Dune: Messiah, the novel which is a source material for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Three, was written by Frank Herbert mainly to emphasize the notion he tried to introduce in the original Dune novel. Herbert’s work was heavily influenced by his conservative and libertarian ideas, which imply that concentrated political power is dangerous. Herbert once said that power attracts pathological personalities, and he supported the notion which is deeply entrenched in the tradition of such thought, that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Most readers didn’t see Paul as such a figure after the original Dune novel was published, so in Dune: Messiah, Herbert wanted to show how the synthesis of absolute religious and political power (which was made possible by the Bene Gesserit propaganda) results in an ultimate catastrophe. Dune: Messiah takes place roughly 12 years after the events in the Dune novel, and Paul is now and Emperor, in command of the known galaxy, and his rule is a mix of a theocracy and totalitarian rule over his subjects.
Paul says: „Statistics: at a conservative estimate I’ve killed sixty-one billion, sterilized ninety planets, completely demoralized five hundred others. I’ve wiped out the followers of forty religions…” When he speaks of the Golden Age of Earth, he says to Stilgar that Genghis Khan killed perhaps four million people, not by himself, as Paul explains to confused Stilgar, but by sending out his legions, in the same way Paul did. He also says: „There’s another emperor I want you to note in passing – a Hitler. He killed more than six million. Pretty good for those days.” Stilgar answers that these statistics are not very impressive. Paul also says, in his order to the Council: “Production growth and income growth must not get out of step in my Empire. That is the substance of my command. There are to be no balance-of-payment difficulties between the different spheres of influence. And the reason for this is simply because I command it… My Government is the economy.” Although he compares himself to Hitler when it comes to the mass killings his Fremen legions perpetrated, in some ways, he is more similar to Stalin. The notion that his government is the economy suggests that his empire is a planned economy, there is no such thing as free commerce – all economic activity and the distribution of profits is under his control and command.
This is done to ensure political stability, but also, this makes his government totalitarian in the way Stalin’s was. Not only does he have the lives of his subjects at his disposal, but also the entire galactic economy is guided by his hand, not the invisible one as in market economy, we may safely presume. Also, the similarity to Stalin doesn’t end here, since he established a personal cult of worship of his name and person. The Jihad is inexorably tied to his person, so even if he dies or abdicates, the Jihad will go on. Since Paul is a mentat, as well as Kwisatz Haderach, a being which can be at many places at once, and in a certain way encapsulates Time within himself, his mind works as a “human computer”, relying both on computations and the oracle which comes from his powers of prescience. When computations are used, statistics become the main tool of governance, especially since the entire galaxy is under his control. The population he rules over becomes merely a statistical figure, it is deprived of warmth of human flesh, and the beat of a heart, but reduced only to mere numbers, and this echoes Stalin’s rule as well.
He is also similar to the modern-day figure of an ayatollah, which in Arabic and Persian means “Sign of God”, since he wields both religious and secular supreme authority. But he is not the earthly sign of god only, he is both the head priest of his religion and the object of worship at the same time, a godhead. His Quizarate missionaries serve both to spread religious worship across the galaxy, but also as bureaucratic officials on conquered worlds. Arrakis is a place like Mecca, where his subjects from all over the galaxy come to the pilgrimage, in the desert there is a shrine of his father’s skull, which is a place of worship. His rule is both theocratic and totalitarian, and for someone who leaned toward libertarianism like Frank Herbert, this is the most dangerous and horrific combination possible. Religion, economy, sovereignty over his subjects’ lives, all of this is under Emeperor Paul Atreides’ total control.
He is the sun of each planet in the galaxy, the omnipresent godhead which rules over all living things. His mother Lady Jessica, in a letter to his sister Alia, who serves as a religious figure due to her own powers of prescience, warns that religion cannot be a substitute for governance, that laws eventually must replace morality, conscience and religion the Jihad created. In other words, ceremony must take place of faith, and symbolism replace morality. The methods of governance which are used in state affairs must be employed, arcana imperii as the Roman historian Tacitus called them, symbols and ceremonies must be established to normalize everyday life, and replace religion as an unifying factor – which is, according to Lady Jessica, extremely unstable. Paul’s empire is in a constant state of emergency, as long as the Jihad is under way, fueled by religious fanaticism, but at some point, it most be replaced with the semblance of normal life, using political tools at empire’s disposal. Lady Jessica calls Paul’s over-reliance on religion a “deadly paradox”.
The tone of Dune: Messiah is melancholic, contemplative, it focuses on Paul’s powers of prescience and how they shape his view of life, which becomes bitter and cynical. He feels trapped by the Jihad, unable to escape it, his mind tells him to disengage over and over, but at the same moment, he aspires to the most desirable outcome to his predicament, which will hurt those he loves as little as possible, and end the horrors of Jihad. He takes solitary walks at night through the streets of Arrakeen, dressed in a stillsuit so he may not be recognized as the emperor, except maybe by former sietch companions. His sadness and cynicism are the result of his understading that there is next to no way to escape the totalitarian empire he created, still in the flames of Jihad. The conspirators include the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam and, most notably, a Tleilaxu Face Dancer who seeks to end Paul’s rule. He attempts to achieve this through a method similar to the one the Tleilaxu used on their own Kwisatz Haderach, by forcing him to become something he is not, leading him to his self-destruction. As Paul says in the Trailer to Dune: Part Three: “I must not die… yet.”
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