Last conspiracy against Muad'Dib

The last conspiracy against Muad'Dib was the alliance formed against the Padishah Emperor Paul Atreides twelve years into his reign, while his Jihad was still running. It was the final plot against him, ending with the blinded Emperor walking into the desert in the Fremen tradition and the beginning of the regency of his sister Alia. (Dune Messiah)

The conspirators#

The conspiracy was assembled from the parties most diminished by Muad'Dib's rule: the remnants of House Corrino, the Bene Gesserit who had lost control of their Kwisatz Haderach, the Spacing Guild made wholly dependent on him, a few Fedaykin and other close Fremen, and the Bene Tleilax. Its leader was the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam. Among its members were the Guild Navigator Edric, whose presence shielded the plot from Paul's prescience, the Face Dancer Scytale, Paul's wife the Princess Irulan, and the Tleilaxu Master Bijaz. They met on Wallach IX to arrange their plan.

The gift of Hayt#

The conspirators presented Paul with a gift he could not refuse: Hayt, a ghola of Duncan Idaho, his childhood teacher and friend. They hoped the ghola's presence would force Paul to question himself and his empire, while his acceptance of a Tleilaxu creation weakened his standing among Fremen who regarded such things as unclean. The Bene Tleilax, who had made the ghola, expected it to serve as a tool of espionage and control.

Paul summoned Mohiam, who feared death but instead found him willing to bargain: he offered to produce a child by artificial insemination in exchange for the safety of Chani and her unborn child. To accept, Mohiam would have to violate Butlerian taboos against machines, and she recognized that no child so conceived could claim the throne or be openly acknowledged. She resolved to consult her Sisterhood on Wallach IX. Meanwhile Irulan secretly fed contraceptives to the pregnant Chani.

The blinding#

Paul received Bijaz from the Fedaykin Otheym, and shortly afterward his soldiers attacked the gathered conspirators. In the assault the Tleilaxu set off a stone burner that destroyed the surroundings and blinded Paul. He was able to continue ruling as though sighted by fixing his every action in exact accord with his earlier oracular visions, moving through life in lockstep with what he had already foreseen. The cost was that he could not alter any part of his destiny so long as he wished to appear to see.

The unraveling exposed Korba, high priest of Paul's church, as one of his enemies; he was placed in Stilgar's custody. Bijaz, interrogated by Hayt, used conditioning words and whistled tunes to plant a compulsion in the ghola, programming Hayt to offer Paul a bargain when Chani died and, secretly, to kill him in the right circumstances.

The fall of the conspiracy#

Chani died giving birth to twins, Leto and Ghanima, pre-born and aware in the womb through their father's prescient nature and Chani's exposure to spice essence. Paul had foreseen Ghanima but not Leto. His grief at Chani's death triggered the compulsion in Hayt, who moved to kill him, but the ghola's body rebelled against its own programming and a new consciousness arose, a blend of Duncan Idaho and Hayt freed of Tleilaxu control. Paul, who had foreseen this, was unsurprised.

As Paul reached a crucial point at which his visions failed and he was rendered wholly blind, Scytale, disguised as Otheym's daughter, held a knife to the throats of his newborn children and demanded his abdication in return for reviving Chani as a ghola. Paul received a prescient vision through the eyes of his infant son and used it to throw a dagger that killed Scytale. His sight gone, Paul chose to walk into the desert in the Fremen way, securing the loyalty of the Fremen for his children. He left Alia as regent, and she had Stilgar execute the surviving leaders of the conspiracy, including Korba, leaving the twins in apparent safety.