I don't understand why the Emperor would put house Etreides in charge of the most valuable natural resource in the universe, if he was worried they were getting too powerful. Seems counterintuitive, is there some reasoning behind this?
The politics of it in my view does not make sense.
The idea is that Harkonnens would disobey the emperor and move against Atreides, like what happened in the movies. But what happened next does not make that much sense.
If the emperor wanted to move against Harkonnens afterwards, there is the chance. Harkonnens disobeyed him, so he could punish or even attack the Harkonnens, at the very least take Dune away, weaken both Harkonnens and Atreides in one move and that would make a lot of sense.
The Harkonnens are of course no fools, if those were the emperor's intentions then there is no reason for Harkonnens to get themselves in trouble for nothing.
But Harkonnens attacked Atreides anyway, for some reason they thought nothing would happen to them, and indeed they disobeyed the emperor and got away with it, at least by the look of it.
In this scenario the emperor looked weak, it looked like he was no longer in control. It is I think really the worst possible outcome for the emperor.
The 2 houses are at war. The Emperor doesn't have a say in either of the house attacking the other.
The emperor although powerful is not powerful enough to take on all the houses and a direct attack on the Atreides would have meant his demise. Same for an attack on the Harkonnens who just followed the rules of kanly.
So the 2, the emperor and the Harkonnens schemed and trapped the Atreides on Arakis. Most likely a Harkonnen attack on Caladan would have failed, badly.
Plus if I remember right Irulan (the princess, not present in the movie) was supposed to marry Baron's son or nephew, the one that's not in the movie either, LOL.
Marrying the princess to Baron's son will only make the situation look worse. Not only the emperor did not dare to punish Harkonnens, he has to use marriage to please the Harkonnens.
shareThe emperor has no son and the Harkonnens are the most powerful house.
Apparently you don't understand the simple thing: the emperor has NO reason to punish the Harkonnens - it was Kanly. Read the damn books, lol.
Are you just stubborn or you like to play dumb???
https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Kanly
https://www.tor.com/2016/11/22/rereading-frank-herberts-dune-dune-part-two/
I would like to say the same to you. Because I repeated many times before. It is not about the feud or the war, it is about Harkonnens took back Dune, which was specifically against the emperor's order.
shareDamn, they didn't take back Dune, they killed the Atreides in a legal way. Arakis just happened to be the battle field, where would you have had the Harkonnens attack if not on Arakis (where the Atreides actually were)? In a far far away galaxy???
With Atreides gone the Emperor can assign another house to Arakis. Which will happen to be the Harkonnens.
Really?? You don't get it???
Why can't you have a simple discussion about the movie without all the useless insults.
I'm so sick of it ... maybe in the time of Dune they will have system smart enough to pole you with a Gom Jabbar when you break out into insulting language. Geeeze.
Look who's talking :D
Well, I'm tired of people not wanting to go out of their small made up simulation and fighting to deny what's explained to them ...
Duke Leto was popular; this threatened the Emperor. So he sent Leto to Dune then conspired with the Harkonnens to kill him.
shareYep, it was a trap. The Atreides were popular and capable of leading the Landsraad against the Emperor. On the other hand, nobody liked the Harkonnens much.
shareBut why not just attack Duke Leto on his home world? Why go through the whole charade of sending him to Dune first? Is it because he wouldn't be able to mount as an effective defense on Dune?
Alternatively if the Emperor has the power: why not just send them to some wasteland planet elsewhere and just forget about them?
There are so many things that are explained in the books but not in the movie.
As an example: fremens bribing the guild to NOT monitor Arakis' orbital space. So yeah, basically attacking caladan would had been a big no no for Harkonens ...
Even attacking Arakis would had failed if not for Yueh. Which again is simplified in the movie, in the book is so much more context around it.
Actually, even given today's level of technology it would not be possible for one person to sabotage a whole city like that unless there was absolute idiotic incompetence in the guarding and configuration of the defense.
It is supposed to be thousands of years in the future and though the explain the Butlerian Jihad and the mentats, surely they had time to experience and defend against almost every spying and sabotaging method. Why would the Doctor even know or have access to the Atreides defensive strategies. You really have to suspend your disbelief to watch this movie.
Well, as I said, in the book it's much better explained.
The movie is too "short" to go over all the details ...
Plus you have to take into account that the book is written in the 60s, we didn't have access to this kind of technology back then and the books are purposely written to mimic a feudal society, in space.
There are rules in governing an empire, even an emperor can only rule by consent. He can't just punish a noble family without a pretext, otherwise all noble families will feel threatened and they will be plotting against the emperor if none felt safe.
Atreides and Harkonnens are having a feud, so the rules allow Harkonnens attacking Atreides. But Harkonnens keeping Dune afterwards has nothing to do with any feud, because Dune does not belong to Atreides or Harkonnens, it belongs to the empire, that is the part does not make sense.
Coz they're hotter and cleaner than Harkonnen.
shareHouse Atreides was well respected by the other houses and the Emperor begin to fear they might erode his power, so he gave them a gift they couldn't refuse, that would be their undoing. If the Emperor attacked House Atreides home world there would be civil war, but on Dune he could blame the Harkonnens and it's just a family squabble. The Harkonnens are cool with it because they only care about the mad profits from the spice. They get the profits and rid of their arch nemesis, the emperor gets rid of a potential rival and increases his power, win for both.
shareThis is the correct answer.
Plausible deniability.
I believe it was spelled out that the Emperor was afraid of the rising popularity of Duke Leto, so he hatched this plan with the Harkonnens to take House Atreides out, because no one liked the Harkonnens.
But, I've thought similarly about this. There are a lot of holes in Dune that one just let's go because of the richness of the built up world in one's imagination as a reader. I think a lot of this is taken on in subsequent sequels to Dune, but the whole series just goes sour, or even more sour than the ending of Dune in the sequels.
Basically the story is - it is because it is.
The book is long enough as it is, too long to make a single movie out of and too confusing and boring to make a mini-series out of. More motivation and filing in of the galactic empire's politics would have been nice.
In the book is explained that the Baron had stockpiled spice so the temporary take over by the Atreides would not hinder the operation.
shareThe Emperor was jealous of Leto Atreides standing among the great houses, he was also afraid of the army that House Atreides had built and trained. He had no pretext to attack Caladan so he had to draw them out. He used their rivalry with the Harkonens as a cover to launch his own attack on the Atreides once he got them to Arrakis.
shareSpecifically so they could be killed off.
shareI actually know where you're coming from. They didn't really make it obvious in earlier versions of this story, but the Emperor basically feared losing his throne, and was not an honorable or likeable man.
See, Duke Leto Atreides had become popular among the Landsraad, the main faction of all the noble/royal houses across worlds, partially due to being a good leader, and partially due to having a very well-disciplined army, one that could almost rival the Emperor's Saardukaar soldiers. In the 2000 miniseries, the Baron was having a conversation with his nephews about it, saying that "A popular man arouses jealousy, and the Emperor is a very jealous man." Obviously, Emperor Shaddam IV was not as popular as Duke Leto, and feared that at one point, the Landsraad might vote to remove him from the throne and put Duke Leto there instead, and House Corrino had ruled from that position for centuries.
So he took advantage of the rivalry between House Harkonnen and House Atreides to make his move to get rid of the Duke and everything he had. He made it look like he had chosen House Atreides to take over Spice operations on Arakkis over the Harkonnen, claiming the Atreides could do the job better and more responsibly than their rival. In truth, the Emperor didn't really care about how the Harkonnen treated the people of Dune or how they got the Spice, so long as he got his cut of the profits. He aided House Harkonnen by providing his own Saardukaar soldiers (originally they were disguised as Harkonnen soldiers, but in this film they weren't disguised at all) and other resources to make it look like House Harkonnen had destroyed House Atreides and succeeded.
It's kind of ironic that despite the Emperor's efforts at maintaining his throne, he still lost it two years later to an Atreides, just not Duke Leto.