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C O L L E C T I O N S |
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DUNE CHRONICLES
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| In My Father's House |
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My father, the Padishah Emperor, took me by the hand one day and I sensed in
the ways my mother had taught me that he was disturbed. He led my down the
Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides. I marked
the strong resemblance between them - my father and this man in the
portrait - both with thin, elegant faces and sharp features dominated by
cold eyes. "Princess-daughter," my father had said, I would that you'd been
older when it came time for this man to choose a woman." My father was 71
at the time and looking no older than the man in the portrait, and I was
but 14, yet I remember deducing in that instant that my father secretly
wished the Duke had been his son, and disliked the political necessities
that made them enemies. "In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan Dune
When my father, the Padishah Emperor, heard of Duke Leto's death and the
manner of it, he went into such a rage as we had never before seen. He
blamed my mother and the compact forced on him to place a Bene Gesserit
on the throne. He blamed the Guild and the evil old Baron. He blamed
everyone in sight, not excepting even me, for he said I was a witch like
all the others. And when I sought to comfort him, saying it was done
according to an older law of self-preservation to which even the most
ancient rulers gave allegiance, he sneered at me and asked if I thought
him a weakling. I saw then that he had been aroused to this passion not
by concern over the dead Duke but by what that death implied for all
royalty. As I look back on it, I think there may have been some prescience
in my father, too, for it is certain that his line and Muad'Dib's shared
common ancestry.
Family life of the Royal Creche is difficult for many people to understand, but
I shall try to give you a capsule view of it. My father had only one read
friend, I think. That was Count Hasimir Fenring, the genetic-eunuch and one
of the deadliest fighters in the Imperium. The Count, a dapper and ugly little
man, brought a new slave-concubine to my father one day and I was dispatched
by my mother to spy on the proceedings. One of the slave-concubines permitted
my father under the Bene Gesserit-Guild agreement could not, of course, bear
a Royal Successor, but the intrigues were constant and oppressive in their
similarity. We became adept, my mother and sisters and I, at avoiding subtly
instruments of death. It may seem a dreadful thing to say, but I'm not at all
sure my father was innocent in all these attempts. Royal Family is not like
other families. Here was a new slave-concubine, then, red-haired like my
father, willowy and graceful. She had a dancer's muscles, and her training
obviously had included neuro-enticement. My father looked at her for a long
time as she postured unclothed before him. Finally he said: "She is too
beautiful. We will save her as a gift." You have no idea how much
consternation this restraint created in the Royal Creche. Subtlety and
self-control were, after all, the most deadly threats to us all.
My father, the Padishah Emperor, was 72 yet he looked no more than 35 the year
he encompassed his death of Duke Leto and gave Arrakis back to the Harkonnens.
He seldom appeared in public wearing other than a Sardaukar uniform and a
Burseg's black helmet with the Imperial lion in gold upon its crest. The
uniform was an open reminder of where his power lay. he was not always that
blatant, though. When he wanted, he could radiate charm and sincerity
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