Complete listed story — includes the ending
Dune
Duke Leto Atreides of House Atreides, ruler of the ocean world Caladan, is assigned by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV to serve as fief ruler of the planet Arrakis. Although Arrakis is a harsh and inhospitable desert planet, it is of enormous importance because it is the only planetary source of melange, or the "spice", a unique and incredibly valuable substance that extends human youth, vitality and lifespan. It is also through the consumption of spice that Spacing Guild Navigators are able to effect safe interstellar travel through a limited ability to see into the future. The Emperor is jealous of the Duke's rising popularity in the Landsraad, the council of Great Houses, and sees House Atreides as a potential rival and threat. He conspires with House Harkonnen, the former stewards of Arrakis and the longstanding enemies of the Atreides, to destroy Leto and his family after their arrival. Leto is aware his assignment is a trap of some kind, but is compelled to obey the Emperor's orders anyway.
Leto's concubine Lady Jessica is an acolyte of the Bene Gesserit, an exclusively female group that pursues mysterious political aims and wields seemingly superhuman physical and mental abilities, such as the ability to control their bodies down to the cellular level, and also decide the sex of their children. Though Jessica was instructed by the Bene Gesserit to bear a daughter as part of their breeding program, out of love for Leto she bore him a son, Paul. From a young age, Paul is trained in warfare by Leto's aides, the elite soldiers Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck. Thufir Hawat, the Duke's Mentat (human computers, able to store vast amounts of data and perform advanced calculations on demand), has instructed Paul in the ways of political intrigue. Jessica has also trained her son in Bene Gesserit disciplines.
Paul's prophetic dreams interest Jessica's superior, the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam. She subjects Paul to a deadly test. She holds a poisoned needle, the gom jabbar, to his neck, ready to strike should he withdraw his hand from a box which creates extreme pain by nerve induction but causes no physical damage. The purpose of the test is to appraise Paul's ability to endure the pain and override his animal instincts, proving that he is, in the eyes of the Bene Gesserit, human. Paul passes, while enduring greater pain than any woman who has ever been subjected to the same test.
Paul and his parents travel with their household to occupy Arrakeen, the capital of Arrakis. Leto learns of the dangers involved in harvesting the spice, which is protected by giant sandworms, and seeks to negotiate with the planet's indigenous Fremen people, seeing them as a valuable ally rather than foes. Soon after the Atreides' arrival, Harkonnen forces attack, joined by the Emperor's ferocious Sardaukar troops in disguise. Leto is betrayed by his personal physician, the Suk doctor Wellington Yueh, who delivers a drugged Leto to the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and his twisted Mentat, Piter De Vries.
Yueh, who delivered Leto under duress related to his late wife, Wanna, arranges for Jessica and Paul to escape into the desert. Duncan is killed helping them flee, and they are subsequently presumed dead by the Harkonnens as they venture into a sandstorm. Yueh replaces one of Leto's teeth with a poison gas capsule, hoping Leto can kill Baron Harkonnen during their encounter. Piter kills Yueh, and the Baron narrowly avoids the gas (due to his defensive shield), which kills Leto, Piter, and the others in the room. The Baron seduces Thufir Hawat to become his replacement mentat by promising him "the most efficient spices" and denigrating Leto as "one whose reason was clouded by emotion," while secretly dosing him with an unremovable fatal poison, providing a daily antidote via his food, as security.
Having fled into the desert, Paul is exposed to high concentrations of spice and has visions through which he realizes he has significant powers (as a result of the Bene Gesserit breeding scheme). He foresees potential futures in which he lives among the Fremen before leading them on a holy war across the known universe. Paul reveals to Jessica that her father, and as a result his maternal grandfather, is Baron Harkonnen, a secret kept from her by the Bene Gesserit.
Paul and Jessica traverse the desert in search of Fremen people. After being captured by a Fremen band, Paul and Jessica agree to teach the Fremen the Bene Gesserit fighting technique known to the Fremen as the "weirding way" and are accepted into the community of Sietch Tabr. Paul proves his manhood by killing a Fremen man named Jamis in a ritualistic crysknife fight and chooses the Fremen name Muad'Dib, while Jessica opts to undergo a ritual to become a Reverend Mother by drinking and neutralizing the poisonous Water of Life. Pregnant with Leto's daughter, she inadvertently causes her unborn daughter Alia to become infused with the same powers in her womb. Paul takes a Fremen lover, Chani, who gives birth to his son Leto.
Two years pass, and Paul's powerful prescience manifests, which confirms to the Fremen that he is their prophesied "Lisan al-Gaib" messiah, a legend planted on Arrakis generations ago by the Bene Gesserit's Missionaria Protectiva. Paul embraces his father's belief that the Fremen could be a powerful fighting force to take back Arrakis, but also sees that if he does not control them, their jihad could consume the entire universe. Word of the new Fremen leader reaches both the Baron and the Emperor as spice production falls due to their increasingly destructive raids. The Baron encourages his brutish nephew Glossu "Beast" Rabban to rule with an iron fist, hoping the contrast with his shrewder nephew Feyd-Rautha will make the latter popular among the people of Arrakis when he eventually replaces Rabban. The Emperor, suspecting the Baron of trying to create troops more powerful than the Sardaukar to seize power, sends spies to Arrakis. Thufir uses the opportunity to sow seeds of doubt in the Baron about the Emperor's true plans, putting further strain on their alliance.
Gurney, who survived the Harkonnen coup and became a smuggler, reunites with Paul and Jessica after a Fremen raid on his harvester. Believing Jessica to be a traitor, Gurney threatens to kill her but is stopped by Paul. Paul did not foresee Gurney's attack and concludes he must increase his prescience by drinking the Water of Life, which is fatal to males. Paul falls into unconsciousness for three weeks after drinking a single drop of the poison, but when he wakes, he has clairvoyance across time and space: he is the Kwisatz Haderach, the ultimate goal of the Bene Gesserit breeding program.
Paul senses the Emperor and the Baron are amassing fleets around Arrakis to quell the Fremen rebellion, and prepares the Fremen for a major offensive. The Emperor arrives with the Baron on Arrakis. The Sardaukar seize a Fremen outpost, killing many, including young Leto, while Alia is captured and taken to the Emperor. Under cover of an electric storm, which shorts out the Sardaukar's defensive shields, Paul and the Fremen, riding giant sandworms, destroy the capital's natural rock fortifications with atomics and attack, while Alia assassinates the Baron and escapes. The Fremen quickly defeat both the Harkonnen and Sardaukar troops, killing Rabban in the process. Thufir is ordered to assassinate Paul, who gives him the opportunity to take anything that Thufir wishes of him. Thufir chooses to stab himself with the poisoned needle intended for Paul.
Paul faces the Emperor, threatening to destroy spice production forever unless Shaddam abdicates the throne. Feyd-Rautha challenges Paul to a knife fight, during which he cheats and tries to kill Paul with a poison spur in his belt. Paul gains the upper hand and kills him. The Emperor reluctantly cedes the throne to Paul and promises his daughter Princess Irulan's hand in marriage. Paul takes control of the Empire, but realizes that he cannot stop the Fremen jihad, as their belief in him is too powerful to restrain.
Dune Double Feature
Dune: Part One
In the distant future, Duke Leto Atreides is assigned by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV to replace Baron Vladimir Harkonnen as the fiefholder of Arrakis, a harsh desert planet and the sole source of "spice", a valuable psychotropic substance that imparts heightened vitality and awareness. Spice is also key to interstellar travel. Emperor Shaddam, fearful of Leto's rising power, plots for House Harkonnen, aided by his Sardaukar troops, to retake Arrakis and destroy House Atreides. Leto is suspicious of the Emperor but weighs the risks against the power of controlling Arrakis and making an alliance with its mysterious natives, the Fremen.
Leto's concubine, Lady Jessica, is an acolyte of the Bene Gesserit—a sisterhood whose members possess advanced physical and mental abilities. As part of a centuries-long breeding program, they instructed her to bear a daughter whose son would become the Kwisatz Haderach—a messianic superbeing with the prescience necessary to guide humanity to a better future. Jessica disobeyed and bore a son, Paul, whom she trains in Bene Gesserit practices. Paul also receives mentorship from Leto's aides Duncan Idaho, Gurney Halleck, Wellington Yueh, and Thufir Hawat. The Reverend Mother and Imperial Truthsayer Gaius Helen Mohiam subjects Paul to a highly dangerous gom jabbar test to assess his humanity and impulse control, which he passes. Paul begins having troubling visions of the future.
House Atreides arrives on Arrakis. The Fremen revere Paul and Jessica, which she explains is due to the Bene Gesserit sowing beliefs on Arrakis centuries earlier. An attempt to assassinate Paul fails. At a secret meeting on the Harkonnen planet Giedi Prime, Mohiam insists that Baron Harkonnen spare Paul and Jessica in his coup, to which he duplicitously agrees. Leto meets and negotiates with Fremen chieftain Stilgar and meets the Imperial Judge of the Change, Dr. Liet Kynes, a planetologist who lives among the Fremen. During a flight over the desert, they rescue a stranded spice-harvesting crew from a giant sandworm, and Paul's exposure to the spice triggers intense premonitions.
Yueh betrays the Atreides and disables Arrakeen's shields, allowing the Harkonnens and Sardaukar to invade. Yueh incapacitates Leto, planning to exchange him for his wife, the Baron's prisoner. Yueh replaces one of Leto's teeth with a poison gas capsule with which Leto can assassinate the Baron. After the Baron kills Yueh, Leto releases the gas, killing himself and the Baron's Mentat, Piter De Vries, but the Baron survives. Though the Baron arranged to have Paul and Jessica dropped deep in the desert to die, Yueh had left them with a fremkit with survival supplies. Jessica uses the Voice technique to overpower and kill their captors. Overnighting in the desert, Paul—surrounded by spice—has visions of a bloody holy war fought across the universe in his name.
After conquering Arrakis, Baron Harkonnen appoints his nephew Rabban to oversee the planet, and orders him to restart spice production to recoup the invasion's cost. Meanwhile, Duncan and Kynes find Jessica and Paul, who discloses his plan to marry one of Emperor Shaddam's daughters to avert a potential civil war arising from the Emperor's betrayal. When they are discovered by Sardaukar soldiers, Duncan sacrifices himself to enable Paul and Jessica to escape. Kynes also tries to escape but is caught and mortally wounded. Deep in the desert, Paul and Jessica encounter Stilgar's tribe, including Chani, the young woman from Paul's visions. When Stilgar commands lenience towards Paul and Jessica, the Fremen warrior Jamis challenges them to a ritual duel to the death; Paul accepts and wins. Contrary to Jessica's wishes, Paul joins the Fremen, determined to fulfill his father's goal of bringing peace to Arrakis.
Dune: Part Two
Following the defeat of House Atreides by House Harkonnen, Princess Irulan—daughter of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam Corrino IV—records in her journal her father's betrayal of the Atreides. On the planet Arrakis, a Fremen tribe led by Stilgar accompanies Paul Atreides and his pregnant Bene Gesserit mother Lady Jessica to Sietch Tabr. Some Fremen suspect they are spies, while Stilgar and others see signs of the prophecy that a mother and son from the "Outer World" will bring prosperity to Arrakis.
After Paul defeats Jamis in a duel, the Fremen accept Paul. Stilgar commands Jessica to succeed Sietch Tabr's dying Reverend Mother by ritually drinking the normally fatal Water of Life. Jessica uses her Bene Gesserit training to transmute the poisonous liquid and survive, inheriting the memories of past Reverend Mothers. The liquid prematurely awakens the mind of her unborn daughter, Alia, allowing Jessica to communicate with her. Chani and her friend Shishakli correctly deduce that the prophecy is a Bene Gesserit myth fabricated to manipulate the Fremen. Nonetheless, Chani begins to respect Paul after he declares that he only seeks to fight alongside the Fremen, not rule them.
Paul and Chani fall in love as he immerses himself in Fremen culture—learning their language, becoming a Fedaykin fighter, riding a sandworm, and raiding Harkonnen spice-harvesting operations. Paul adopts the Fremen names Usul and Muad'Dib. Due to the spice raids, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen replaces his older nephew Rabban as the ruler of Arrakis with his favored nephew, Feyd-Rautha. Lady Margot Fenring is sent by the Bene Gesserit to evaluate Feyd-Rautha as a prospective Kwisatz Haderach.
Jessica travels south to unite with Fremen fundamentalists who strongly believe in the prophecy. Paul remains in the north, fearful that his visions of an apocalyptic holy war will come to pass if he goes south as a messiah. During a raid on a smuggler spice harvester, Paul reunites with his mentor Gurney Halleck, who leads Paul to House Atreides' hidden atomic warheads. Paul is forced to journey south after Feyd-Rautha unleashes a devastating attack on Sietch Tabr and kills Shishakli. Upon arrival in the south, Paul drinks the Water of Life and falls into a coma. Jessica uses The Voice to compel Chani to save Paul; she gives Paul a mixture of her tears with the Water of Life, which awakens him. With his emerging prescience, Paul perceives countless possible futures and identifies a narrow path to victory, along with a vision of an adult Alia on a water-covered Arrakis. He also discovers that his mother is the Baron's daughter and that the Bene Gesserit orchestrated her union with Duke Leto Atreides to merge Harkonnen and Atreides bloodlines in their plan to create the Kwisatz Haderach.
Paul declares himself the messianic figure Lisan al Gaib after gaining the southern Fremen's support by demonstrating his ability to know their deepest thoughts. He threatens to destroy the spice fields, forcing Emperor Shaddam to come to Arrakis with Irulan and his elite Sardaukar soldiers. The Fremen launch an offensive using atomic weapons and sandworms, overpowering the Sardaukar. Gurney leads a Fremen assault on Arrakeen, killing Rabban.
After capturing the Imperial court and executing Vladimir Harkonnen, Paul challenges Shaddam for the throne and, to Chani's dismay, demands to marry Irulan. More Great Houses (which were secretly summoned by the Baron) arrive in orbit but Paul threatens to destroy the spice fields if they intervene. Feyd-Rautha, who volunteers to be Shaddam's champion, is killed by Paul in a duel. Irulan agrees to marry Paul on the condition that he spare her father. Shaddam surrenders but the Houses reject Paul's ascendancy, so he orders the Fremen to attack the orbiting fleet. As Stilgar leads the Fremen onto the captured Sardaukar ships, Jessica and Alia reflect on the beginning of Paul's holy war. A devastated Chani refuses to bow to Paul and departs alone on a sandworm.
Duke Leto Atreides of House Atreides, ruler of the ocean world Caladan, is assigned by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV to serve as fief ruler of the planet Arrakis. Although Arrakis is a harsh and inhospitable desert planet, it is of enormous importance because it is the only planetary source of melange, or the "spice", a unique and incredibly valuable substance that extends human youth, vitality and lifespan. It is also through the consumption of spice that Spacing Guild Navigators are able to effect safe interstellar travel through a limited ability to see into the future. The Emperor is jealous of the Duke's rising popularity in the Landsraad, the council of Great Houses, and sees House Atreides as a potential rival and threat. He conspires with House Harkonnen, the former stewards of Arrakis and the longstanding enemies of the Atreides, to destroy Leto and his family after their arrival. Leto is aware his assignment is a trap of some kind, but is compelled to obey the Emperor's orders anyway.
Leto's concubine Lady Jessica is an acolyte of the Bene Gesserit, an exclusively female group that pursues mysterious political aims and wields seemingly superhuman physical and mental abilities, such as the ability to control their bodies down to the cellular level, and also decide the sex of their children. Though Jessica was instructed by the Bene Gesserit to bear a daughter as part of their breeding program, out of love for Leto she bore him a son, Paul. From a young age, Paul is trained in warfare by Leto's aides, the elite soldiers Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck. Thufir Hawat, the Duke's Mentat (human computers, able to store vast amounts of data and perform advanced calculations on demand), has instructed Paul in the ways of political intrigue. Jessica has also trained her son in Bene Gesserit disciplines.
Paul's prophetic dreams interest Jessica's superior, the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam. She subjects Paul to a deadly test. She holds a poisoned needle, the gom jabbar, to his neck, ready to strike should he withdraw his hand from a box which creates extreme pain by nerve induction but causes no physical damage. The purpose of the test is to appraise Paul's ability to endure the pain and override his animal instincts, proving that he is, in the eyes of the Bene Gesserit, human. Paul passes, while enduring greater pain than any woman who has ever been subjected to the same test.
Paul and his parents travel with their household to occupy Arrakeen, the capital of Arrakis. Leto learns of the dangers involved in harvesting the spice, which is protected by giant sandworms, and seeks to negotiate with the planet's indigenous Fremen people, seeing them as a valuable ally rather than foes. Soon after the Atreides' arrival, Harkonnen forces attack, joined by the Emperor's ferocious Sardaukar troops in disguise. Leto is betrayed by his personal physician, the Suk doctor Wellington Yueh, who delivers a drugged Leto to the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and his twisted Mentat, Piter De Vries.
Yueh, who delivered Leto under duress related to his late wife, Wanna, arranges for Jessica and Paul to escape into the desert. Duncan is killed helping them flee, and they are subsequently presumed dead by the Harkonnens as they venture into a sandstorm. Yueh replaces one of Leto's teeth with a poison gas capsule, hoping Leto can kill Baron Harkonnen during their encounter. Piter kills Yueh, and the Baron narrowly avoids the gas (due to his defensive shield), which kills Leto, Piter, and the others in the room. The Baron seduces Thufir Hawat to become his replacement mentat by promising him "the most efficient spices" and denigrating Leto as "one whose reason was clouded by emotion," while secretly dosing him with an unremovable fatal poison, providing a daily antidote via his food, as security.
Having fled into the desert, Paul is exposed to high concentrations of spice and has visions through which he realizes he has significant powers (as a result of the Bene Gesserit breeding scheme). He foresees potential futures in which he lives among the Fremen before leading them on a holy war across the known universe. Paul reveals to Jessica that her father, and as a result his maternal grandfather, is Baron Harkonnen, a secret kept from her by the Bene Gesserit.
Paul and Jessica traverse the desert in search of Fremen people. After being captured by a Fremen band, Paul and Jessica agree to teach the Fremen the Bene Gesserit fighting technique known to the Fremen as the "weirding way" and are accepted into the community of Sietch Tabr. Paul proves his manhood by killing a Fremen man named Jamis in a ritualistic crysknife fight and chooses the Fremen name Muad'Dib, while Jessica opts to undergo a ritual to become a Reverend Mother by drinking and neutralizing the poisonous Water of Life. Pregnant with Leto's daughter, she inadvertently causes her unborn daughter Alia to become infused with the same powers in her womb. Paul takes a Fremen lover, Chani, who gives birth to his son Leto.
Two years pass, and Paul's powerful prescience manifests, which confirms to the Fremen that he is their prophesied "Lisan al-Gaib" messiah, a legend planted on Arrakis generations ago by the Bene Gesserit's Missionaria Protectiva. Paul embraces his father's belief that the Fremen could be a powerful fighting force to take back Arrakis, but also sees that if he does not control them, their jihad could consume the entire universe. Word of the new Fremen leader reaches both the Baron and the Emperor as spice production falls due to their increasingly destructive raids. The Baron encourages his brutish nephew Glossu "Beast" Rabban to rule with an iron fist, hoping the contrast with his shrewder nephew Feyd-Rautha will make the latter popular among the people of Arrakis when he eventually replaces Rabban. The Emperor, suspecting the Baron of trying to create troops more powerful than the Sardaukar to seize power, sends spies to Arrakis. Thufir uses the opportunity to sow seeds of doubt in the Baron about the Emperor's true plans, putting further strain on their alliance.
Gurney, who survived the Harkonnen coup and became a smuggler, reunites with Paul and Jessica after a Fremen raid on his harvester. Believing Jessica to be a traitor, Gurney threatens to kill her but is stopped by Paul. Paul did not foresee Gurney's attack and concludes he must increase his prescience by drinking the Water of Life, which is fatal to males. Paul falls into unconsciousness for three weeks after drinking a single drop of the poison, but when he wakes, he has clairvoyance across time and space: he is the Kwisatz Haderach, the ultimate goal of the Bene Gesserit breeding program.
Paul senses the Emperor and the Baron are amassing fleets around Arrakis to quell the Fremen rebellion, and prepares the Fremen for a major offensive. The Emperor arrives with the Baron on Arrakis. The Sardaukar seize a Fremen outpost, killing many, including young Leto, while Alia is captured and taken to the Emperor. Under cover of an electric storm, which shorts out the Sardaukar's defensive shields, Paul and the Fremen, riding giant sandworms, destroy the capital's natural rock fortifications with atomics and attack, while Alia assassinates the Baron and escapes. The Fremen quickly defeat both the Harkonnen and Sardaukar troops, killing Rabban in the process. Thufir is ordered to assassinate Paul, who gives him the opportunity to take anything that Thufir wishes of him. Thufir chooses to stab himself with the poisoned needle intended for Paul.
Paul faces the Emperor, threatening to destroy spice production forever unless Shaddam abdicates the throne. Feyd-Rautha challenges Paul to a knife fight, during which he cheats and tries to kill Paul with a poison spur in his belt. Paul gains the upper hand and kills him. The Emperor reluctantly cedes the throne to Paul and promises his daughter Princess Irulan's hand in marriage. Paul takes control of the Empire, but realizes that he cannot stop the Fremen jihad, as their belief in him is too powerful to restrain.
Dune Double Feature
Dune: Part One
In the distant future, Duke Leto Atreides is assigned by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV to replace Baron Vladimir Harkonnen as the fiefholder of Arrakis, a harsh desert planet and the sole source of "spice", a valuable psychotropic substance that imparts heightened vitality and awareness. Spice is also key to interstellar travel. Emperor Shaddam, fearful of Leto's rising power, plots for House Harkonnen, aided by his Sardaukar troops, to retake Arrakis and destroy House Atreides. Leto is suspicious of the Emperor but weighs the risks against the power of controlling Arrakis and making an alliance with its mysterious natives, the Fremen.
Leto's concubine, Lady Jessica, is an acolyte of the Bene Gesserit—a sisterhood whose members possess advanced physical and mental abilities. As part of a centuries-long breeding program, they instructed her to bear a daughter whose son would become the Kwisatz Haderach—a messianic superbeing with the prescience necessary to guide humanity to a better future. Jessica disobeyed and bore a son, Paul, whom she trains in Bene Gesserit practices. Paul also receives mentorship from Leto's aides Duncan Idaho, Gurney Halleck, Wellington Yueh, and Thufir Hawat. The Reverend Mother and Imperial Truthsayer Gaius Helen Mohiam subjects Paul to a highly dangerous gom jabbar test to assess his humanity and impulse control, which he passes. Paul begins having troubling visions of the future.
House Atreides arrives on Arrakis. The Fremen revere Paul and Jessica, which she explains is due to the Bene Gesserit sowing beliefs on Arrakis centuries earlier. An attempt to assassinate Paul fails. At a secret meeting on the Harkonnen planet Giedi Prime, Mohiam insists that Baron Harkonnen spare Paul and Jessica in his coup, to which he duplicitously agrees. Leto meets and negotiates with Fremen chieftain Stilgar and meets the Imperial Judge of the Change, Dr. Liet Kynes, a planetologist who lives among the Fremen. During a flight over the desert, they rescue a stranded spice-harvesting crew from a giant sandworm, and Paul's exposure to the spice triggers intense premonitions.
Yueh betrays the Atreides and disables Arrakeen's shields, allowing the Harkonnens and Sardaukar to invade. Yueh incapacitates Leto, planning to exchange him for his wife, the Baron's prisoner. Yueh replaces one of Leto's teeth with a poison gas capsule with which Leto can assassinate the Baron. After the Baron kills Yueh, Leto releases the gas, killing himself and the Baron's Mentat, Piter De Vries, but the Baron survives. Though the Baron arranged to have Paul and Jessica dropped deep in the desert to die, Yueh had left them with a fremkit with survival supplies. Jessica uses the Voice technique to overpower and kill their captors. Overnighting in the desert, Paul—surrounded by spice—has visions of a bloody holy war fought across the universe in his name.
After conquering Arrakis, Baron Harkonnen appoints his nephew Rabban to oversee the planet, and orders him to restart spice production to recoup the invasion's cost. Meanwhile, Duncan and Kynes find Jessica and Paul, who discloses his plan to marry one of Emperor Shaddam's daughters to avert a potential civil war arising from the Emperor's betrayal. When they are discovered by Sardaukar soldiers, Duncan sacrifices himself to enable Paul and Jessica to escape. Kynes also tries to escape but is caught and mortally wounded. Deep in the desert, Paul and Jessica encounter Stilgar's tribe, including Chani, the young woman from Paul's visions. When Stilgar commands lenience towards Paul and Jessica, the Fremen warrior Jamis challenges them to a ritual duel to the death; Paul accepts and wins. Contrary to Jessica's wishes, Paul joins the Fremen, determined to fulfill his father's goal of bringing peace to Arrakis.
Dune: Part Two
Following the defeat of House Atreides by House Harkonnen, Princess Irulan—daughter of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam Corrino IV—records in her journal her father's betrayal of the Atreides. On the planet Arrakis, a Fremen tribe led by Stilgar accompanies Paul Atreides and his pregnant Bene Gesserit mother Lady Jessica to Sietch Tabr. Some Fremen suspect they are spies, while Stilgar and others see signs of the prophecy that a mother and son from the "Outer World" will bring prosperity to Arrakis.
After Paul defeats Jamis in a duel, the Fremen accept Paul. Stilgar commands Jessica to succeed Sietch Tabr's dying Reverend Mother by ritually drinking the normally fatal Water of Life. Jessica uses her Bene Gesserit training to transmute the poisonous liquid and survive, inheriting the memories of past Reverend Mothers. The liquid prematurely awakens the mind of her unborn daughter, Alia, allowing Jessica to communicate with her. Chani and her friend Shishakli correctly deduce that the prophecy is a Bene Gesserit myth fabricated to manipulate the Fremen. Nonetheless, Chani begins to respect Paul after he declares that he only seeks to fight alongside the Fremen, not rule them.
Paul and Chani fall in love as he immerses himself in Fremen culture—learning their language, becoming a Fedaykin fighter, riding a sandworm, and raiding Harkonnen spice-harvesting operations. Paul adopts the Fremen names Usul and Muad'Dib. Due to the spice raids, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen replaces his older nephew Rabban as the ruler of Arrakis with his favored nephew, Feyd-Rautha. Lady Margot Fenring is sent by the Bene Gesserit to evaluate Feyd-Rautha as a prospective Kwisatz Haderach.
Jessica travels south to unite with Fremen fundamentalists who strongly believe in the prophecy. Paul remains in the north, fearful that his visions of an apocalyptic holy war will come to pass if he goes south as a messiah. During a raid on a smuggler spice harvester, Paul reunites with his mentor Gurney Halleck, who leads Paul to House Atreides' hidden atomic warheads. Paul is forced to journey south after Feyd-Rautha unleashes a devastating attack on Sietch Tabr and kills Shishakli. Upon arrival in the south, Paul drinks the Water of Life and falls into a coma. Jessica uses The Voice to compel Chani to save Paul; she gives Paul a mixture of her tears with the Water of Life, which awakens him. With his emerging prescience, Paul perceives countless possible futures and identifies a narrow path to victory, along with a vision of an adult Alia on a water-covered Arrakis. He also discovers that his mother is the Baron's daughter and that the Bene Gesserit orchestrated her union with Duke Leto Atreides to merge Harkonnen and Atreides bloodlines in their plan to create the Kwisatz Haderach.
Paul declares himself the messianic figure Lisan al Gaib after gaining the southern Fremen's support by demonstrating his ability to know their deepest thoughts. He threatens to destroy the spice fields, forcing Emperor Shaddam to come to Arrakis with Irulan and his elite Sardaukar soldiers. The Fremen launch an offensive using atomic weapons and sandworms, overpowering the Sardaukar. Gurney leads a Fremen assault on Arrakeen, killing Rabban.
After capturing the Imperial court and executing Vladimir Harkonnen, Paul challenges Shaddam for the throne and, to Chani's dismay, demands to marry Irulan. More Great Houses (which were secretly summoned by the Baron) arrive in orbit but Paul threatens to destroy the spice fields if they intervene. Feyd-Rautha, who volunteers to be Shaddam's champion, is killed by Paul in a duel. Irulan agrees to marry Paul on the condition that he spare her father. Shaddam surrenders but the Houses reject Paul's ascendancy, so he orders the Fremen to attack the orbiting fleet. As Stilgar leads the Fremen onto the captured Sardaukar ships, Jessica and Alia reflect on the beginning of Paul's holy war. A devastated Chani refuses to bow to Paul and departs alone on a sandworm.
Sources and content license
Source and revision history ↗ · Exact listed stories combined in catalog order. Sources retain their stated license; formatting and headings adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Dune (novel). Section headings and formatting adjusted. Exact listed stories combined in catalog order. Sources retain their stated license; formatting and headings adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Dune (2021 film). Section headings and formatting adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Dune: Part Two. Section headings and formatting adjusted. · Content license