What Happened in the Twelve Years Between Dune and Dune Messiah

Between the end of Dune and the start of Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert lets twelve years go by off the page. In that time Paul Atreides became Emperor, his Fremen legions carried a holy war across the universe, and a priesthood turned him into a god. Herbert never shows the war directly. Messiah tells it through the cost, the people who survived it and the man who started it. This page pulls together what the two novels say, with spoilers for both. (Dune; Dune Messiah)

How Dune ends#

Dune closes with Shaddam IV beaten in the Battle of Arrakeen. Paul took the throne by demanding the hand of Shaddam's daughter, Princess Irulan, and sent the old Emperor into exile on Salusa Secundus. His real power was the spice. He had shown he could destroy it, and with it the Spacing Guild's ability to cross space, so the Guild and the Great Houses had to deal with him. Chani stayed at his side as his true partner. (Dune)

All through Dune, Paul saw a jihad coming: fanatic legions carrying the Atreides banner and his name across the stars. He searched his visions for a way to stop it, and in the end he understood that even his death would not, because his followers would fight on for a martyr. The war was already moving when the book ends. (Dune)

The appendix to Dune gives one date from these years: by the Almanak en-Ashraf, Shaddam IV died in 10202 AG. The same entry's birth date for him clashes with the rest of the book, so treat it with care. The Dune timeline sets out the dates. (Dune (appendix))

The holy war and its toll#

Muad'Dib's Jihad was fought by the Fremen legions, led by the Fedaykin who had followed Paul in the desert. Herbert gives almost no battle-by-battle history. What Dune Messiah gives instead is the bill. (Dune Messiah)

Paul puts the figures plainly. At a conservative estimate, he says, he has killed sixty-one billion people, sterilised ninety planets, completely demoralised five hundred others, and wiped out the followers of forty religions. He sets this beside the great killers of human history, Genghis Khan and Hitler among them, and their totals look small next to his. (Dune Messiah)

Paul doesn't claim the war is out of his hands in a simple sense. He can see the futures that branch from it, and every path he finds that ends the jihad leads somewhere worse. So he stays on the throne and lets it run, hating it. That choice, and the guilt behind it, is what Dune Messiah is about. (Dune Messiah)

The war also came home to Arrakis. Veterans like Otheym, dying of a disease caught on another world, and Farok, home from campaigns on other worlds, came back changed. The fighters who had conquered worlds found the desert life they had fought for slipping away. (Dune Messiah)

The Qizarate and the religion of Muad'Dib#

The Qizarate is the priesthood that grew up around Paul. The glossary to Dune names its priests the Qizara Tafwid, the Fremen priests who came after the Mahdi. Many were men who had fought for him in the desert. (Dune (appendix); Dune Messiah)

During the jihad its missionaries travelled with the armies and preached Muad'Dib on conquered worlds, part of the war aimed at belief rather than territory. By Dune Messiah it has become an arm of the state. Pilgrims crowd into Arrakeen on the Hajj, the priests run the rituals and the official story of Paul's life, and the former Fedaykin Korba is Paul's Panegyrist, the priest whose job is to sing his praises. (Dune Messiah)

The priesthood also judged heresy. Dune Messiah opens with words from the historian Bronso of Ix, speaking from a death cell after he was condemned for writing about Paul as a man. Paul looks at what has been built in his name with something close to horror, but he knows the myth is holding his empire together. (Dune Messiah)

Paul's empire#

By the time Dune Messiah opens, Paul rules from a vast keep in Arrakeen. Stilgar, the Fremen leader who once sheltered him, is his minister of state. His sister Alia, now fifteen, is a priestess of his religion. Irulan is his wife in name only, and Chani is still the woman he loves, still childless. His mother, Lady Jessica, has gone back to Caladan, uneasy with what her son's rule has become. (Dune Messiah)

Paul's wealth reaches into CHOAM, the great trading company, and his hold on the spice still keeps the Guild in check. The old powers survived the war but lost their freedom of action: the Bene Gesserit, who wanted his bloodline back under their control, the Guild, and the Bene Tleilax. Twelve years in, they came together with Irulan in the last conspiracy against Muad'Dib. (Dune Messiah)

What the expanded books add#

Frank Herbert left these years as a gap. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's Paul of Dune (2008) is set in them and adds battles, plots and new characters, including attempts on Paul's life. It belongs to the expanded books, which don't always agree with Frank Herbert's novels, and this page doesn't use it for anything above. The timeline marks which dates come from which books. (Paul of Dune)

The story picks up in Dune Messiah, and on screen in Dune: Part Three. For who's who when it does, see the Dune Messiah characters. (Dune Messiah)