Summary
Chapter 9
Paul, Stilgar, and Gurney observe the enormous temporary structure where the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV is staying on Arrakis. Everything is in place, though Gurney and Stilgar each have doubts that Paul soothes. They release the two Sardaukar they captured; in response, the Emperor raises the CHOAM Company flag, signaling that he doesn’t care who wins, Atreides or Harkonnen. An enormous storm hits, and the battle begins. Things go well for Paul, but they receive a garbled message that Paul understands: Sietch Tabr was raided; his son, Leto II, is dead; and Alia is held hostage. Paul feels emptied, diseased—and he also feels an "old-man wisdom" chuckle and rub its hands within him. He thinks: How little the universe knows about the nature of real cruelty!
Chapter 10
The Baron Harkonnen is in an audience chamber with the Emperor himself. The Emperor has brought his entire retinue—from Sardaukar to hairdressers and poets—along with the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohaim, the Emperor’s Truthsayer. The Emperor is angry that he has been roped into this expensive and “stupid affair.” The Emperor reveals that he raided the southern desert and took Alia captive, at great personal cost. Alia says she allowed herself to be captured, and she inserts herself in the Reverend Mother’s mind, frightening her.
As Alia predicts, the Emperor’s stronghold is soon under attack. The Baron grabs Alia, but she stabs him with a dark needle she calls “the Atreides gom jabbar,” killing him. The battle is chaotic as the stronghold is breached; Sardaukar are awed to see Fremen riding sandworms into battle. The Emperor is taken safely to his ship with the Reverend Mother, his daughter Princess Irulan, and two Guild agents. The Guild agents say they don’t know how the battle will go—but that means Muad’Dib can’t know, either. The Reverend Mother advises the Emperor to summon Count Fenring.
Chapter 11
Paul-Muad’Dib enters the governor’s mansion in Arrakeen on the evening of his victory. Alia tells Paul—through a medium he doesn't understand, but of which he is aware—that she has killed their grandfather, Baron Harkonnen. Rabban is also dead; Paul, seeming strange in a way that worries Jessica, sends word to the Emperor that he’s welcome to come down to Arrakis with Paul’s protection.
The Emperor arrives, along with Princess Irulan, Guild agents, the Reverend Mother, Thufir Hawat, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, and Count Fenring (who Paul realizes he’s never seen along any time-line—just like he’s never seen his own moment of death). Hawat chooses to die in Paul’s arms from the Harkonnen poison rather than assassinate Paul as he was told to do. Paul threatens the Guild agents with the complete destruction of all spice, and they obey his commands. He reveals that the Bene Gesserit have been controlling bloodlines for 90 generations and tells the Reverend Mother that she has no control over him. Feyd-Rautha invokes the rules of kanly, which was declared by Duke Leto between Harkonnen and Atreides, and Paul agrees to fight him one-on-one; the Emperor allows Feyd to fight with his own personal blade. The Reverend Mother is concerned that if both of the young men die here, they will be survived only by Feyd’s infant bastard daughter and Alia.
Feyd-Rautha and Paul-Muad’Dib fight. Paul is silent, and Feyd is boastful, with a secret poison dart in his waistband. Paul uses his powers to atomically alter the soporific on the Emperor’s blade, which had been designed to slow him down. Even pinned beneath the poison dart, Paul refuses to say a secret word that will cause Feyd's muscles to freeze (like the one Feyd used on the slave-gladiator on his 17th birthday). Paul gains the upper hand and stabs Feyd under the jaw and through the head, killing him.
The Emperor commands Count Fenring to kill Paul, but the Count says no. Paul realizes he can’t “see” the Count in the past or future because Count Fenring was almost the Kwisatz Haderach himself, but was born a eunuch; Paul feels brotherhood for the first time in his life. The Emperor is furious. Muad’Dib (not Paul, as that would break the Atreides promise to keep the Emperor safe) sentences the Emperor to live on Salusa Secundus, which Paul intends to turn into a paradise planet—just like Arrakis, which will also maintain some of its desert for spice and for training men. The Emperor, defeated, agrees at his daughter’s urging: Paul will marry Irulan and be next in line for the Imperial Throne.
Paul asks Jessica and Chani to negotiate the terms for him. He wants the Emperor’s entire CHOAM Company holdings as dowry; Gurney Halleck will gain Caladan, and every surviving Atreides man will be rewarded. The Fremen will be rewarded by Muad’Dib, not Paul. Jessica will go to Caladan for “peace and stillness,” as she requests. Chani begs Paul to give her nothing, and he promises her that she’ll need nothing—she’ll have his entire heart, and Princess Irulan won’t ever get a child or a touch or a soft look from him. Jessica whispers to Chani to trust Paul—Irulan might have the title, but concubines like Jessica and Chani will be remembered by history as wives.
Analysis
Paul is around 18 years old at the end of Dune, but during the final battle he learns that he has lost his son, Leto II. Like the death of his father, this grief leaves Paul feeling "emptied," but with the addition of what's portrayed as a cunning, almost comedic, explicitly elderly mischief, or even glee. His thought—How little the universe knows about the nature of real cruelty!—recalls Liet-Kynes's dying thought, in which he decides that the nature of the universe is dominated by principles of accident and error. Kynes's chapter ends: "Even the hawks could appreciate these facts." If the universe operates on the principles of accident and error, and the universe doesn't know the nature of real cruelty, then it can be deduced that cruelty is intentional, not accidental, not an error—maybe cruelty is human.
Frank Herbert intentionally left loose ends so that readers would reread Dune and be interested in its sequels. Some of these are obvious, like the impending jihad, the visions Paul has of his own stabbed corpse, and what Paul will do as Emperor, not just Duke Atreides. Viewed on its own, Dune almost completes a hero's journey, with Paul returning home (well, Arrakeen, anyway), uniquely powerful, triumphant over the Evil One(s). However, the final chapter, and especially the final few pages, emphasize how unheroic Paul's triumph is. If anything, it's a bureaucratic nightmare of logistics and contracts. Paul heroically kills Feyd-Rautha, but talk turns quickly to marriage arrangements and business holdings, not the fate of the universe.
