The Emperor pitted two historic rival houses against one another, with the expectation that they’d annihilate themselves and leave room for upstarts to take their place. The Bene Jesuits had seen this cycle play out before and knew it would preserve the Emperor’s power at the expense of the advancement of the society as a whole. So, they backchanneled a breeding program between Atreides and Harkonen - on the Atreides side via Lady Jessica and Duke Leto, on the Harkonen side between Feyd-Rautha and Margot Fenring - to yield the prophesied optimal off-spring, the Kwisatz Hadarach.
But all of this ran afoul of a third agency, the Planetologists of Dune, who believed the planet’s perpetual condition of spice harvest was undermining what could be a new kind of Eden for domestic development and liberation. Their efforts to irrigate Arakus at the expense of the global galactic trade (catalyzed by Lady Jessica’s unlicensed male hier) was what ultimately undermined both the Emperor’s political schemes and the Bene Jesuits’ breeding program.
In the end, the primary antagonists of the Dune series are the environmentalists, fighting a guerrilla war against a Galactic Oil & Gas Industry.
Harkonnen was only appointed to manage a war, and to decapitate the only threat to the imperial throne.
The Emperor pitted two historic rival houses against one another, with the expectation that they’d annihilate themselves and leave room for upstarts to take their place. The Bene Jesuits had seen this cycle play out before and knew it would preserve the Emperor’s power at the expense of the advancement of the society as a whole. So, they backchanneled a breeding program between Atreides and Harkonen - on the Atreides side via Lady Jessica and Duke Leto, on the Harkonen side between Feyd-Rautha and Margot Fenring - to yield the prophesied optimal off-spring, the Kwisatz Hadarach.
But all of this ran afoul of a third agency, the Planetologists of Dune, who believed the planet’s perpetual condition of spice harvest was undermining what could be a new kind of Eden for domestic development and liberation. Their efforts to irrigate Arakus at the expense of the global galactic trade (catalyzed by Lady Jessica’s unlicensed male hier) was what ultimately undermined both the Emperor’s political schemes and the Bene Jesuits’ breeding program.
In the end, the primary antagonists of the Dune series are the environmentalists, fighting a guerrilla war against a Galactic Oil & Gas Industry.
Bene Jesuit, now I can’t help but think all those ladies were secretly the catholic church all along 🤣
Just like in real life!