| “ | I am Paul Muad'Dib Atreides, Duke of Arrakis! The Hand of God be my witness, I am the Voice from the Outer World! I will lead you to PARADISE! | „ |
| ~ Paul claiming leadership over the Fremen and declaring himself as Arrakis' Messiah. |
| “ | This is your universe now. | „ |
| ~ Paul Atreides, relinquishing his visions and allowing his son to follow the Golden Path and free the universe |
| “ | I will love you as long as I breathe. | „ |
| ~ Paul Atreides to Chani |
Paul Atreides, also known as Muad'Dib, is the main protagonist of the Dune franchise.
The elder brother of Alia Atreides and the son of Duke Leto Atreides I and Lady Jessica Atreides, he is the last Duke of the noble House Atreides who later ascends to the throne of Padishah Emperor. He would later go on to father Leto Atreides II the Elder, Ghanima Atreidies, and Leto Atriedes II the Younger, who would later be known at the God-Emperor.
He was portrayed by Kyle MacLachlan, in his debut, who also portrayed Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks in the 1984 movie, Alec Newman, who also played Barnabas Collins in the 2004 pilot film Dark Shadows, in the 2000 miniseries and its 2003 sequel and Timothée Chalamet in the 2021 remake and its 2024 sequel, who also portrayed King Henry V in the 2019 The King and Willy Wonka in the 2023 movie Wonka.
Appearence[]
In the novels, he has black hair and green eyes and is described as being quite small for his age. He has an oval face, similar to his mother, Lady Jessica. He also has strong bones and hair. He has Duke's black and black eyebrow line and his maternal grandfather's eyebrow line, which he will not name. He has a fine and disdainful nose. His hair is like his father's, coal-colored and tousled.
Personality[]
When he was younger, Paul Atreides was a quiet, dutiful, perceptive and principled young man. Raised as the son of a Duke, he received meticulous in preparation to not only succeed his father as ducal heir, but also in the Bene Dessert way, led him to being a very dutiful and strategic man. Trained everything from hand-to-hand combat, leadership, and basic ecology - Paul was very knowledgable and analytical, but also demonstrated personal qualities of an ideal leader as well. He was very courteous, fair, humble, and decisive, and despite his quiet disposition, Paul showed a great sense of sincerity, directness, and charisma when need be, like his father before him. As heir apparent to his father's dynasty, Paul was an ambitious, if naive young man who idealized his father, and sought to live up to his family name.
However, following the Gom Jabbar test with the Reverend Mother, Paul Atreides' mind begins to cultivate a more expanded awareness of the future. With his prescience, Paul carries the burden of knowing the future, and perceiving the unequivocal fact that he is destined to change the course of the universe. From the start, Paul was a youthful, naive young man who is unaware of the extent his entire life has been premeditated, and between his father's expectations, his training as a Duke, Bene Gesserit, and a Mentat, Paul was instilled with expectations of what he was supposed to be. Even in the very beginning, Paul's prescience foretold that he was destined for terrible purpose, establishing Paul’s great trepidation he felt as a result of the expectations upon him, and fears he felt intrinsically linked to his relation to the Sisterhood and position as a product of the Bene Gesserit breeding program to create the Kwisatz Haderach.
Throughout the events of Dune, Paul's prescient mind begins to awaken to the latent prescience he contained as a Bene Gesserit male, and following his prescient awakening in the Stilltent, his prescience pervaded his concious life as well. Following this psychological expansion, Paul's perceived the inexorable passage of time on a far more multifaceted level, partially perceiving the causal results his actions have on the future, and in particular, foresees glimpses of a horrific Jihad being incited in his name if he were to go down the path of indoctrinating the Fremen and restoring his family name. Hellbent on vengeance after his father's death, and overwhelmed by his prescient awakening, Paul became a far more cold, calculating, and opportunistic individual. This is shown in his manipulation of the Fremen, who - while cautious to lead as a result of his visions of a holy war - still ultimately chooses to exploit to claim the throne. As the Fremen prophet, Paul also portrays himself as a charismatic, bold, and determined revolutionary leader, destined to fulfill inundated prophecies by the Bene Gesserit foretelling their messianic deliverance. Paul leads his army with great devotion, inspiring fanatical fervour of his gradually building figurehead among the Fremen people.
Using his charisma to lead the Fremen against the Imperium, Paul brutally crushes the Harkonnens, and in another demonstration of his expanded perceptiveness, forthrightness, and longing for revenge, Paul manipulates the Emperor into abdicating the throne, poising himself as Padishah Emperor and Mahdi of the Known Universe. Yet beneath all of this charismatic bravado, coldness, and callous manipulation, Paul was a deeply fearful individual who was horrified on the path he felt inclined to follow, and terrified over the prospect of what his megalomaniacal vying for power will bring upon the universe. Though rationalizing his rise to power as one meant to avert the Jihad, Paul is also consumed by vengeance over his father and is predominantly driven by revenge - a newly elicited coldness in Paul that he feels separated him from his humanity, and one he felt isolated him from the values of morality and honour his father led by. Beyond the elation he felt at claiming vengeance against the conspirators who destroyed his house, Paul was horrified for the future, believing himself damned to a terrible purpose, one he now recognized as the Jihad and felt trepidatious that he could not avert, as in no future could he un-foresee the violence that would result from the messianic figurehead he had already validated himself to be in the eyes of the Fremen.
As Padishah Emperor, and instated as Muad’Dib, the messiah of the Known Universe, Paul becomes consumed by trepidation, paranoia, and regret. In his public disposition, Paul portrays himself as an authoritative and messianic figure, speaking with a commanding, charismatic authority, befitting of his position as the most powerful and important Emperor who ever reigned. Having spearheaded a guerrilla war against the Emperor Shaddam, Paul has now become a legend, and in his name, he has now unwillingly incited the violent Jihad that he first foresaw in his earliest prescient visions. Following his defeating the Imperial army, Paul felt entrenched with the terrible purpose that he first conceived, and as he had predicted, his Fremen army - now fully converted worshippers of his godhead - enacted the Jihad in his name, viewing Paul as a prophesied messiah and aspired to spread their religion by any means necessary. As a result, in Dune Messiah, Paul is riddled with turmoil, desperation, and regret. He feels that working so many into a religious frenzy and causing the deaths of his many dissenters has caused mass violence, and is horrified of the stained legacy he left not only to the Imperium, but to his family name. Additionally, he struggles against a feeling of acute powerlessness - trapped by his very prescience and fanatical Fremen army which allowed him to claim the throne to begin with. In essence, Paul feels trapped by his prescient visions of the future and his expectations as Emperor of the Known Universe, two facets which seems to carry with absolute command over the universe but instead only shows Paul how time subjects Paul himself to fate. Paul is Emperor, and yet is unable to control the men who worship him. Similarly, Paul's prescient mind leaves him fundamentally incapable of existing in the present moment, always ruminating over the potential results his actions will have on the future. He tries to be excited about Chani’s pregnancy and the prospect of their retirement to Sietch Tabr, but all he can see is the unalterable events that will lead to Chani's death in the near future. All in all, Paul wishes that he could relinquish his position of power and exist without expectations imposed upon him. This is also seen in his desperate longing to escape the messianic godhead in his name, and a hopeless aspiration against fate itself to still somehow restore his name and honour after the horrific bloodshed his actions incited across the universe. When Hayt - the ghola of Paul’s former swordmaster and Atreides confidant, Duncan Idaho, arrives on Arrakis, Paul's heightened intelligence and prescience clue him on to the fact that he is a creation of the Tleilaxu to destroy Paul. However, he - against this cautionary knowledge - permits Hayt to stay because Hayt reminds Paul of a past he longs for. Ultimately, Paul is fearful over the Guild’s conspiracy against him, and fearful of the results which may come if he follows a path that strays from the certain futures he's seen. However, following his blindness by a nuclear weapon, and the unforeseen birth of Paul and Chani’s son Leto, Paul finally relinquishes himself from the burdens of fate. At the end of Dune Messiah, Paul accepts the futility of his actions, finally freeing himself of an existence burdened by expectation and prescient knowledge, and for the first time, making a choice uninfluenced by any expectation or burden beyond his own desire: choosing to honour Fremen law, and walking into the desert to die. In this final act, he solidifies the Fremen’s eternal reverence for him.
Reappearing 9 years later as The Preacher, Paul portrays the disposition of a morally renewed man who now sees the truth of the fallible consequences his actions held, and does all he can to discredit and disavow the former violence he incited in his name. Renouncing his former identity as Paul Atreides, Paul becomes a mysterious figure who dispels atheistic lectures against the religion he once consolidated by his rise as Emperor. As the Preacher, Paul shows himself to be depressed and fatalistic, resigning himself to the life of an unwitting slave to the Iduali of Sietch Jacurutu. However, following meeting his son, Leto II, Paul is confronted on the cowardice of his actions, not only in his willful submission to the Ideal, or his manipulation the Fremen inspiring the violent Jihad in his name, but also in his refusal of the Golden Path. Here, Paul - beyond any regret he once had for his actions - truly owns up to the personal consequences they caused, recognizing that in his warpath of vengeance, he was consumed by trepidation and callousness, and had become manipulative, cold, and intolerable to everyone around him, most notably towards his mother and Irulan. Furthermore, he recognizes the Golden Path that he rejected, and relinquishes his visions of the future to his son, allowing Leto to take on the path of leading and freeing humanity Paul had become too depressed to follow. In the end, Paul dies having made peace with his son, and is stabbed to death renouncing the horrors he was once responsible for, ushering in a new era of his son, the God Emperor, to take his place as Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe and lead humanity through the devastating path he could not to free them from stagnation.
Biography[]
A young adult by 10,191 A.G. (21,267 A.D), Paul accompanied his father Leto and mother Jessica from their homeworld of Caladan to Arrakis so that House Atreides could take over the fiefdom of that world at the order of Emperor Shaddam IV Corinno. Shaddam did this so that he and the Harkonnen could eliminate House Atreides.
In the Harkonnen counterattack, Duke Leto died and the Atreides forces were decimated, but Paul and Jessica escaped into the desert, where they met Stilgar and his band of Freman. Proving himself to be a capable combatant, Paul and his mother were welcomed in to the tribe. Stilgar declared that Paul would be known as Usul within their tribe, and requested Paul tell them what name of manhood he wanted to be known as publicly. Paul requested to be known as Paul Muad'dib after the mouse shadow in the second moon.
Soon afterwards, Paul fell in love with the Freman woman Chani, who was the daughter of Imperial Doctor Liet-Kynes.
Over the next two years, Paul and his Freman allies brought production of the spice melange to a virtual sandstill, forcing the Emperor and the Lansraad to turn their attention to Arrakis. Paul took the water of life, which enabled him to fulfill his destiny as the Kwisatz Haderach, the superbeing the Bene Gesserit had been working to create for many centuries.
Paul and his Freman allies attacked and defeated the combined Corinno and Harkonnen forces. Shaddam was forced to surrender to Paul, and was exiled to the prison planet Salusa Secundus. House Harkonnen became extinct when Paul defeated the new Baron Feyd Rautha-Harkonnen in personal combat. Paul then used his abilities to bring rain to Arrakis for the first time in the history of the planet.
Within the profound leave, beneath the weight of extraordinary circumstances and the increased measurements of flavor that he has been ingesting essentially by living on Arrakis, a few of Paul's powers came to realization, and his capacity to see conceivable prospects detonated into mindfulness. He saw numerous things—a way out of his circumstances and the restoration of the Atreides—if, as it were, he could make contact with the local Fremen and survive.
After an unsafe crossing, Paul and Jessica were ordered to meet up with a troop of Fremen. Paul and Jessica demonstrated their worth by incapacitating Fremen in unarmed combat, supported by Bene Gesserit prana-bindu training—the "Weirding Way," and the Fremen pioneer Stilgar happily acknowledged them into his troop since he would like to include that expertise with the Fremen individuals. Paul also met a youthful lady, Chani, the girl of Liet Kynes, whom he had long seen in his dreams. Amid this fight, Paul incapacitated a pleased Fremen, Jamis, who took offense at this "arrogant" youth and challenged Paul to a battle to the death. In spite of the fact that he was initially unwilling to murder, he triumphed effortlessly, making his title within the tribe additionally succeed to the position of head of the family of the dead man. Stilgar gave Paul the title Usul, meaning "the solid base of a pillar," as his private title inside the troop; Paul gave himself the title "Paul Muad'dib" as his open Fremen title.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- While Paul is initially depicted in a heroic light in the first book, the miniseries, and the 2021-24 film adaptations, he would turn to darkness as he gains more power. Though the 1984 version of the character is fully heroic due to the later parts of Paul's story not being adapted.
External links[]
- Paul Atreides on the Villains Wiki
- Paul Atreides on the Inconsistently Heinous Wiki