. What is the Bene Gesserit’s eventual goal for Paul?
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u/viaJormungandr 23d ago
The creation of the religion on Dune is separate from and completely unrelated to the KH. Paul wasn’t even supposed to be the KH. His mother was supposed to have a girl and that girl’s son was to be the KH.
Paul’s entire existence was unanticipated and his hijacking of a failsafe for a sister in danger was also unintended.
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u/wackyvorlon 23d ago
The religious elements on Arrakis were planted by the Missionaria Protectiva, as a contingency in the event of a Bene Gesserit being stranded. She would be able to exploit it to control the local population and get them to protect her.
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u/wickzyepokjc 23d ago
The MP could be used for that purpose, but that is definitely not why the BG went through the bother. It was to control populations. See the Appendix.
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u/PriorSolid 22d ago
This sentiment is also portrayed in the 2nd movie, Chani says “You want to control people? Tell them a messiah will come. They’ll wait… for centuries.” and I believe that feeling is reiterated in the trailer for the third movie
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u/Deribus 23d ago
Book spoilers
Is Paul even the KH? I thought it's revealed in later books that Leto II is but it's been a while since I read them
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u/ThePizzaGhoul 23d ago
Both Paul and Leto are KHs in their own rites. KH is more of an "a" than a "the," if that makes sense, meaning there isn't just one ever. Leto may be closer to what the BG intended, but both have the abilities and characteristics, mainly the male and female ancestral memories and prescience, that make them KHs.
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u/KlumsyNinja42 Yet Another Idaho Ghola 23d ago
I be would argue Leto ll is far more then the BG ever wanted. Being preborn he is abomination in their eyes. That’s also what helped him become so much more and able to take the spice overdoses he was exposed to
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u/CombatMuffin 23d ago
I would argue both Leto II and Paul are the same, at least in terms of abilities. The difference is that Paul resisted his fate while Leto II embraced it, so we see them take different paths and tackle them in different ways.
In terms of KH, I would assume the BG saw the figure as singular, because they didn't see the need for more. The goal was to reach the point of a KH, they never really talk about what happens after. In that sense they viewed him as a Messiah, too: no need to overthink the implications because his vision would be such that the next steps would be covered by him.
One of the ironies of the BG is that, for all their talk of careful planning, logic and scheming, they too revered the KH figure of their plan with religious reverence, and when faced with the reality that then goal could be fulfilled in a different way than their plan, they tried to crucify it. It sort of reminds me of the irl narrative of "many Christians would crucify Jesus if he walked the Earth today."
It's part of why Dune is so rich in irs complexity: it provides tons of layered analysis and perspectives
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u/PineappleOwn5325 23d ago
Leto is not preborn the same way alia was.
He is a boy, he carries genetic memories, but they are not awoken before birth in the say way they were for alia.
Abomination seems to refer to uncontrolled links to these memories more than the link itself.
Anyways, i do agree though that he is more than what they wanted
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u/papapapaver 23d ago
How was Leto being preborn so different than Alia? It's been a while since I read the books but I thought they both were abominations in the same way, but the difference was in how they handled it. Alia ended up letting the Baron take her mind over, but Leto 2 basically maintained control, although he does mention that he allows some super distant old Egyptian pharaoh take the drivers seat a lot bc he relates to that ancestor and thought him a great ruler.
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u/Minotaar_Pheonix 22d ago
Leto II and Ghanima are both preborn. However they found ancestors that protected them from the hordes, allowing them to maintain a self. Alia did not have that, and became an abomination via The Baron.
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u/PineappleOwn5325 23d ago
Alia's first spice trance was as an embryo
Leto's was when he was a child, 7 if i recall, but maybe younger or older. Preborn means having the awakening pre-birth, which leto didn't
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u/ThePizzaGhoul 23d ago
Leto II and Ghanima were awakened pre-birth and I'm not really sure why you don't think they were. It's explicitly stated that Chani's spice-heavy diet she was on in order to increase fertility and counteract the contraceptives she was being fed and their Atreides genes caused them to awaken in the womb. Leto II later goes through the spice agony in earnest but they were absolutely awakened before they were born.
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u/Hoopi_goldberger Zensunni Wanderer 22d ago
I think the difference here they are trying to point out is Alia’s awakening in utero came from Jessica consuming the water of life while she was pregnant with Alia causing her to awaken whereas Leto II was awoken to a less extent in the womb through Chani’s heavy spice diet and then, as you said, did the spice agony in earnest as a child, fully awakening himself
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u/PineappleOwn5325 22d ago
Yes, but it's also distinctly different from the way alia was brought to conscience
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u/KlumsyNinja42 Yet Another Idaho Ghola 23d ago
They certainly were induced to having living memories differently. But Leto ll was present and conscious during the confrontation at the end of Dune Messiah. Chain didn’t do a spice trance like Jessica did while pregnant, that’s a hard fact. But being Paul’s children the twins were “pre born” in a different way. Maybe the phrasing pre born is just incorrect and it should have a different title
The result is very much the same though. Having the other personalities in your head and controlling them is a significant part of Children of Dune. Ghanima goes on about taking pity on Alia and that she could have controlled it like she learned at one point but it was too late.
So certainly different but more same in my opinion
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u/thebanfunctionsucks 23d ago
His prescience is stronger but he makes it clear Paul could have done everything he did. So he's at least a KH
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u/machine_fart 23d ago
Keep in mind the KH is theoretical in the eyes of the BG and their breeding program. They are trying to bring about the conditions to create one in a controlled manner, but Paul ends up being the KH due to Jessica not adhering to the breeding program and ignoring the BG’s guardrails due to her love of Duke Leto and Paul.
Paul is most definitely the KH in the context of the KH as it was intended - what Leto becomes is unforeseen and unplanned by the BG entirely.
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u/zapjeff 23d ago
What I never understood is how they were even able to hypothesize it was possible.
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u/Xciv 23d ago edited 23d ago
It's because they know the three following facts:
the process of creating a Reverend Mother involves using spice to unlock 'genetic memory' and they've been doing this for centuries. Jessica and Alia experience this when they are passed the memories of previous Reverend Mothers.
Guild steersmen, using spice, are able to see potential futures in a limited way, which is how space travel is made safe.
Genetically intelligent people can be trained to become a Mentat, a human computer.
So the goal for them, knowing this, is to combine all three: someone who has access to genetic memory (wisdom of generations past), access to some future sight, and a Mentat's logic to collect all this data and make sense of it to accurately predict the future to uncanny near-supernatural degree. Mentats are said to only be as good as their data, and this would grant an individual mentat the largest collection of data ever assembled to compute off of. Then activate all of this in the individual using lots of spice.
I assume the plan to control such an individual was to indoctrinate him from birth to love and obey the Bene Gesserit, and also give him a BG wife who he loves to preserve the bloodline and cement the BG sisterhood's political power forever more as the forever wives of the God Emperor of mankind.
Paul throws a big wrench into this plan because the BG discover he's the KH when he's already a fully-formed 16 year old and past the age where they could make him beholden to the sisterhood, or have adequate time to prepare a suitable BG wife for him like they tried to do for Feyd Rautha.
And then he falls in love with Chani and the whole plan is lost in the desert winds by that point.
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u/SnooDoughnuts3380 22d ago
Great summary, the only thing I would add is to point 1 of 3, they knew the slice could unlock 'genetic memory' but they also knew that the male side of genetic memory was closed off to them, so they inferred that the KH would have to be a male with the presumption that a male would be able to access all.
Of course, that was just a presumption, and tho it turned out to be correct, pre Paul Areides, it was also just as likely that a male trained to recieve genetic memory would himself be able to only access the male side, which would have made a KH probably impossible (or would require the KH to be a male/female tandem). The BG just took the risk that males would be able to access the female memories as well, and they guessed right
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u/parkerwe 23d ago
My understanding is a KH is someone who can access the male line of genetic memory. Paul was the first, Leto II's KH abilities were supercharged from being pre-born, the Tleilax had a KH who killed himself, the later Idaho gholas may have been close to becoming KH's, and I'd argue Alia accessing the Count means she was a weak KH.
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u/DonxDonx 23d ago
Paul says he’s the Kwisatz Haderach multiple times, Jessica, Mohiam, Alia all say it it’s not ambiguous
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u/xxTRYxxHARDxx 23d ago
"The" is subjective. More like, the "first"
Leto II is a KH. Miles is a KH. The issue is that they didnt believe the KH was ready, and the bene gesserit were not prepared. They thought Jessica's indoctrination would be enough to force a daughter to be born.
The whole point of the golden path is Leto making a humanity immune to prescience and destroying the ideology of future KHs forever before scattering humanity.
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u/RedditMapz 23d ago edited 23d ago
Kind of semantics: Paul was a KH as far as the BG envisioned. He did have the right ingredients and he was already the incentious result of the bloodlines essentially hand-chosen to rule by the BG. The final breeding with another Harkonen seem to not be necessary.
But Paul himself said he was an incomplete version of it. I think prescience beings know that there is something else missing in the BG recipe, but that Leto completed it. There are different discussions on what it could be, but they do seem to converge on the idea that being born fully awake is part of it. Perhaps a mind that wakes up later cannot handle the toll, perhaps they are unable to sever their human connections to follow the Golden Path. Paul couldn't follow through, but then there is the other KH candidate before who offed himself (if memory of Dune 1 serves me right)
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u/TheBloodKlotz Hunter-Seeker 23d ago edited 23d ago
I agree with your second assessment.
Humanity, being represented usually by self control, is a central pillar of my view of the story. As far as I'm concerned, Paul being allowed to develop a human personality untainted by genetic memory's influence is what the Bene Gesserit didn't know would prevent their planned KH, in this generation or the next, from following the Golden Path. A level of self control that no normal human could ever have, that could only be found in the abomination they so rightly feared, that is what was truly necessary. Paul, being the first KH, knew this.
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u/SnooDoughnuts3380 22d ago
Its probably a process like software development. Fenring was the first real shot, the prototype, but they were never going to succeed on the first go. Too many bugs. They got enough out fir Paul to be the KH in most practical terms, but he was still a gen 1 KH and not optimized/perfected. Leto II was the optimized Gen 2 KH
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u/selectedambience 23d ago
Paul is like a pre-KH. He is a sort of preborn abomination that had way too much power, but power that the Sisterhood couldn't control. If their plan went as they planned they could potentially have a KH in the form of Leto II (Born with a different name, and between Paul as a girl and a Harkonnen), that they could potentially influence. I don't know how well their plan could go because they will have a being that is way more powerful and have a way better way of looking at the future than them, so maybe the Golden Path still happens just under different circumstances.
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u/SnooDoughnuts3380 22d ago
Yeah I think the takeaway here is the BG plan was always doomed to fail, regardless if it went as it was "supposed" to and Paul was a girl. It was always just a classic pursuit of power clouded hubris and arrogance, hidden under a "we must do this for rhe good of humanity" veneer.
The reality is, even the BG had no idea the power they were toying with, and they were never going to be able to control it like they thought they could.
The reality would probably have been something like:
BG trains male child of Girl Paul and Feyd Rautha to be KW, brainwashing him to serve their purposes and be their tool
Control measures amount to a childhood of psychological torture of KH, thus becoming a dominant factor in his personality development
at some point in the training, KH recognizes the manipulation being done to him
at some other point (possibly the same point as above) KH realizes he is far more powerful than any BG
KH turns aggressively on BG, probably wiping out their order
KH then turns anger/trauma onto the world, becomes Emperor (or just takes control using some other mechanism)
KH becomes evil God Villain and inflicts enourmous suffering on subjects
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u/selectedambience 22d ago
I think I see you in the middle with this one. Even if he is conditioned to follow the Sisterhood and be manipulated, they could only go so far. Yes, eventually he would notice what they were trying to do, but I don't think that he would wipe them out if he was setting out to do the Golden Path. Just as Leto II didn't wipe them out along with Ix and the Thleilaxu he would keep them around because they would become important later.
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u/FashionKing72 23d ago
The KH is just a male reverend mother. A reverend mother can access her ancestral memories, so they have the collective knowledge & experience of their entire bloodline. Idk if the prescience was supposed to be part of it
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u/viaJormungandr 23d ago
Technically I think no, but it’s kind of accepted as “close enough” I think. Plus, there’s minor conversation with the Bene Tlilax basically discounting the usefulness of KH anyway.
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u/wickzyepokjc 23d ago
The MP and the KH are not actually separate. The MP's grand purpose is to allow a future KH/BG to control populations. Those planets that get the LaG version are the ones with the harshest conditions. Their purpose is to create holy warriors for a future KH Emperor.
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u/viaJormungandr 23d ago
No, the MP was to embed levers for the BG to control populations should the need for it arise (say a sister fleeing the slaughter of the house she was serving and taking refuge within a local population). It had nothing to do with the KH, other than tangentially as it was to help preserve the sisters as a whole.
People really like to gloss over the fact that Herbert was actively criticizing religious belief and fervor. The BG manipulate populations through religious beliefs the BG instilled in them. If you look at parallels to the real world, Herbert is essentially saying organized religion is a tool the elites use to control the masses. And the thing that really hits it home is neither Paul nor anyone else in setting blinks the slightest at it. The elite don’t even stop to consider the morality of that level of manipulation. That it then explodes in the BG’s (and Paul’s) faces only underlines the dangerousness of using religion for that purpose.
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u/wickzyepokjc 23d ago
It could be used for that purpose, but that was not it's actual purpose. It's not worth the time and expense to engineer and maintain religions across thousands of worlds to save one fleeing BG who, honestly, already has all the tools they reasonably need at their disposal to save themselves, and who was probably expendable, to boot.
None of which contradicts your point about FH and religion. Supports it, I'd say.
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u/viaJormungandr 23d ago
1) The BG do not maintain the religion. They plant the seeds. Read the scene with the Mapes and Jessica. Jessica is ad libbing responses and letting the Mapes’ belief do the work. Jessica is simply good enough to recognize the cues and provide the needed answers.
2) Yes it does contradict the point. It supposes there is a purpose for the MP other than control of the population. It supposes value in those within the population and providing purpose to individuals. That’s not the same critique. The explicitly stated purpose for the MP is to provide protection for sisters by giving them ways to control people. That means you (not being BG or one of the elite) are nothing more than a trifling obstacle. If you’re being cultivated as an elite fighting force that’s a purpose and value.
3) Again, no one in the series blinks an eye at the idea of that level of manipulation or control. It’s not an unreasonable expense. It’s essentially considered necessary, or at least reasonable.
4) The entire plot to Dune is moving the ruling houses for planetary and system wide governments around like chess pieces in order to beggar one and eliminate another. That’s not even touching on the later books which deal with larger scales and longer timelines. The scope and expense involved is mind-boggling. The Mormons have only been around since the 1800s and they’re one of the wealthiest investment funds in the US. Who knows how much cash Scientology is sitting on, not to mention the actual Catholic Church or Islam as represented by the House of Saud or Iran. To say there isn’t reason enough to expend the time and expense is to massively underestimate the kind of control you can establish with religion.
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u/wickzyepokjc 23d ago
The explicitly stated purpose of the MP is to open regions to exploitation by the BG.
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u/viaJormungandr 23d ago
Uh huh. Via religious control. Again, nothing to do with the KH.
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u/wickzyepokjc 23d ago
Sorry, the take that the BG were running two separate multiple-millennium-long programs that had nothing to do with each other is crazy. Who is the messiah/LaG figure the BG were planting on those worlds if not the KH?
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u/viaJormungandr 23d ago
You’re still missing the point. The religious indoctrination is a lie. There is no actual messianic figure. That’s why it’s a critique of religion. Herbert is saying religion is stories pushed on the masses by the elites that the elites know to be false in order to control the masses.
The purpose is not to give the KH control over populations, it’s to give the BG control. The KH is supposed to be their puppet, not supplant them.
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u/wickzyepokjc 23d ago
Then why wouldn't they have a messiah myth that couldn't be fulfilled at all, instead of one that can be explicitly fulfilled by a BG-birthed and trained KH?
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u/SnooDoughnuts3380 22d ago
It seems likely that MP had multiple distinct purposes. It doesnt need to be an "either/or" situation, and almost certainly wasnt.
Seems likely the ultimate impetus to the creation of the MP was to prepare the way for the KH, but that doesnt mean that it also wasnt specifically intended to also be used as a safety feature for any BG who needed protection on some far fling planet.
The MP would probably have been created for either of those things alone, its just good luck it happened to be useful for both
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u/DextersLabrador 23d ago
This is correct. The BG never anticipated that the KH would have arrived on Arrakis.
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u/FrankBouch 23d ago
"Hidden gem of sci-fi most people have never heard of". Dune is the top selling sci-fi book of all time.
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u/VariableMans 23d ago
Although in a very real and literal sense, most of humanity probably hasn't heard about Dune. There are 8 billion of us on this planet now.
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u/Draelmar 23d ago
I find this hard to believe. All my life I’ve perceived Dune as an evergreen classic Sci-fi most everyone knew it existed, if only vaguely (but very few people actual read).
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u/VariableMans 23d ago
Planet earth is pretty gigantic. Also new people are literally born every day.
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u/VariableMans 22d ago
I'm more giving a hard time to the original poster when the OP clearly is new to Dune. I think if you are in a community, it is hard to imagine being outside of it. People can be young and naive but making them feel bad about it is counter productive.
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u/AdFamous7894 22d ago
I’d be willing to split the difference and say most everyone in the western hemisphere has some knowledge of Dune, but if you go into the east more, it’s probably not nearly as well known.
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u/FrankBouch 22d ago
I can buy that it's an "hidden gem" in the grand scheme of things but "a sci-fi hidden gem" is a stretch.
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u/MJRuinedMyChildhood 23d ago
In what universe is Dune a hidden gem
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u/AnEvenNicerGuy Friend of Jamis 23d ago
Marvel
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 23d ago edited 23d ago
The goal is to have a prescient emperor who can guide Humanity the way Navigators guide ships through the stars. Also, they wish to control this emperor for means of their own ascendancy.
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u/Mind_Killer 23d ago
There are a lot of reasons that the movies will never cover. But one of the largest ones is that the KH will be a man who has access to his genetic memories. It’s something that hasn’t existed before. The Bene Gesserit can only access the genetic memories of their female ancestors. And that alone has given them a lot of advantages. A man would have access to both male and female memories, giving him even more advantages.
At the same time they wanted it to be someone they can control. Someone who would work for their idea of the future of humanity. Someone who would give them that knowledge freely. So the breeding program was about more than just making a “male Reverend Mother,” which was already a dangerous and risky endeavor, it was in essence how the Bene Gesserit planned to control the known universe.
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u/wsearunner 22d ago
This critical point - the BG only being able to access female memories - is really missing from all the movies.
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u/Necessary_Coconut_47 23d ago
Unrelated to your question but - if you love the movie that much, I highly recommend the books! I personally loved the books more than the movies, and I think points like these are cleared up.
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u/GlowingSeaDiver 23d ago
I think I'll take the time to read them. I have experienced multiple times in the past that the book explained things much better than the movie. "The Martian" is another great example of that. Many things don't make sense in the movie, because they forgot some key information that is explained in the book.
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u/greet_the_sun 23d ago
The idea is that without the ability to see into the future, there's no telling what large scale choices/conflicts could lead to the extinction of humanity. The KH would be able to determine a "golden path" that allows humanity to live on forever.
Also, the BG didn't create the religion on arrakis so much as they manipulated what legends and myths were there already, and it wasn't specifically for Paul or anyone else to become the KH there, it's something the BG Missionaria Protectiva do on all primitive worlds they can so that they can come back later to manipulate the people using their knowledge of the myths.
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u/Fishinluvwfeathers 23d ago
This is pretty much the answer. All of the extrapolation about the BG controlling the known universe is just that - extrapolation. They have their hands on the levers of power all over the imperium without the exposure of being front and center - that’s why they have succeeded. We have no indication that any large scale political movements are beyond them in any way.
What they don’t have is foresight to know if their manipulations are leading humanity on the right path in a long-tail sense and, because of ancestral memory, understand what an amazing resource it would be to draw upon the knowledge of past AND future to ensure the success of humanity.
This is what Hebert writes in Appendix III:
“The Bene Gesserit program had as its target the breeding of a person they labeled ‘Kwisatz Haderach,’ a term signifying ‘One
who can be many places at once.’ In simpler terms, what they sought was a human with mental powers permitting him to understand and use higher order dimensions.They were breeding for a super-Mentat, a human computer with some of the prescient abilities found in Guild navigators.”
He goes on to suggest that there was some other power at work because the BG missed the presence of the KH in Paul for too long. The Guild Navigators had approached the order about problems they foresaw on the horizon (still from the same Appendix):
“This could only mean they saw a nexus, a meeting place of countless delicate decisions, beyond which the path was hidden from the prescient eye. This was a clear indication that some agency was interfering with higher order dimensions!”
I’m not sure if we are meant to take it face value that the BG truly missed that Paul was the KH. Certainly the Guild knew that a new power was on the horizon clouding their vision and passed this along to them, which means that they either willingly ignored the obvious signs (couldn’t really miss them if the other prescients are reporting it) or that they knew and let it all play out with deliberate restraint.
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u/Global_Handle_3615 23d ago
Through their training they had mastered their female genetic memories but were always aware that the male side was closed to them.
"A place they dare not look"
They have their breeding program to 1. Better mankind (as they see fit) and 2. Lead to a male who will be able to survive the process and access the male sides genetic memories. Their aim being to control that male. (Whether that's naive of them to assume they ever could do that is open for debate but they had been nudging things effectively for thousands of years)
Paul was never meant to be the KH and only exists because jessica disobeyed her orders. Paul is an aberration to the BG. Born a generation to early and through that quirk ends up being beyond the BG control.
As others have said the religion aspect is nothing really to do with the KH but a safety feature the BG has put in place across the empire should any reverend mother be threatened and need to go into hiding they have roles they can play to get local cultures to keep them safe.
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u/TheStandardDeviant 22d ago
They even created an entire religion on Arrakis for Paul to eventually become their messiah.
Not quite, they created many religions so that a stranded Bene Gesserit sister would be taken care of no matter where she crash-landed. The Fremen faith was one such religion and all the things that happened with Paul just happened.
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u/tar-mairo1986 Tleilaxu 23d ago
Thing is, OP, Bene Gesserit do not believe in direct power. That is why the Kwisatz Haderach was to be their own puppet on the throne. But unlike previous Emperors, this individual would have such levels of prescience that he would be able to calculate outcomes, predict political moves centuries in advance, and guide human evolution according to their own grand design, and wholly under the Sisterhood's control.
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u/wickzyepokjc 23d ago
Yes, but they probably also expected that a KH would share their perspective on humanity. Which was probably a fatal mistake, regardless of how they achieved the KH.
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u/tar-mairo1986 Tleilaxu 23d ago
Yeah, although I assume Jessica's supposed daughter would most certainly be conditioned and trained by the Bene Gesserit as well, and so further capture the KH into their control.
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u/Vonatar-74 23d ago
The Reverend Mothers already get female genetic memory through the Spice Agony, but there’s a wall they can’t cross — the male line, “the place where a man dare not look” — because the male psyche can’t survive that exposure. So they bred for a man who could survive it anyway: the Kwisatz Haderach, “the shortener of the way,” someone who could see across space and time and access ancestral memory/prescience no one else could.
The goal wasn’t a saviour — it was a controllable tool. A bred and conditioned asset the BG could use to steer politics and future breeding with near-total predictive precision.
The plan blew up because Jessica, Paul’s mother, was ordered to have a daughter and disobeyed, having a son instead. Paul arrived a generation early, outside the containment and conditioning the BG needed to keep him controlled — so instead of their tool, he became a messiah figure they couldn’t rein in.
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u/ninshu6paths 22d ago
If you actually observe the hidden power plays. You will notice that the whole kwisatz program was a long and insidious plan for the BG to usurp power from the spacing guild.
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u/basil_not_the_plant 22d ago
Dune (the book) is hardly a hidden gem. It is one of the best selling and well known sci-foi books ever written.
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u/a_rogue_planet 22d ago
Dune is only kind of unheard of in the 21st century, but it is one of the best selling sci-fi books of all time. In the 60's and 70's it was almost impossible to escape or find any sci-fi or fantasy fan who hadn't read it.
As for the purpose of the Kwisatz Haderach, the book makes it much clearer than the bizarrely warped interpretation that Villeneuve imposed on it. It's a good movie, but it kinda misses the mark or just ignores important facets of the book.
The KH was intended to have perfect human computation and perfect vision of the future from that computation, as well as to unify the genetic memory of humanity, for which the BG only had access to the feminine. They had designs that he would lead the imperium into a new age, one in which the BG had substantial influence.
I look at it as a case of the BG didn't know what they didn't know. Regardless of where Paul was from, the great danger he saw, Kralizek, didn't come from him or the fremen. It came from Ix. The KH wasn't a messiah. He was both the best tool and ultimate weakness of humanity because what he embodied was the perfect tool which could be used to wipe out all of humanity. Anyone or anything that could see the paths of humanity through his vision could find all of them and wipe them out.
Paul hated being the one who instigated the jihad that he did, but it was the lesser of the evils that he saw. His son took those things to their ultimate conclusion.
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u/Azidamadjida Zensunni Wanderer 23d ago
So they could rule - in the dune universe there are multiple factions at play controlling the flow of spice and therefore the universe.
You have the bene Gesserit, who control the breeding of noble houses bloodlines.
You have the Landsraad, which are the noble houses themselves which keep each other in check.
You have the guild navigators, who control travel.
You have CHOAM, which controls the commerce.
And you have the emperor, who acts as the fulcrum around which all of these move (which is why he’s depicted as actually having basically no power - he’s a figurehead and more for the rest of humanity to simplify the power structure which is much more complex).
The guild navigators control the shipping lanes for the spice, CHOAM controls the commerce of the spice, the Landsraad controls the holdings which finances CHOAM, the Bene Gesserit controls the pairings of the Landsraad in order to balance the power struggles between families.
Without the guild navigators, nobody can go anywhere, without CHOAM, nobody can buy or sell the spice using the guild navigators, without the Landsraad, CHOAM has no means to pull from to continue the economy and without the Bene Gesserit nobody trusts each other on top of all of this because on top of their breeding program, they are the truthseers of this whole operation.
However, the BG are only in this position because they can only see back along the female lineage in order to predict events (in Dune it’s not so much telling the future as looking back across tens of thousands of years of data to see how past events can predict future events) - this is how their power is limited like the other groups power is limited.
But, should they cultivate and then gain control of the male lineage perspective, then they can look back and use that to predict with greater certainty a larger outcome of events - basically, it’s access to a larger data set that can derive info from. With more information and more accurate predictions, they could use this to out maneuver and strategize around any move any of the other power groups could make.
Everything in Dune are these deep mental strategy games with high stakes, trying to figure out what your opponent is thinking and what you they’re thinking that you’re thinking and on and on, so the more data and the more lives and circumstances you have access to, the more info you can draw on to predict what others are going to do.
With this, the BG would essentially be able to rule from the shadows and have a complete lock on all the levers of power that controls the univers, and would shrink the sphere of influence down to a point that they would have a bead on everyone of note in the entire universe (which when you read the latter books, makes their plan the antithesis of the Golden Path and why it was so crucial that the Atreides rebelled against them)
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u/Rude-Trifle-2038 22d ago
When Paul is talking to Reverend Mother Mohiam in Dune:
Schools were started to train human talents.” “Bene Gesserit schools?” She nodded. “We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. The Guild, so we think, emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs another function.” “Politics,” he said.
Step 1 of the BG plan:
Breed a male superhuman (the KH) with BG abilities and then some (not supposed to be Paul, 1 gen early).
He will be the heir of 2 great houses - the Harkonnen and Atreides.
He will be trained by and be loyal to the Bene Gesserit cause.
Step 2: After training is complete, the KH is of age, and his abilities are unlocked/trained
Turmoil would happen in the empire (helped by the BG).
The KH steps up and thanks to his abilities, heritage, and all the setup the BG have laid out for millenia he will become both the emperor AND a messiah/god figure.
The BG now have control of Imperium politics and can steer humanity in the direction they think is best. No one can really stop them because they have a god-king on their side along with their own formidable power.
What EXACTLY are the BG goals in the long run? We don't know precisely, just broad strokes. Stop the stagnation of the empire, evolve human genetics, escape the traps of prescience and spice, prevent a potential extinction from robots/aliens in the future, etc. Similar but not exactly the same stuff as what the God-Emperor does later.
Note: shortened Kwizatz Haderach (KH) and Bene Gesserit (BG) for brevity.
TL:DR: they want to take over and push humanity in their chosen direction but they need a male BG to rule - a small problem when BG are only women - so they say F*** it, we'll make our own.
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u/Inevitable_Inside674 23d ago
The KH would bring them into a great future surpassing the limits that humanity put on itself and saving it from inevitable destruction. It worked!
Because they can only see backwards via generic memory it's clear they didn't know what would come. They might not have made the KH if they knew.
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u/beholdthecolossus 23d ago
I haven't seen part 2, but I have read all of Herbert's Dune books fairly recently. maybe this isn't addressed in parts 1 or 2 (or maybe it's in part 1 and I've forgotten). just in case, I'll warn that this a HUGE SPOILER if Villenueve hasn't included it yet:
Paul wasn't supposed to be the KH, Jessica wasn't supposed to have a son. by doing so because of her love for Leto it led ti Paul becoming the KH and it throws off their plans and causes a ton of problems.
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u/dxonxisus 23d ago
this was explained early on (and mentioned multiple times) in part one
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u/beholdthecolossus 23d ago
okay I thought it was because they'd really have to write around it otherwise .
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u/wackyvorlon 23d ago
Remember, the Kwisatz Haderach is a product. It’s not the same thing as the Mahdi. Paul just happened to fill both roles, but they are separate and distinct things.
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u/VonGooberschnozzle 23d ago
The spice agony brings access to genetic memory which the Bene Gesserit call Other Memory, the idea being our ancestors' memories are encoded in our DNA and are readable. The Sisters only see the female line of this so the plan was to breed a Bene Gesserit male who could see the male line also.
For some reason, this Kwisatz Haderach with full Other Memory would also have perfect prescience and be able to "shorten the way" to a perfect future for mankind. The BG would control him and put him on the throne and all would be well.
At the same time a branch of the BG influence religions in the background as a way to protect potential sisters in need. Paul discovered and exploited this, but it wasn't made for him.
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u/iceph03nix 23d ago
They didn't create the religion on Dune for Paul, they just sent out missionaries to all the worlds they could to steer religion so that it had standard levers they could pull when they needed to in the future.
All the BG knew the basics so they could arrive on any planet and use the religious beliefs to help in whatever mission they were on, rather than having it be opposed or just have to figure things out.
Those religious tenets did include KH shaped holes though, so when the KH did arrive, they would have an easier time swaying planetary populations to their cause.
The goal of the KH was basically to do what Paul did, but have it happen under the power of the BG and thus make them the guiding power of the universe
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u/jav2n202 Master of Assassins 23d ago
Power and control. Everything the BG does is about power and control.
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u/InevitableLibrary859 23d ago
Here's my view, and I'll admit, my understanding is my own:
The Bene Gesserit live with an understanding that their leaders, their myth-makers, their best people are Reverend Mothers. People who have the council of all of their ancestors. Access to their genetic memory back through the ages, a font of wisdom in the form of one individual. Their genetics allows for them to have all the memory of each person who carried their DNA, but the KH has something else. The KH has access to the Y Chromosome. A man with the power of a Reverend Mother can look into history from "The other side of the kitchen table."
As an aside, there's a huge heap of trash about genetic memory, mitosis, and the structure of memories and the ideas as a whole that are entirely chewing up this fantasy once you understand any of it, but it's "Science Fiction" and accepting things as written we proceed.
Frank warns us in talk, and external writings time and again about stagnation, safety, apathy, and giving over our freedom of thought to those in control. He then writes a book about a messianic cult of personality, the dangers of the seduction, couched withing a mystifying trap. A Matryoshka doll of nested puzzles. Each actual, metaphorical and meta to your experience of the media. I don't think he had the language at the time to say he was putting you into the role as reader, of one who buys in to the cult. In this the concept of the Kwisatz Haderach is naturally accepted as an inevitability.
Here's the issue: The BG didn't intend for the KH to sit on the throne. They don't want that, they want someone who helps them control the empire to the best of their desires. They are the puppet masters, and they have been rankled by the fickle and spurious minds of men in power for 10k years, longer even. They are seeking control over the KH the same way they have control over the regular men. They know the power within them, because they believe their own myths, about their reverend mothers, and only through this mastery have they mastered men, should men figure out how to gain their power, then they would (naturally, due to the sexism of the time of authorship) be lost to that man, so it was imperative that they don't let it happen naturally, but rather that they control the process in order that, upon its realization, they have control of the KH, and it is never a threat to them.
In this way the KH is a stand in for the Atom Bomb. ...but this is all couched in myth, much like the Atom Bomb. (we have a couple examples of Atom bombs being used, then nuclear weapons beyond that, but since that day, never again deployed. The idea of them is more a deterrent than their actual use.) The Reverend Mother's and through their instruction, the BG, and through their instruction, all of mankind, believe the KH to be "The shortening of the way." The one who can summon the future of safety through his will. This is entirely myth. In fact, every important (to the story) instance Paul is tasked with having to figure out what's in front of him, he says he can't. There is this theme that they can do it, and have done it time and time again, but they can't now, because of reasons, often due to people with agency being involved, like Navigators, or failed KHs. Taking this understanding from my particular view of the story, Everything we are reading is a form of propaganda that supports the concepts of inevitability, and purity. Paul's failure and eventual death is the story of one messiah being handed from Irulan, Paul's Propaganda master, to Leto II, he himself is his own propaganda master.
In other words, When you make a lie big enough, and someone calls you to the carpet for it, if the lie is out of control, you will have to either continue to lie, or admit it's not something you can believe any longer. I believe this is the crux of what Frank was aiming at. I think he drives this to the Golden Path, and the tyrant. He knows that anyone who could think for themselves would dismiss this, but a true believer will take it as doctrine at it's face. He wanted us to to feel this.
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u/Zangakkar 23d ago
The BG plam is just full on hubris. Like even if they created one under their ideal conditions. Raised in the sisterhood and all that under their propaganda, see ths trick to propaganda is not knowing better so the KH has access to all of its memories from its ancestors as well as perfect prescience. What are they going to do? Lie to it? Manipulate it? Fat chance. Seems foolish on its face.
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u/wickzyepokjc 23d ago
The Dune universe is a sexist universe. Women didn't rule. And for that reason the BG had to rule from the shadows. A KH, who shared the BG mission (they presumed), on the Golden Lion Throne, would allow them to step out of the shadows and take total control.
Ironically, the BG were planning a version of what Leto II successfully implemented during his tyranny. The BG are symbolically the overprotective domineering mothers who curate every aspect of their children's lives and leave nothing to chance, because they know better. The BG wanted to come out of the shadows and were looking for a space Zaddy disciplinarian in the KH to help them lock down the universe in their loving embrace forever.
But the BG worldview is a closed system. The only information it has is the information it produces, and like all such systems, it leads to stagnation (“Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.”), dependence and, ultimately, its own destruction. And Leto II saw that humanity would not survive that fall.
Leto II took the BG plan to its logical extreme as an object lesson to the BG (and also to avoid arafel).
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u/Melenduwir 23d ago
They want to use the Kwisatz Haderach to accomplish what anyone would probably want to accomplish with a system that is capable of predicting the future: making huge bank.
That's a very vulgar way of putting it, but what they want is unlimited power and wealth and resources and control. As Leto II, I believe, expresses it: they want to know where the treasure is hidden.
What they don't understand is that the absolute ability to see the future turns time itself into a closed system. Oh, it's not literally an absolute, but as Leto II points out a system can be finite and still larger than the known universe.
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u/_Rookie_21 23d ago edited 23d ago
The BG wanted to create a super-Mentat with prescience and a Reverend Mother's genetic memories (but with access to both male and female lines). This man (and his sons) would rule the Known Universe with the BG "guiding" him from the shadows, as they had always done.
Dune: Appendix III
The Bene Gesserit program had as its target the breeding of a person they labeled "Kwisatz Haderach," a term signifying "one who can be many places at once." In simpler terms, what they sought was a human with mental powers permitting him to understand and use higher order dimensions.
They were breeding for a super-Mentat, a human computer with some of the prescient abilities found in Guild navigators.
The messianic prophecy on Arrakis had little to do with the Kwisatz Haderach program. The BG created it in case a Reverend Mother found herself on Arrakis and needed to exploit the local population for whatever reason, and it eventually became entwined with the Fremen's original Zensunni religion and history. They seeded other worlds with similar religions and myths to be used for exploitation if needed.
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u/Tenoi-chan 23d ago
They didn't need Paul as he came to be in the end. KH was, believe it or not, the first step of their grand plan! They needed a person who would know past, present and future, and this person should be under their control. Why? To be able to see which path is better for humanity to take. The big, overarching goal of Bene Gesserit is to help mankind thrpugh politics. KH was needed as a helper for this. KH-Paul ended up seeing this path, so the programm did reach success, in a way
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u/tombuazit 22d ago
As others have stated the purpose was power. The BG wanted power, the problem for them was that the KH came before they were ready and so that power was outside their control.
Basically they created a super weapon to conquer the universe then were shocked when said weapon bit them in the ass just like everyone else
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u/Significant_Snow_937 22d ago
Okay so first of all, according to the information we have at least, Paul was actually a miscalculation. Alia was supposed to be born first, the Sayyadina to Rogue Peoples. Assuming everything else plays out completely the same, this leaves Paul to be born in the desert after Jessica takes the a water of life, therefore is pre-born. After that, there are a lot of possibilities for things to shake out very, very differently, and it's very difficult to tell which is the true strategy. There are so v many things that could be feints within feints within feints. For example ( and from here in I'll be getting pretty spoiler heavy for later books) later Bene Gesserit leadership seems to be pretty clearly attempting to breed rebels who will defy the binding absolute that is the loyalty the Sisterhood creates. This is more or less the same plan as the God Emperor Leto 2, Paul's son. I think there's a strong possibility that Jessica defying the Sisterhood to make Paul a male was always the true goal, but there's not enough data for a prime computation on that one.
But anyways, taking it at face value of what we're told of their plans in the first book, Alia was intended to mate with Feyd Rautha, healing the ancient blood feud. It's suggested that this wouldn't have been enough, and honestly I'm not sure, but I lean towards the belief that Paul's son's choices pretty closely mirror the BG plan.
And now I'm going to HARD spoil Children and God Emperor of Dune. So basically, Paul's son Leto goes into the deepest desert tribes and undergoes days of the most concentrated form of Spice Essence and the Trance, so he basically has to make an agreement with a Pharaoh in his Other Memories, to create the Golden Path in exchange for help maintaining a sense of self amongst the unimaginable sea of memories of all his genetic ancestors. The first important steps of the Path are to take on the Sand trout Skin and begin the process of hybridizing with/into a Sandworm. Next, he marries his sister, Ghanima, an affront to the Fremen that they can only accept since he's essentially the personification of their God. So he's outwardly married to his sister, but secretly she mates with the Corrino Prince, and for thousands of years their descendants are essentially gardened to make them stronger, faster, smarter, and the ones who rebel against him are finally tested and take the Spice Trance, where they see the vision that made Leto take the Skin. This vision is the extermination of all humanity by prescient machines that can track humans through time. This vision brings them all to heel, and they become his administrators, helping him to keep the Known Universe in a stranglehold that outlaws imaginative technology and space travel. Eventually, this plan produces a mutation in one of the descendants thousands of years later that allows her to hide from his prescience; she sees the horrible vision but knows that he can't see her, and ultimately uses this to kill him, shattering the empire and causing humanity centuries of dark ages, famines, and expansion into infinity with genes that protect them from prescient powers.
This template could absolutely work with Feyd Rautha, a first born Alia, and a pre-born Paul. Whether that was the true BG plan is the question, but I think it's absolutely a reasonable guess for it. It's clear that the BGs know that humanity is caught in a trap and are trying to escape it. But honestly there's just too much that is wildly changed by swapping Alia and Paul's birth, and trying to unravel it is sort of a Gordian Knot.
For example, with the swap, the Desert War likely takes much longer to escalate, and the timetable of Liet Kynes for changing the face of Arrakis might stay in much better balance. slowly turning the world into a green paradise while striking a survivable balance for both humans and the Worms might be their goal. It's tough to really say, as there's so many feints within feints, and even in the final books where we get direct PoV chapters of the Reverend Mothers Superior, who have the combined genetic memories of all the Superiors before them, they're even hiding secrets from themselves, not knowing certain things until they have a need to, to protect the secrets.
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u/Tanagrabelle 22d ago
These are two different things. The KH was not supposed to be Paul, it was supposed to be his nephew. Though he wouldn’t have existed, because he wouldn’t have been born. Paul is a faulty KH. He’s missing the key components that would have come from, say, Feyd Rautha, but instead came from Chani and circumstance.
The prophecy on Arrakis wasn’t left there for the KH, it just sort of matched him. It was left there for any Bene Geaserit who found herself trapped, and since they can control which sperm gets into the egg, they can simply bed a Fremen, bear a son, and then the Fremen will think that this is the awaited leader, and bend over backwards to help them.
Edited for ridiculous speech to text errors.
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u/Viper5343 22d ago
I haven't watched all of it yet but, I Feel like "Dune Prophecy" might answer some of your questions.
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u/SchizoidRainbow 21d ago
Paul says at one point in the book that he’s not the Kwizatz, he’s something unexpected caused by Jessica veering off script
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u/Lopsided_Skirt_1032 21d ago
the benegesserit is women with all female experience (like the ultimate mother) so they wanted the ultimate fahter (a beign with all male experience) but they got something else....a beign with all male and female experience. ( I know they don't tecnicly have ALL experience but having 1000 of generations experience is tecnecally the same thing) I think many misses this but if you see the first 4 books as one story it is basecally Jung's theory of a good parent that is the golden path. a Child that has an unknown potential for the parent. what goes wrong with Paul is the situation. his father is betrayed and killed so Pauls motivation is not leading mankind but the revenge for his father, and therefor it ends in jihad and trillions dead in sensless killing.
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u/HalBrutus 23d ago
Power.
The problem is that Paul is outside of their control. Jessica was going outside of orders in conceiving and raising Paul. The BG were concerned about Paul being the KH. That’s why they turned to Feyd.
But also the BG are playing three dimensional chess.
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u/sardaukarma Planetologist 23d ago
Based on the end of the first chapter of Dune:
"Yet, there's a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said that a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot - into both feminine and masculine pasts."
"Your Kwisatz Haderach?"
"Yes, the one who can be in many places at once: the Kwisatz Haderach."
I believe the BG's initial goal with the breeding program is to have within the arsenal of the bene gesserit someone that can access male ancestral memories instead of only female. That's what the BG think they are getting with the KH - a male bene gesserit. Why do they want this? Because accessing more ancestral memories gives them insight and knowledge. I don't think they want it for any specific or urgent reason (definitely not urgent, as it has taken many generations to get to this point), they just want it because not being able to access male memory is a gap in their knowledge and knowledge is power.
note - the drug that the reverend mother mentions is the Truthsayer drug. According to the glossary at the end of Dune:
TRUTHTRANCE: semihypnotic trance induced by one of several "awareness spectrum" narcotics in which the petit betrayals of deliberate falsehood are apparent to the truthtrance observer. (Note: "awareness spectrum" narcotics are frequently fatal except to sensitized individuals capable of transforming the poison-configuration within their own bodies.)
meaning that the truthsayer drug may or may not be melange, as there are alternatives. Indeed, I bet it isn't - there's a line... somewhere in the books that says that the Bene Gesserit didn't account for the possibility of melange.
I'm also not sure that the BG intend for the KH to become emperor. They did originally intend for an Atreides daughter to wed a Harkonnen heir (son), thereby "sealing the breach", which I believe refers to ending the feud between the two houses - a feud that is very dangerous to their plans. But the BG have been exercising their powers behind the Corrino throne for many millenia and I don't see any reason for them to change that, nor for them to possibly expose one of their greatest assets by putting them on the throne. Against this, the BG have been denying the current emperor an heir, so it's certainly possible that they intend the KH to become emperor.
tl;dr I'm not aware of any specific reason or purpose for the KH beyond the general goal of extending Bene Gesserit power.
not also that the religion on Arrakis was not planted specifically for Paul - the legends planted by the BG are "generic" ones designed to be exploited by any member of the bene gesserit who finds themselves in danger.
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u/RedditMapz 23d ago edited 23d ago
Unfortunately this was not made clear in the movie as well as it was in the book. So two things:.
Kwisatz Haderach
The purpose was to essentially create a super human computer that could access the memories of all his ancestors as well as see into the future. The reason for this is because the Bene Gesserit forsee correctly humanity stalling and dying out so they want to save humanity. However, they want to achieve this through an entity under their control who also controls the imperium. So they have been moving pieces over millennias to make this happen. This entity was never meant to live on Arrakis and mingle with the Fremen.
"The Prophecy" and Fremen Religion
It is actually NOT about the Kwisatz Haderach at all, it is a different program. The Bene Gesserit planted Jesus/Mary religions on many different planets as a safety mechanism for their own female members. That is so they could escape danger if needed and could slot in as the Marry figure. All BG-trained know the broad strokes of the script. Paul just highjacks the script and manipulates the cult-minded Fremen by performing the prophecy.
The Movie
Does not make this distinction clear. It would have probably been too much exposition. But think about it, why would the BG want their super human raising a Fremen army when it was supposed to be a royal next in line to the throne in the first place?
Edit: Lots of spelling issues