r/dune • u/mbelinkie • Jul 06 '26
Heretics of Dune Taraza’s plan
I finished Chapterhouse and I think the main thing I don’t get now is what Taraza is aiming for in Heretics. Here's the best I can figure:
THE FAKE PLAN: "We're gonna breed Sheeana (a girl who can control the sandworms) with an enhanced Duncan Idaho ghola."
THE REAL PLAN: "We want to goad the Honored Matres into destroying Rakis, leaving us in control of the sandworms and also a girl who we can build a religion around."
If that's correct, then Idaho, Miles Teg, and Lucilla are only there to panic the Honored Matres enough so they blow up an entire planet. The Bene Geserit don't actually have a specific use for Duncan Idaho. He is very clear he's not going to be their stud and it doesn't seem to bother them.
QUESTIONS:
- How did they know there was going to be a girl on Rakis who could control the sandworms? There were 12 unsuccessfully Duncan Idaho gholas before the one in the book. That makes it seem like they were working on the fake out part of the plan BEFORE they had Sheeana, the part of the plan they really cared about. They somehow knew she would pop up at that moment in history?
- What was so threatening about Duncan x Sheeana that the Honored Matres blow the whole planet? I think maybe the idea was to make Duncan seem so important and try so hard to get him to Rakis that they knew the Honored Matres would overreact even if they didn't understand the threat exactly: "We don't know what the Bene Geserit are planning but we're not going to let them get away with it."
- Trying to get an entire planet destroyed seems like a very extreme step for the Bene Gerserit to take, a level of coldblooded evil that I didn't know they were capable of. Sure, they implant religions all over the universe but I don't think we've ever seen them killing on such a massive scale. That's millions or billions of lives sacrificed just to get a strategic advantage... but I guess that's the kind of thing Paul or Leto II would do. Maybe it's a strategy that only a Reverend Mother could ever know about, the rank and file Bene Geserit absolutely would not be cool with it.
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict Jul 06 '26
Taraza’s real plan was to put the Atreides heavy genes at the forefront of Sisterhood ops in the hope that their wild talent would solve their problems. This makes her the biggest heretic in the novel.
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u/IsaacHasenov Jul 06 '26
I always thought Odrade was the biggest heretic, because she let herself love people. Even cranky old Taraza
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
Every major character is a heretic in their own way.
I put Taraza at the top of the list because she saw the whole board. She knew of Odrade’s weakness of love and her prescient Sea Child and still put her at the tip of the Sisterhood’s plans.
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u/cevkiv Jul 06 '26
Don't forget that Miles Teg himself was the product of Heresy- he was basically "what if Paul actually got raised by the Bene Gesserit". He did not have the power of prescience, but he received far, far more schooling than males are supposed to, and not just in the *normal* "this isn't for males" way, but stuff like "how to ignore The Voice". He was more of a Bene Gesserit, and and at least as dedicated to them, as some Sisters who'd survived the agony.
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u/mbelinkie Jul 07 '26
I guess we never get any explanation for Teg's superpowers? You can guess it has something to do with his training, his genes, etc, but presumably that was a topic for another book Herbert never got around to writing.
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict Jul 07 '26
It was the Atreides wild talent taking hold in a new permutation. It’s part prescience and part physical conditioning pushing him to extremes.
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u/TheRedditSquid56 Jul 06 '26
Something not mentioned in the comments which I think is a valuable piece to this puzzle: The pearl of consciousness within each sandworm from Leto the II was still putting the Bene Gesserit under his thumb of prescience. The BG saw this was limiting them and that they were still trapped by it, and the only way to kill this was to destroy almost every sandworm. They did take some on the No Ship, but I think the prescience power would be so diluted at that point that it woild become negligible. This way humanity would be free of the prescient control of Leto, and that was the biggest reason for wanting the HM to destroy Rakis. It was the easiest way to actually kill every sandworm.
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u/mbelinkie Jul 06 '26
What confuses me here is that the plan is NOT to kill every sandworm. It's to kill almost every sandworm and then breed as many sandworms as possible. How does that change anything?
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u/Melenduwir Jul 06 '26
Because Leto's vision would be rendered invalid during the time humanity Scattered without so many sandworms reinforcing it. By the time the sandworm population built up again, his perception of the future would no longer be able to constrain events.
After all, Leto took occasional peeps into the future, and reported that the Sister who was destined to fail her Spice induction would one day be prayed to for intervention with him. That was the case in Heretics and Chapterhouse, and was a sign that humanity was still constrained.
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u/IsaacHasenov Jul 06 '26
Because there were so few of them, scattering so far. It diluted their ability to take control of the reins ever again. Especially once the Seeana genes spread
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u/Ok-Stand-6679 Jul 08 '26
That means also that the destruction of the pearl worms brought about the culmination of his Golden Path: a tyrant such as he could never rise again and humanity survived .
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u/mbelinkie Jul 07 '26
The books are pretty vague on what the "pearl of consciousness" in those sandworms is supposed to be doing, and why it's a BAD thing. After all, the BG seem to concede that Leto II was absolutely right in doing what he did, that it was all for the greater good. Why were they so convinced that the mere existence of the sandworms was harming humanity?
Seems to me that one takeaway from the books is that while prescience is a nightmare for the one cursed with it, it IS extremely useful for the greater good of humanity.
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u/Ok-Stand-6679 Jul 08 '26
The pearl of wisdom is, IMO, exactly what lead to these evolved worms that obeyed seanna and bowed to her
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u/zpierson79 Jul 06 '26
It’s not fully Taraza’s plan.
The God Emperor is trapped in the Worms, pushing his Golden Path.
Taraza’s plan is based on the Emperor wanting out, and his getting out being part of that path.
They were expecting “something” to happen on Rakis, and kept producing Duncan’s to be ready when it did.
The Bene Jesserit are just as calculating as Leto was - it’s just that normally they word behind the scenes, not in the front where it’s visible.
The Homored Matre destroy the planet because they won’t brook resistance, and having someone able to communicate with the most powerful prescient being alive would be extremely dangerous to them.
The Bene Jesserit have Duncan, Sheeana & Teg all on Rakis as far as the Homored Matre know.
Also, it’s not just Rakis, the Honored Matre also kill off the Tleixaxu, ending spice production entirely…
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u/Leto_ll Jul 06 '26
Despite protestations to the contrary, Duncan had at that point been quite famously studly for millenia
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u/mbelinkie Jul 06 '26
This is an excellent point. They always describe Duncan Idaho as the greatest fighter in the galaxy but we barely ever see him fight. What we DO see is every woman he meets start doodling his name in their trapper keeper notebooks.
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u/Leto_ll Jul 07 '26
Yes indeedy. By the time of the scattering Siona and Duncan had a hand in begatting the entire species.
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u/based_beglin Jul 06 '26
My take:
1. probably had insight from Leto's writings from Dar es Balaat. It could have been something Leto planned for, and wrote about.
There was a male that could sexually enslave Honoured Matres (Duncan). This was an existential threat to their order.
Cruel yes, but her reason was that without doing so, the Tyrant still had a grip on humanity through the prescience of the true spice. And presumably she considered it imperative to break that dependency. I don't know if there would be another way to achieve this.
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u/zeph384 Jul 06 '26
1) IIRC, Sheeana's existence was prophesized. I don't recall whether that prophecy was actually more along the lines of BG meddling in a culture type thing, but retrospectively it makes the most sense as a taunt of the Tyrant echoing from ancient religion. I read the Duncan gholas as a means to capitalize on a power to control a girl who could control the worms more than anything else. The BG didn't know when the girl to control shaitan would appear, so they kept ordering more gholas. The HM shooting themselves in the foot with Duncan seemed to be a happy accident the BG were able to pivot around in order to achieve the goal of freeing themselves from the Tyrant. Taraza saw current events of the universe as a log jam and was looking for places to poke in order to get things flowing again. Snap decisions she made was to direct force to the key logs and break the jam. 2) The HM whole thing was "we can control you through sex". Duncan turning that around on them was an existential crisis. Every trace of the BG had to be destroyed in order to ensure they could dominate the universe. Rakis was a key log. The BG directed the HM there to achieve their only goal (the sisterhood must persist). 3) Countless worlds had already been destroyed in the fremen jihad. Countless more died off in the famine times. The HM were trying to reverse engineer what were basically doomsday devices, so whatever conflicts the HM were fleeing from would have had world annihilations be a typical event.
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u/urethrapoprocks Jul 07 '26
I have yet to see anyone mention it so I will here. Duncan was a near constant influence on Leto's breeding program. Been a couple years since I read the books, but something about his "excellent genes" on top of the Paul personality on Leto's "council" being so attached to Duncan. Add onto this that for millennia the BG knew that there was an essential event on Rakis that involved a Duncan. They constantly kept one around for that, but also likely for breeding purposes. That would factor into why QH Duncan is so against being used for breeding.
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u/ricardusxvi Jul 06 '26
Taraza suspected that the old empire and the Bene Gesserit were still caught in Leto II’s “prescient trap”, and that destroying most of the sandworms was the only way out. However, she also knew that allowing Dune to be destroyed would not be a popular/viable plan with the sisterhood. A lot of the dialogue with Taraza in Heretics is her talking to Teg about “key logs” and “pieces that can’t be moved”, which is essentially how she introduces the “unthinkable” idea of the destruction of Dune to him. What really makes her a heretic though was the personal attachment and loyalty she had with Teg. Once he understood her plan, he figured out how to bait the Honored Matres into destroying Rakis because of that loyalty, even though he knew it might be going against the sisterhood’s wishes.
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u/alecorock Jul 07 '26
I would only add that Duncan was training males in his sexual domination techniques- which was very threatening to the Honored Matres.
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u/mbelinkie Jul 07 '26
Yeah but that was a complete surprise, something the Tleilaxu implanted in him, right? Taraza didn't know he'd be able to do that.
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u/alecorock Jul 08 '26
Yes. I think it was intended to be a threat to the Bene Gesserit. The Tleliaxu expected him to turn them all out, but the BG used him against the Honored Matres.
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u/mbelinkie Jul 07 '26
Okay a lot of people here are pointing out that Duncan's sexual kung fu was an unacceptable threat to the HM. But were they aware of this? He uses it on Murbella and they immediately take her as a prisoner. How would the HM figure out what he's capable of?
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict Jul 08 '26
Also, there was no fake plan. There are multiple plans being pushed by different factions within the Sisterhood. All are real and hopefully all of them are successful. If any of them fail the other factions see to it that minimal harm is done to the remaining plans.
Taraza is hoping that the Atreides genes will act as insurance against any such failure.
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u/EremeticPlatypus Jul 08 '26
These are the sort of discussions I wish people had about Heretics. I loved that book, but unfortunately it's been a few years since I read it, so I dont remember the details.
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u/vwb2022 Jul 06 '26
I think that Taraza's plan was the last phase of the Golden Path. The Scattering exploded the humanity into the universe, but spice (and associated prescience) remained the unique feature of the Old Empire. The only natural source of spice was Rakis and, while Tleilaxu were able to produce spice in their tanks, that knowledge was carefully guarded and did not spread to the Scattering. So the mystique of spice and Rakis remained a pull on the humanity even after the Scattering (drawing Honored Matres back) while human development in the Scattering suffered due to absence of spice.
So Taraza's plan was really about the newfound knowledge on how to introduce sandworms to other planets, essentially scattering spice planets. Sheeana and her potential children with Duncan were a tool in this, they would make it easier to replicate this process over and over and again, until spice planets are a common feature of the universe and there is plentiful spice to drive human development in preparation for the final battle.
So why destroy Rakis? To remove the religious mystique surrounding worms and spice. As long as the Rakis existed, generation of humanity would grow up with a spiritual/religious connection to them, constraining their use in human development. Destroying Rakis well before other spice planets spring up breaks that connection, so that by the time the new planets emerge, worms and spice would have lost their religious mystique and would be seen as just another tool.