God Emperor of Dune

Duncan Idaho is Leto’s Commander of the Royal Guard and a ghola, a duplicate manufactured from the cells of the original Idaho, who served House Atreides in Dune. Duncan represents loyalty to the past, and he often struggles with feelings of dislocation and a crisis of identity as one of a multitude of previous gholas. Leto has replaced Duncan multiple times throughout his long reign, and the novel opens with accounts of how previous Duncans have died attempting to kill Leto. Only 19 Duncans have died natural deaths, and Siona knows of nine whom Leto has murdered. Despite their attempts on his life, Leto continues to replace his gholas out of a nostalgic bond between the original Duncan and Leto’s father, Paul Atreides. Leto also values the Duncans for their integrity and tendency to rebel against his tyranny. The fact that Leto continues to order ghola after ghola illustrates the paradox of Duncan’s existence: He is both replaceable and irreplaceable. Only another Duncan—an exact duplicate of the original Duncan—can take his place, and Leto does not search for other people to serve as his Commander even though he has bred stronger and faster Atreides.

Duncan is a mirror to Leto, as both characters are quasi-immortal and thus disrupt the rules of ordinary time. They both struggle with exerting a singular identity among the multitude from the past—Duncan with his unknown predecessors and Leto with the “mob” of his ancestral ego-memories. They develop an interdependent and antagonistic relationship as Duncan needs Leto as an Atreides to define his identity and purpose, and Leto values Duncan as the only companion to truly know his humanity through intimate memories of his family.

Duncan is the archetype of the soldier and the male seducer, whose title is “swordmaster of the Atreides” (60) and whose “genotype is remarkably attractive to women” (93). The past defines Duncan, and Leto finds it charming and “chivalrous” (124) when Duncan blushes, a rare response in Leto’s time. By contrast, Moneo considers Duncan a “foolish, dangerous, antique human” (442) for his outdated prejudices against homosexuality and reliance on gender roles. Duncan spends most of the novel feeling emasculated because Leto’s all-female army protect him and shield him from fighting. As Leto’s favored male and breeding stud, the Fish Speakers often proposition him, and Duncan resents that his appeal to them is tied to Leto’s influence and not solely his own. Duncan rails, “[Y]our women won’t let me fight!” (375) and “I have to fight them off!...Damn you, I’m not your stud!” (310). Duncan’s flaws are in his masculine pride and military prowess. Moneo realizes what the gholas have failed to learn, telling him, “You choose male companions for their ability to fight and die on the side of right as you see it. You choose females who can complement this masculine view of yourself. You allow for no differences which can come from good will” (495). As the novel progresses, Duncan begins to show humility. He asks Moneo for guidance and feels shame after denigrating one of the museum Fremen for not knowing his own culture.

Throughout the novel, Duncan struggles to accept Leto’s tyranny and fulfill his duty to the Atreides. Rebellion is a particularly complex trait for Duncan given the history of his gholas. In Dune Messiah, when the Tleilaxu made the very first Duncan ghola, he did not have the original Idaho’s memories and was designed to kill Paul Atreides when given a subliminal command. Only when he refused to kill Paul was the first Duncan ghola able to remember his identity and become the “real” Duncan. Duncan’s sense of duty to the Atreides is so intrinsic to his identity that the Tleilaxu use a mimic of Paul and a knife to test whether their gholas have any defects. The current iteration of Duncan passed the test because “[s]omething in the Idaho cells had rebelled at killing an Atreides” (60). This background explains why Duncan is so dependent on the Atreides to define his identity and why he struggles so intensely to reject Leto. To reject an Atreides amounts to self-negation.

A direct descendant of Ghanima Atreides and Harq-al-Ada, Moneo Atreides is Siona’s father and Leto’s loyal majordomo. The descendant of a Duncan ghola, he is 118 years old (the average human life span is 100). Moneo refuses the spice’s “geriatric properties” (18) to lengthen his life, fearing the risk of Abomination from ancestral memories. His caution demonstrates that his allegiance to Leto is not rooted in ambition. Far from coveting Leto’s power, Moneo is grateful not to be in Leto’s position. Leto earned his devotion after Moneo survived his test and became sensitized to the Golden Path. Fulfilling the archetype of the convert and the disciple, Moneo was a former rebel who submitted to Leto’s authority when he witnessed the horror of human extinction and comprehended the supreme sacrifice Leto made to save humankind.

Moneo represents devotion to a fault, and he spends most of the novel fulfilling Leto’s orders without protest, from the mundane tasks of scheduling his meetings to disposing of another dead ghola’s body and planning his wedding. Leto trusts and depends on Moneo, but ultimately the emperor considers his servant’s devotion and subservience a failure of his breeding program and the grand design of the Golden Path. Duncan refers to him disparagingly as a “docile lamb” (379), and Leto frequently refers to him as “faithful Moneo” (393) in a tone of both appreciation and disappointment. Moneo’s steadfast dedication lacks the glory and ecstasy of the Fish Speakers’ devotion, and he often completes his task with a “sad resignation” (48). He refers to the Golden Path as a “burden” (490) and a “cage” (491) that traps both Leto and him. Moneo’s weariness mirrors Leto’s boredom, and their relationship functions in a type of “misery loves company” dynamic.

Moneo’s faith in Leto and the Golden Path is absolute, and he elevates Leto as a God. Knowing that the Lord Leto is nearing his volatile transformation into a giant sandworm, Moneo accepts that he may lose his life at any moment and is ever watchful for “the approach of the Worm” (90). He is a literal “God-fearing” believer and interprets the risk of death as evidence of Leto’s authority as Shai-Hulud, the Worm God who has the power to smite him. Despite numerous scenes that reinforce Moneo’s passivity, Moneo also embodies superior strength and agility. He easily parries Duncan’s attack and kills Malky with an assassin’s swift blow. These scenes are a sharp contrast to Moneo’s typically subdued demeanor and reveal that his acceptance of the Golden Path is not a demonstration of weakness as much as self-control.

Siona is the staunch rebel. In her determination to destroy Leto, she represents tenacity and independence. She is the culmination of Leto’s breeding program and the corrective to the Kwisatz Haderach. In her unique ability to “fade” from prescience, Siona provides the genetic key to protecting entire populations from falling prey to a single, prescient authority. Like her father, she survives Leto’s test and accepts her responsibility to the Golden Path. However, unlike Moneo, her duty does not entail succumbing to religious worship. Her role in Leto’s grand design is paradoxical: Even in steadfastly rebelling against him and finally killing him, she is only fulfilling his wishes.

Siona accepts the authenticity of the threat to human extinction but not the legitimacy of Leto’s rule. She joins Leto’s ranks as a commander of the Fish Speakers but vows that she will “never forgive him” (555). She does not believe that the ends justify the means, and she voices strong moral objections to Leto’s acts of corruption and tyranny. She argues, “if it [the Golden Path] was ever a reason for our God Emperor, it is not reason for what he has become!” (534). Having renounced Leto as a murderer when she was a teen at the Fish Speakers school, Siona remembers the death of her friends from Leto’s D-wolves and insists to Duncan that “the Worm must go!” (534). Siona bases her convictions on the observable ways Leto has restricted individual freedoms. Rather than speak in aphorisms and lofty principles as Leto does, Siona sees the stagnation of village life and invokes the individual names of her friends who died resisting him.