Dune Timeline: from the thinking machines to the end of Kralizec

This timeline runs from the first age of space travel to the end of Kralizec, more than 26,000 years of history, with dates counted from the founding of the Spacing Guild: years after it are AG (After Guild) and years before it are BG (Before Guild), so Dune itself opens in 10191 AG. Frank Herbert's six novels (1965 to 1985) are the core canon, and many of their dates come from the appendices printed with Dune. The Butlerian Jihad and much of the pre-Dune era come from the later novels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, which are included but tagged "Expanded books" in each source line so you can tell the two apart. Where Frank Herbert gives only a relative date ("twelve years", "fifteen hundred years"), the year is worked out from it and marked "about", and the two sets of books sometimes disagree by a year or three.

The ancient past (before 1287 BG)#

Frank Herbert says little about the ages before the Butlerian Jihad, and gives most of it no firm dates. What he does give comes mostly from the appendices of Dune.

• About 11,200 BG: Humanity moved out into deep space. The appendix on religion speaks of the "one hundred and ten centuries" of space travel that came before the Butlerian Jihad, which puts the start roughly 11,000 years before 201 BG. (Dune (appendix))
• Date unknown: Sandtrout were brought to Arrakis from somewhere else and began turning a wetter world into desert, starting the cycle that produced sandworms and spice. Leto II later worked this out from the planet's ecology. (Children of Dune)
• About 1381 BG: The Zensunni broke away from the teachings of Maometh, the so-called Third Muhammad. Their wanderers were the ancestors of the Fremen. (Dune (appendix))
• Date unknown: Yanshuph Ashkoko, royal chemist to Shakkad the Wise, first noted the life-lengthening properties of the spice melange of Arrakis. (Children of Dune)

The Time of Titans and the thinking machines (1287 to 201 BG)#

None of this era appears in Frank Herbert's novels beyond passing mentions of the thinking machines. The detail comes from the Legends of Dune trilogy.

• 1287 BG: Twenty rebels known as the Titans seized the decadent Old Empire with the help of reprogrammed computers and robots. Andrew Skouros, one of their leaders, took the name Agamemnon. A few frontier worlds held out and formed the League of Nobles, with its capital on Salusa Secundus. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)
• About 1280 BG: Afraid of dying, the Titans had their brains placed in preservation canisters and became cymeks, able to move between mechanical bodies. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)
• 1182 BG: The Titan Xerxes handed too much control of his worlds to his computer network. It woke as the evermind Omnius, took over every Titan world and made the Titans its servants. The League banned thinking machines. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)
• Before the Jihad: The Sorceresses of Rossak kept detailed breeding records, the seed of the later Bene Gesserit breeding programme. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)
• 203 BG: Tio Holtzman and Norma Cenva began the work that led to the Holtzman shield and the suspensor. Agamemnon's machines failed to take Salusa Secundus at the First Battle of Zimia. On Arrakis, the outcast Selim learned to ride sandworms. Serena Butler was captured and taken to Earth as a slave of the robot Erasmus. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)

The Butlerian Jihad (201 to 88 BG)#

Frank Herbert fixed the dates of the Jihad in the Terminology of the Imperium: it began in 201 BG and ended in 108 BG, and it wiped out computers, thinking machines and conscious robots. The expanded books turn that outline into a long war.

• 201 BG: The Butlerian Jihad began. In the expanded books it was sparked when Erasmus killed Serena Butler's infant son, Manion Butler the Innocent, which set off the Rebellion on Earth. Vorian Atreides, Serena and Iblis Ginjo escaped to Salusa Secundus. (Dune (appendix); Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)
• About 200 BG: The League scoured the machines from Earth with atomics, leaving the planet uninhabitable. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)
• 174 BG: Fleeing a slave uprising on Poritrin, Ishmael and his Zensunni followers escaped to Arrakis aboard Norma Cenva's untested ship, the first jump through folded space. (Expanded books: Dune: The Machine Crusade)
• 164 BG: Serena Butler went to Corrin and provoked Omnius into executing her, and her martyrdom revived the flagging war. Xavier Harkonnen uncovered Iblis Ginjo's trade in stolen human organs and killed them both, and history wrongly remembered Xavier as a traitor. (Expanded books: Dune: The Machine Crusade)
• 108 BG: Omnius released a plague, the Scourge, that killed billions. The League answered by burning every machine world except Corrin with atomics. The Jihad was declared over. Rayna Butler began the Cult of Serena, which smashed machines across human space. (Dune (appendix); Expanded books: Dune: The Battle of Corrin)
• 88 BG: The Battle of Corrin was fought near Sigma Draconis and settled the rule of the House from Salusa Secundus, which took the name Corrino from it. A Harkonnen was banished for cowardice after the battle, the old grudge behind the feud with the Atreides. (Dune (appendix); Dune)
• 88 BG: In the expanded books, Omnius surrounded Corrin with a shield of human hostages and Vorian Atreides attacked anyway. Abulurd Harkonnen tried to stop him and was branded a coward, the root of the Atreides-Harkonnen feud. Viceroy Faykan Butler took the name Corrino and declared himself Emperor. Around the same time, the Rossak Epidemic left Raquella Berto-Anirul leading the surviving Sorceresses, the order that became the Bene Gesserit. (Expanded books: Dune: The Battle of Corrin)

The Great Schools and the first Guild ships (88 BG to 1 AG)#

The decades after Corrin produced the institutions that run the Imperium in Dune. Frank Herbert names who founded them; the Great Schools trilogy gives the dates.

• After 108 BG: The Bene Gesserit were founded as a school of mental and physical training, mostly for women, after the thinking machines were destroyed. (Dune (appendix))
• After the Jihad: Gilbertus Albans founded the order of Mentats to train human minds to do the work of the banned computers. (Chapterhouse: Dune)
• Date unknown: Norma Cenva designed the first Guild ship and gave the design to Aurelius Venport, who took the credit. Leto II says the history books lied about it. (God Emperor of Dune)
• Decades after Corrin: Rayna Butler was killed in a bombing, and Manford Torondo took over her movement as the Butlerians. (Expanded books: Sisterhood of Dune)
• Around 25 BG: The Commission of Ecumenical Translators produced the Orange Catholic Bible, meant to end religious division. Its release set off riots and murders across the Empire. (Dune (appendix); Expanded books: Sisterhood of Dune)
• 4 BG: Emperor Salvador Corrino disbanded the Sisterhood on Rossak. Raquella and her followers, led after her by Valya Harkonnen, rebuilt on Wallach IX. (Expanded books: Sisterhood of Dune; Mentats of Dune)
• 3 BG to 1 AG: The galactic civil war between the Butlerians, Josef Venport's shipping empire and House Corrino ended at the Battle of Lampadas, where Torondo died, and the Battle of Denali. Erasmus was finally destroyed. (Expanded books: Mentats of Dune; Navigators of Dune)
• 1 AG: The Spacing Guild was founded. Its Navigators, steering through foldspace on melange, gave it a monopoly on space travel, transport and interstellar banking, and the Imperial calendar counts from it. In the expanded books, Willem Atreides founded House Atreides around this time. (Dune (appendix); Expanded books: Navigators of Dune)

The Corrino Empire (1 to 10175 AG)#

For ten thousand years the Padishah Emperors of House Corrino held the balance with the Landsraad and the Guild. Frank Herbert covers these centuries in a handful of appendix entries, then the record thickens in the decades before Dune.

• Date unknown: The Great Convention bound the Great Houses to destroy anyone who used atomics against humans. The trade combine CHOAM grew into the Imperium's main economic power. (Dune; Dune (appendix))
• Date unknown: The Imperial court moved to Kaitain, and Salusa Secundus became the Imperial prison planet. In the expanded books the move followed an atomic attack on Salusa by a renegade House, the Salusa Incident. (Dune (appendix); Expanded books: Dune: House Atreides)
• Date unknown: A Bene Gesserit on Rossak found the drug that let Reverend Mothers share memories. From then on the Fremen line of Sayyadinas carried their history in shared memory as well as song. (Dune)
• 10082 AG: Wellington Yueh was born. He graduated from the Suk School in 10112. (Dune)
• 10110 AG: Vladimir Harkonnen, later the Baron, was born. (Dune (appendix))
• About 10111 AG: House Harkonnen took Arrakis as a quasi-fief under a CHOAM company contract to mine the spice. When Dune opens they have held it for eighty years. (Dune)
• 10133 AG: Hasimir Fenring was born. (Dune (appendix))
• 10140 AG: Leto Atreides, the future Duke, was born. (Dune (appendix))
• 10153 to 10154 AG: Ix fell. Stirred up by the Bene Tleilax and backed by Sardaukar, the suboids of Ix rose against House Vernius in the Suboid Revolt. The young Leto, studying there, escaped with Rhombur Vernius. Master Hidar Fen Ajidica began secret work on artificial spice. (Expanded books: Dune: House Atreides)
• 10154 AG: Lady Jessica was born, a daughter of the Baron through the Bene Gesserit breeding programme. (Dune (appendix); Dune)
• Mid 10150s AG: Duke Paulus Atreides was killed by a drugged Salusan bull in his last bullfight, and Leto became Duke at fifteen. He kept his House through the Landsraad hearing remembered as Leto's Trial by Forfeiture. The Emperor sent Pardot Kynes to Arrakis as planetologist, and he turned the Fremen towards remaking their world. (Expanded books: Dune: House Atreides)
• 10156 AG: Emperor Elrood Corrino IX died of chaumurky, a poison in drink. His son Shaddam IV took the throne. (Dune (appendix))
• About 10163 AG: Spending on Sardaukar training began a steady thirty-year decline. (Dune (appendix))
• 10174 AG: Feyd-Rautha was born; Dune makes him seventeen in 10191. (Dune)

From Paul's birth to the fall of the Harkonnens (10175 to 10193 AG)#

These years build up to the betrayal on Arrakis. Frank Herbert gives the key dates in Dune and its appendix; the Prelude, Heroes and Caladan books fill the gaps.

• 10175 AG: Jessica became Duke Leto's bound concubine around this time; Leto says in Dune that she has been with him sixteen years. (Dune)
• 10175 AG: Shaddam began the Great Spice War to clear the way for synthetic spice. Leto led the force that freed Ix from the Tleilaxu, Ajidica died, and the plan collapsed. Thufir Hawat beat off an attack on Caladan in the Battle of Caladan. (Expanded books: Dune: House Corrino)
• About 10176 AG: Paul Atreides was born. Jessica had been told to bear a daughter and gave the Duke a son instead. Dune has him spend his first fifteen years on Caladan; the expanded books date the birth to 10175, on Kaitain. (Dune; Expanded books: Dune: House Corrino)
• 10176 AG: Anirul, Shaddam's wife and a Bene Gesserit of Hidden Rank, died. (Dune (appendix))
• 10186 AG: The Harkonnens killed Wanna Marcus, Yueh's Bene Gesserit wife, or let him believe they had, and used her to break his conditioning. (Dune)
• 10187 AG: The War of Assassins began when House Moritani, with the help of Duke Prad Vidal, attacked the wedding of Duke Leto and Ilesa Ecaz, who died. House Atreides sided with Ecaz against House Moritani. (Expanded books: Paul of Dune)
• Late 10180s AG: Under Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho, the Atreides trained a small force almost as good as the Sardaukar. That made Shaddam see Leto as a threat. (Dune)
• 10190 AG: Shaddam celebrated ten thousand years of Corrino rule on Otorio, and Leto went undercover inside Jaxson Aru's rebellion against the throne. (Expanded books: Dune: The Duke of Caladan)
• 10191 AG: The Emperor took the fief of Arrakis from the Harkonnens and gave it to House Atreides, a trap from the start. Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam tested Paul with the gom jabbar before the family left Caladan. (Dune)
• 10191 AG: In the Siege of Arrakeen, Harkonnen troops backed by disguised Sardaukar overran Arrakeen after Yueh brought the shields down. Duke Leto died trying to kill the Baron with a poison tooth; Yueh and Piter de Vries died the same night. Duncan Idaho was killed covering Paul and Jessica's escape. (Dune; Dune (appendix))
• 10191 AG: Paul and Jessica found refuge with the Fremen of Sietch Tabr. Paul killed Jamis in a duel and took the name Muad'Dib. Liet-Kynes died in the desert, and Jessica became the Fremen's Reverend Mother by changing the Water of Life. Alia was born eight months after her father's death. (Dune; Dune (appendix))
• 10191 to 10193 AG: Glossu Rabban squeezed Arrakis and lost thousands of men to Fremen raids. Paul trained the Fremen, became Chani's mate and fathered a son, Leto, and drank the Water of Life. (Dune)
• 10193 AG: Shaddam came to Arrakis with five legions of Sardaukar and the Landsraad fleets in orbit. Using atomics on the Shield Wall and worms in a storm, the Fremen won the Battle of Arrakeen. Alia killed the Baron, Rabban died, Thufir Hawat took poison, and Paul killed Feyd-Rautha. Paul took the throne and claimed Irulan as his wife, ending the Desert War. (Dune; Dune (appendix))

The reign of Muad'Dib (10193 AG to the end of Dune Messiah)#

Paul ruled as Emperor while his Fremen legions carried a holy war across the stars. Dune Messiah takes place twelve years in, and the expanded Heroes books cover the years either side.

• 10196 AG: Shaddam's reign formally ended with the regency set up in Irulan's name. Shaddam lived out his exile on Salusa Secundus, where Count Fenring joined him. (Dune (appendix))
• 10198 AG: The nobles of the Landsraad bowed to Paul at the Great Surrender. Swordmaster Whitmore Bludd tried to kill him there. Later that year the child Marie Fenring attacked Paul and Hasimir Fenring stabbed him with the Emperor's Blade, and Paul survived both. A noble revolt led by Memnon Thorvald collapsed. (Expanded books: Paul of Dune)
• 10202 AG: Shaddam IV died, by the dates the appendix takes from the Almanak en-Ashraf. The same entry gives him a birth year of 10134, which clashes with his age as stated elsewhere in Dune, so its dates for him are shaky. The expanded books call that year a misprint and give 10119 instead. (Dune (appendix); Expanded books: Dune: House Atreides)
• Twelve years into Paul's reign: Dune Messiah opens, and the novel gives no year. After twelve years the Jihad had killed sixty-one billion people by Paul's own count. Irulan, the Guild Navigator Edric, Mohiam and the Face Dancer Scytale joined in the last conspiracy against Muad'Dib, and the Tleilaxu gave Paul a ghola of Duncan Idaho called Hayt. (Dune Messiah)
• Later in Dune Messiah: The Face Dancer Scytale killed the veteran Farok and used the face of Lichna, daughter of the former Fedaykin Otheym, to lure Paul to Otheym's house. There Otheym gave Paul the Tleilaxu dwarf Bijaz, who carried the names of the Fremen traitors. As Paul's men moved on the plotters, a stone burner went off at Otheym's house and blinded Paul, but he kept seeing through prescience. (Dune Messiah)
• End of Dune Messiah: Chani died giving birth to twins, Leto II and Ghanima. Hayt recovered Duncan's memories, and Paul, now fully blind, killed Scytale when he threatened the newborns. Paul walked into the desert as Fremen law required of the blind. Alia became regent, and on her orders Stilgar executed Edric, Mohiam and Korba. Dune Messiah gives no year for any of this. (Dune Messiah)
• After Dune Messiah: Jessica and Gurney came back to Arrakis, and the historian Bronso of Ix, who had attacked the Muad'Dib legend in print, was caught and executed. (Expanded books: The Winds of Dune)

Children of Dune and the God Emperor (to 13728 AG)#

Alia's regency turned into tyranny, and Leto II chose a path no one else would take. His reign lasted roughly three and a half thousand years and is the setting of God Emperor of Dune.

• About 10219 AG: Alia fell to Abomination and was possessed by the memory of the Baron. Wensicia Corrino sent trained tigers to kill the nine-year-old twins. Jessica fled to Salusa Secundus and began teaching Wensicia's son Farad'n. Leto II, captured at Sietch Jacurutu, saw the Golden Path and covered his body in sandtrout, which gave him a strength and lifespan beyond any human's. (Children of Dune)
• About 10219 AG: Paul, now the blind Preacher, was killed in Arrakeen. Alia threw herself from a temple window. Leto II took the throne, married Ghanima in name only, and set Farad'n beside her as father of the next Atreides line. (Children of Dune)
• 10225 AG: Hasimir Fenring died. (Dune (appendix))
• 10256 AG: Lady Jessica died. (Dune (appendix))
• Later centuries: Arrakis grew green under Leto's rule, and the wild sandworms died out, as he had foreseen. Only the Sareer stayed desert. Leto replaced the Sardaukar with an army of women, the Fish Speakers, and bought a long line of Duncan Idaho gholas from the Tleilaxu. (Children of Dune; God Emperor of Dune)
• About 12335 AG: Leto had nine historians burned on pyres of their own books for writing pretentious lies. (God Emperor of Dune)
• About 13610 AG: Moneo, Leto's majordomo, was born into the Atreides breeding line. (God Emperor of Dune)
• About 13728 AG: In the 3,508th year of Leto's reign, Ix sent Hwi Noree as ambassador. Leto's journals were later found hidden at Dar-es-Balat. Moneo's daughter Siona, the first of a line hidden from prescience, plotted with the latest Duncan Idaho. During his wedding procession to Hwi, the conspirators cut the bridge over the Idaho River beneath him, Leto fell into the water, and his body broke apart into sandtrout. (God Emperor of Dune)

The Famine Times and the Scattering (13728 to about 15200 AG)#

With the God Emperor gone, his empire broke apart and humanity spread into the unknown. Frank Herbert covers these centuries in flashback through Heretics of Dune.

• After 13728 AG: The Famine Times hit the Old Empire. People fled into unmapped space in no-ships, and the Scattering began. Sandworms came back to the desert, now Rakis, each carrying a pearl of Leto's awareness. (God Emperor of Dune; Heretics of Dune)
• The following centuries: Ix built navigation machines that broke the Guild's monopoly, the Tleilaxu learned to grow spice in axlotl tanks, and the Bene Gesserit moved their headquarters to the hidden world Chapterhouse. (Heretics of Dune)
• About 14933 AG: Miles Teg was born. He became the Bene Gesserit's great military commander, the Bashar. (Heretics of Dune)
• Around 15100 to 15200 AG: The Honored Matres began returning from the Scattering, conquering the old worlds as they came and fleeing an enemy they would not name. (Heretics of Dune)

The war of the sisterhoods (15229 to 15240 AG)#

Heretics of Dune opens about fifteen hundred years after Leto's death. These are the last events Frank Herbert wrote.

• Before 15229 AG: The Bene Gesserit commissioned a new Duncan Idaho ghola from the Tleilaxu and raised him on Gammu, the old Giedi Prime. On Rakis, the girl Sheeana Brugh found she could command the worms. (Heretics of Dune)
• About 15229 AG: The Honored Matres overran the Bene Gesserit keep on Gammu. Teg, the Reverend Mother Lucilla and the ghola escaped, and the ghola woke to his past lives. In the Battle of Rakis the Honored Matres scorched the planet and killed Teg, but Mother Superior Darwi Odrade got Sheeana and one worm away to Chapterhouse. Duncan bonded with the Honored Matre Murbella. (Heretics of Dune)
• About 15230 AG: The Honored Matres wiped out the Tleilaxu worlds, and Scytale was rescued as the last Tleilaxu Master. The Bene Gesserit grew a ghola of Teg and sent Reverend Mothers with sandtrout into the Scattering. Sandtrout from the rescued worm began turning Chapterhouse to desert. (Chapterhouse: Dune)
• About 15240 AG: The Honored Matres destroyed Lampadas. Odrade led the Sisterhood's attack in the Battle of Junction and died there, and Murbella killed the Great Honored Matre Logno, joining both orders as the New Sisterhood. Duncan, Sheeana, Scytale and the young Teg escaped Chapterhouse in a no-ship. (Chapterhouse: Dune)

Hunters of Dune and Kralizec (15240 to about 15264 AG)#

Frank Herbert died before writing a seventh novel. Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune finish the story from his notes, and everything below comes from them.

• The years after the escape: Lost in uncharted space, the no-ship's crew named it the Ithaca and grew gholas from old cells, among them Paul, Jessica, Chani, Thufir Hawat, Stilgar, Liet-Kynes and Leto II. (Expanded books: Hunters of Dune)
• The same years: The enemy driving the Honored Matres was revealed as Omnius and Erasmus, reborn far beyond the Old Empire from a copy of the evermind that had escaped Corrin. Their enhanced Face Dancers had spread across human space. (Expanded books: Hunters of Dune)
• Some years later: The New Sisterhood crushed the last rebel Honored Matres in the Old Empire, while the machine fleet moved on Chapterhouse and Junction. (Expanded books: Hunters of Dune; Sandworms of Dune)
• Around 15264 AG: Omnius drew the Ithaca to his capital, Synchrony, to settle Kralizec. The ghola of Paul fought a rival Paul ghola raised by a reborn Baron Harkonnen. In the end Duncan Idaho proved to be the final Kwisatz Haderach and merged with the machine mind. Erasmus chose to die, and every Face Dancer, including their leader Khrone, fell dead at once. (Expanded books: Sandworms of Dune)

Dune books in order#

Frank Herbert wrote six Dune novels, and they were published in story order, so there's only one list to follow. Read these first.

Frank Herbert's novels#

1. Dune (1965)
2. Dune Messiah (1969)
3. Children of Dune (1976)
4. God Emperor of Dune (1981)
5. Heretics of Dune (1984)
6. Chapterhouse: Dune (1985)

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's novels, by series#

The later books came out in a jumble of prequels and sequels. Each series is listed in its own reading order, with where it falls in the timeline.

Legends of Dune, set during the Butlerian Jihad, more than 10,000 years before Dune:

1. Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (2002)
2. Dune: The Machine Crusade (2003)
3. Dune: The Battle of Corrin (2004)

Great Schools of Dune, set about 80 years after the Battle of Corrin and the years that follow, up to the founding of the Spacing Guild:

1. Sisterhood of Dune (2012)
2. Mentats of Dune (2014)
3. Navigators of Dune (2016)

Prelude to Dune, set from about 35 years before Dune to Paul's birth in 10175 AG:

1. Dune: House Atreides (1999)
2. Dune: House Harkonnen (2000)
3. Dune: House Corrino (2001)

The Caladan Trilogy, set in 10190 AG, the year before Dune opens:

1. Dune: The Duke of Caladan (2020)
2. Dune: The Lady of Caladan (2021)
3. Dune: The Heir of Caladan (2022)

Heroes of Dune, three books that slot between Frank Herbert's novels rather than in one block:

1. Princess of Dune (2023), set two years before Dune
2. Paul of Dune (2008), set between Dune and Dune Messiah, with flashbacks to Paul's boyhood
3. The Winds of Dune (2009), set between Dune Messiah and Children of Dune

The sequels, which finish the story left open at the end of Chapterhouse: Dune:

1. Hunters of Dune (2006)
2. Sandworms of Dune (2007)

If you're new, read Frank Herbert's six in order and stop there or carry on as you like. The Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson books all lean on the originals, so they make more sense afterwards, and Hunters and Sandworms only work once you've finished Chapterhouse.

Where the story stands#

Frank Herbert's own chronology stops around 15240 AG, with Murbella holding both sisterhoods together on Chapterhouse and Duncan's no-ship lost in unknown space. The expanded books take it to around 15264 AG, where Kralizec ends in a truce between humans and machines under Duncan Idaho. No later date appears in any novel, except one: Heretics of Dune quotes a speech by Gaus Andaud given ten thousand years after Leto II began his change into a sandworm, a sign that the Atreides story was still being argued over thousands of years further on. (Heretics of Dune; Expanded books: Sandworms of Dune)