Leto II Atreides
Leto II Atreides | |
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Leto II Atreides (
Leto is the son of
Leto is portrayed by James McAvoy in the 2003 miniseries Frank Herbert's Children of Dune.
Dune Messiah
Chani dies giving birth to Leto and his twin sister
Children of Dune
In Children of Dune, Leto and Ghanima are nine years old. Because of the
At the same time, the Imperium created by Paul is ruled by his sister
Independently, Leto and Ghanima both solve the problem of the pre-born. Leto constructs his own personality out of an executive committee of his ancestors; with all (the important ones) possessing him, none can possess him individually. Following an assassination attempt by
Leto finds Jacurutu, a
The sandtrout squirmed on his hand, elongating, stretching ... becoming thin, covering more and more of his hand. No sandtrout had ever before encountered a hand such as this one, every cell supersaturated with spice ... Delicately Leto adjusted his enzyme balance ... The knowledge from those uncounted lifetimes which blended themselves within him provided the certainty through which he chose the precise adjustments, staving off the death from an overdose which would engulf him if he relaxed his watchfulness for only a heartbeat. And at the same time he blended himself with the sandtrout, feeding on it, feeding it, learning it ... He located another, placed it over the first one ... Their cilia locked and they became a single membrane which enclosed him to the elbow ... This was no longer sandtrout; it was tougher, stronger. And it would grow stronger and stronger ... With a terrible singleness of concentration he achieved the union of his new skin with his body, preventing rejection ... They were all over his body now. He could feel the pulse of his blood against the living membrane ... My skin is not my own.[2]
— Children of Dune
This layer gives Leto tremendous strength and speed, acting as a living
God Emperor of Dune
A little more than 3,500 years have passed, and in God Emperor of Dune, Leto is now almost fully transformed into a sandworm. He is almost invulnerable to physical damage; only his face is susceptible to injury, and his single greatest weakness that he shares with the sandworms, an intense vulnerability to water, is a secret. "Leto's peace" has kept the universe quiet for that time, and the entirety of human society has become an audience for him. He is their emperor; he is their god. His all-female army of
Desolate Dune is gone; Arrakis is now a verdant planet with a great river named after
Leto has taken over the Bene Gesserit's
Siona is the second human to carry a gene that makes her invisible to prescience and thus uncontainable by it, the first being the Count Fenring, from the novel Dune. Siona is different from Fenring in that she can pass on this gene to her descendants, whereas Fenring was a genetic eunuch. Since Siona cannot be seen in a vision, she cannot be controlled by a vision, nor can her descendants. Thus the tyranny of prescience will end with Siona — humanity can never again be bound by a powerful prescient like Muad'dib or the God Emperor himself.
Siona's partner in revolution is
Meanwhile, the rest of the universe is scheming to kill Leto as well. The Bene Tleilax try many ham-fisted schemes; the technocrats of Ix are smarter. They craft a human to seduce Leto. First they create
At the same time as Leto is breeding a psi-invisible human, Ix invents another solution: no-chambers. A
Leto planned to wed Hwi in what remains of an old Fremen village near the former Sietch Tabr, but changes his mind at the last instant to use the Museum Fremen's Tuono Village, the place where Moneo had sent Siona and Duncan in an attempt to keep the peace and keep Duncan alive, safe from the God Emperor's wrath. However, that is not to be.
The Royal Peregrination, the journey on foot for any of Leto's trips, to Tuono has all the appearance of a normal trip. However, Siona and Duncan, both well aware of the God Emperor's coming and his schemes to breed them, are primed for rebellion, not quiet acceptance. Siona uses her power over
Before arrival to Tuono, Hwi asks Leto to "share their souls", since they cannot interact physically after Leto's loss of humanity. Her deep empathy and ability to see beyond the abyss that separates Leto from all human beings—an abyss that no other human would ever dare to cross—and to love him brings a tear in each of his eyes. Earlier, it was remarked that the God Emperor was unable to shed tears, partly because of the disrupting effect water had on his worm body and partly because of the Fremen-inherited inhibition of wasting body water. (The discussion in which that matter had been brought up sparked a deep interest and concern for Hwi.)
Although the Atreides (Moneo, Siona) that surround him needed to be shown (by activating their genetically-inherited prescient powers) the absolute horrors that could only be avoided by Leto's apparent tyranny in order for them to support the Golden Path, Hwi is able to understand without having seen any proof the altruism in Leto's actions and the ultimate sacrifice that he had to make... and is able to love him.
It is that moment they share which brings forth the deepest emotions in Leto's current life... emotions thought forgotten: fear, surprise, admiration, understanding and being understood and ultimately that moment of true happiness that he had lost hope for.
After Leto's death, driven by the Famine Times and the pent up desires of thousands of years of Leto's enforced peace, which bred stagnation and isolation, humanity explodes out into the universe in waves of migration known as
The sandworms which once again travel Dune after Leto's death carry, in his words, "a pearl of his awareness locked forever in an endless dream." They (and Leto) are worshipped as the Divided God, and their existence keeps humanity locked on Leto's Golden Path.
Sequels
More than 1500 years after his death, Leto II is brought back as a
In the concluding novel
In adaptations
Leto is portrayed by
God Emperor of Dune is parodied in the animated television show The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy in the 2003–04 season episode "Mandy, the Merciless", with Mandy as the emperor Leto II, and Billy as Duncan Idaho.[8]
Family tree
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Notes:
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References
- ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Dune: Creating the Audiobooks (Official promotional video, includes images of Frank Herbert's pronunciation notes for some terms). Macmillan Audio. December 23, 2008. Event occurs at 4:04. Retrieved January 23, 2010.
- ^ ISBN 0-399-11697-4.
- ^ Herbert, Frank (1981). God Emperor of Dune.
- ^ Wertheimer, Ron (March 15, 2003). "TELEVISION REVIEW; A Stormy Family on a Sandy Planet". The New York Times. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
- ^ Berger, Warren (March 16, 2003). "COVER STORY: Where Spice of Life Is the Vital Variety". The New York Times. Retrieved January 26, 2010.
- ^ Fries, Laura (March 11, 2003). "Review: Children of Dune". Variety. Archived from the original on August 21, 2015. Retrieved August 21, 2015.
- ^ Tor.com. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
- ^ Motamayor, Rafael (March 1, 2024). "That Time a Cartoon Network Show Parodied The Weirdest Dune Book". /Film. Retrieved March 4, 2024.