Lady Margot Fenring

Lady Margot Fenring was the Bene Gesserit wife of the Mentat Count Hasimir Fenring. Though she moved within the court of House Corrino and appeared to serve its interests, her ultimate loyalty lay with the Sisterhood, which entrusted her with many secret missions. After the great reduction of Bene Gesserit influence that followed the ascension of House Atreides, Margot and her husband turned to serving their own ends.

A servant of the Sisterhood#

Beautiful and cunning, Lady Margot Fenring was a powerful and important member of the Bene Gesserit, renowned for her superhuman powers of observation and awareness and noted for her skill in seduction and sexual imprinting. Like others of her Order, she held complete command of her own physiology and could control the physical sex of her offspring. She was a willowy woman with golden hair, gray-green eyes, and a perfect figure, carrying about her the serene repose of her training that Feyd-Rautha called subtly disturbing.

An adept political player, Margot was entrusted by the Order with multiple secretive missions. She was one of the Sisterhood's breeders, a Sister who contributed to the Order's crossbreeding program designed to produce the Kwisatz Haderach.

Marriage to Hasimir Fenring#

The Bene Gesserit frequently had their members become the wives or concubines of major political figures, and the Sisterhood arranged for Margot to marry Count Hasimir Fenring, ruler of House Fenring, a House Minor long aligned with House Corrino. The Count was a deadly fighter and assassin and a close friend of the Emperor, and had once been a possible Kwisatz Haderach candidate before he was found to be born sterile. Margot trained her husband in some of her Order's ways, sharpening his already acute powers of observation.

While present in the Padishah Emperor's court, she persuaded Shaddam IV to marry the Reverend Mother Anirul Corrino, whom the Sisterhood knew would yield House Corrino no sons.

On Arrakis#

Margot was with her husband on Arrakis when he served as the planet's temporary governor during the handoff between House Harkonnen and House Atreides. Before she departed, she left a coded note in the residence for her fellow Sister, Lady Jessica, warning her of the Harkonnen plan to kill Paul Atreides and his father Duke Leto. The visible note carried the code phrase that every Bene Gesserit not bound by a School Injunction was required to give another when conditions demanded it, and Jessica's fingers detected the subtle coded dots within it.

The warning was not enough to stop the Harkonnen plot. Duke Leto Atreides was killed, and Jessica and her son Paul were forced to flee into the desert of Arrakis.

The Harkonnen bloodline#

With her loving husband's knowledge, the Sisterhood tasked Margot with breeding with Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen to maintain the Harkonnen bloodline, using her abilities to covertly control the deadly Harkonnen warrior for the Order's hidden goals. When the Count later turned his attention to Paul, he recognized through his own trained sight that Margot had schooled him well, perceiving the mystery and hidden grandeur about the Atreides youth. Hasimir afterward refused Emperor Shaddam IV's command to kill Paul.