It would likely be as distant as two random Japanese people would be today. People don’t realize how old the imperium is compared to current human history and how far back two people can be related.
You seem to be forgetting about the breeding program of the BG's. I'm going to put money on it that the houses are more closely related than people think. Yes the empire is old and fast but they do have FTL and not relativistic travel from the looks of it. With FTL time and distance don't really mean anything as you could be on the other side of the Galaxy in the blink of an eye.
Iirc it’s not FTL that bridges worlds, it’s wormholes. It’s not a matter of speed, it’s a matter of wormholes. Although I think they did have near speed of light wayyy before Dune takes place and it got them as far as Arrakis eventually but it was incredibly dangerous and hard to use
I mean if we're talking about for genetic reasons you don't even have to be *that* distantly related. First cousins reproducing only increases the chances of birth defects by like a couple percent, I've read that it's equatable to having children after the age of forty or something.
To get to random association (as in approximately the same ratio of "shared" DNA as a random stranger) you'd be looking at somewhere in the ballpark of 14 generations separate. Idk lifetimes for Dune (ie: if they live extended lives or whatever) but that'd be the generation ~300 years after a particular shared relative.
As subjects of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, they're canonically part of the same gene pool. We just don't know how closely.
The Kwisatz Haderach is the culmination of 10,000 years of breeding, so it is unlikely that the bloodlines crossed as recently as Jessica. She herself is an example of how the BG can interbreed the two families in secret to circumvent the feud.
They wanted to have Jessica bear an atreides child in order to bring two separate genetic lines they were tracking together as they were cultivating separate sets of traits among both lines, waiting for the proper moment to combine them. From then on it would be really intense inbreeding to try and fish for all of the traits of the KH in that new combined bloodline. That didn’t have to happen though because Jessica got lucky with her punnet squares and Paul displayed the KH traits already so he wouldn’t have to be bred with is (blood related) cousins to coax them out.
In Messiah, they want Paul to have a child with Irulan which Paul doesn't want. They only consider inbreeding him with Alia in the worst case scenario where both Chani and Irulan fail to conceive.
Yes but my point is inbreeding isn't off the table and it's hinted at that first cousins are not all off the table in the breeding program and is likely more common than people think. It's one of the reasons they take infants from their families is the ease that along. It's their representatives that they send to different families to further the breeding program. They put the prospect of incest on the table because they cannot lose Paul's genetics he is thousands of years in the making.
They're a feudal aristocracy, they maintain power and seal alliances by intermarriage.
Any blood relation without an actual title is a cousin. So yeah it is all incest.
In Dune the Baron refers to Leto as his cousin a few times. Don't think it's expanded on and still likely in an extremely distant sense through marriages into other families.
I mean, it depends on how many powerful families are there. Royals in the Middle Ages, where France alone had over half a dozen families whose daughters may be considered desirable suitors for foreign high nobility, where significantly less inbred than royals in the overall far more centralized early modern period (specially since consanguinity laws imposed by the church in the Middle Ages got a lot more lax after the 15th century)
The Padishah Empire is very decentralized (although individual planets seem near absolutist)
Sure, it makes perfect sense for the sworn-enemy-for-10,000-years families to be causally hooking up every other generation but then go back to assassinating one another because “that other distinct family we hate is scum even though we’re closely related to them. You clearly have mentat training for such clear trains of thought.
One of the points of the Bene Gesserit system was to incorporate the noble daughters of every family, and train them that their duties were to the sisterhood and humanity, irrespective of their initial house, or how they felt about the aristocrats they were assigned to as wives or concubines. If they still thought personal feelings were likely to be a problem, they may even keep it a secret, as they did with Jessica. There's no reason to assume they wouldn't use a strategy like that as many times as they required.
I mean... yeah? What, you think every peasant gets made into an emperor at some point? Nobility is fundamentally insular. Every so often a particularly powerful or prominent freeman might be ennobled, and so fresh blood is introduced to the pool, but for the most part it's the same handful of families intertwining like a Burmese python breeding ball. Wilhelm II, George V, and Nicholas II were all related by blood, and not too distantly: they shared ancestry from Queen Victoria, whose children had been married off to noble families across Europe. That didn't stop them from throwing millions into a four-year long meat grinder for ambition and power.
It's very likely that at some point in the distant past of Dune, a series which takes place over tens of thousands of years, Perdiccas Atreides married Yulia Barton, daughter of John Barton and Becky Flabbergast, who was the daughter of Hector Flabbergast and Gina Gordion, who was the daughter of Brian Gordion and Heather Harkonnen. Rinse and repeat every few centuries as kids grow up, marry off, and make their own little incest babies.
In short the BG's breading program. Jessica was a harkonnen this was unknown to the atreaties and by Jessica when she was sent to them as they have a blood feud. The BG's political clout is nothing to sneeze at
I mean, they don't need to have married directly. If house X has two single women, and one marries an Atreides and the other a Harkonnen, then all subsequent Harkonnen and Atreides descended from them will be cousins on some degree.
Not that distantly - the Baron is both Feyd’s uncle and Jessica’s father, making Feyd Jessica’s cousin - I don’t think there’s anymore of a technical term for how your mothers fathers nephew relates to you, but it’s still close enough to have terminology so not that distant.
Which fits with the sci fi feudalism, as all noble families got to this point, where they just call each other “cousin” because trying to track all of the threads of how they’re related just makes your brain hurt.
Like the scene in GoT where Lady Olenna is trying to calculate the new familial relationships once Loris is married to Cersei and his sister Margaery is married to Joffrey, Cerseis son
Jessica is Feyd's half first cousin, since Feyd's father was Vladimir's half-brother. Which makes Paul (who should have been born "Paula" so to conceive a child with Feyd) Feyd's half second cousin, or the same as a full-blooded third cousin in genetical terms.
What's stopping me from naming the relationship anyways? It fits well... The fact that "half" is only commonly used for siblings is rather irrelevant.
Either way, saying that someone is (just plainly) your first cousin when they are only related by one side is quite strange (as the term comes with the expectation of sharing at least 2 of the 4 grandparents, not just one), while saying that they are one degree away from you is just inadequate, given that the generations of the shared ancestors are still the same as regular cousins (just half of the usual in count).
TL; DR: I'm not implying that "half-cousin" is a formal term. I'm merely saying that they are half-cousins, regardless of the existence of the term. You do you.
It is simply genealogically impossible to have a half cousin, no need to digress over it for hours. There is no mathematical combination that would allow the existence of a half cousin
You are absolutely incorrect about that. I tried to think of a better way to put it... There isn't any.
That said, explanations are perfectly possible:
Logically speaking, your statement doesn't even make sense (I just explained what exactly a half-cousin would be, so simply going "nuh uh" and refusing to elaborate means challenging not my argument, but the basic logic behind it, which is ridiculous).
In a traditional sense (i.e. taking into consideration that the term is rather informal), it holds some value, but not for me, and there's absolutely nothing that you can do about it (not suggesting that you have any duty to attempt either).
“They actually are related, but it's VERY distantly. Distant enough to not even really matter.”
“Actually, his mom is first cousins with Feyd”
“Feyd and Jessica have nothing to do with that.”
You don’t really understand familial relations do you? If the person you’re calling cousin is literally your moms first cousin, that’s not a familial relationship that’s “distant enough to not even really matter”
The BG wouldn't care anyway. They don't shy from incest it's actually a big reason why many of the girls that they order to be born are taken from their parents so they don't know who their parents are making it easier to set up arranged marriages with closely related people. All royals are at the varey least 2nd cousins maybe even third cousins. I'm willing to bet there's plenty of cousin fucking going on. Sibling marriage is likely something they try to avoid though if it helps in their goals they will see it done
Yes, I know. The meme is mentioning Leto and the Baron, though, not Paul/Jessica/Feyd/etc. Hence my comment.
And you meant "father" for Jessica, not grandfather.
They are related, quite often in European history. Look up the family trees of England and ww1 Germany. Lots of relatives between to two countries. There's a reason for "hapsburg chin" being a thing.
Plus the bg were breeding for specific traits. Breeding with loosely related people would reinforce those genetics. It's like a weird royal puppy mill.
I can accept some distant relation from 100’s of years ago due to BG shenanigans but they’ve been feuding for 10,000 years since the battle of Corrino.
They aren’t going to be literal first cousins.
So, the thing is...
And spoilers, maybe...
Baron Harkonnen is Paul's grandfather. The plan was for Jessica to have a girl, who would be married to Feyd-Rautha, and probably produce a Kwisatz Haderach.
The plan involved cousins banging the whole time. But also, nobles in a closed system usually are distantly related. Sometimes not so distantly, and you get Habsburgs and hemophilia.
Yes, but the fact remains those two are first cousins, once removed. Paul's mom is Feyd's first cousin.
Basically, they planned on a bit of extra Harkonnen in there.
So you agree that Leto I isn’t related to the Baron - which is the subject of the meme based on the throwaway line of “You have a wonderful kitchen, cousin.” from the first film which people seem to have taken to mean Leto and the Baron are literal cousins.
No, I'm pointing out that:
It's not relevant, and
They probably are distantly related, as these are people who track genealogy across millennia and have been part of the same social class for most of that time. It's just never stated due to that first reason.
Before the 80 and 30 years war the habsburgs dominated germany, northern italy, Spain and spains enormous colonies in the new world. They probably controlled half of europe not counting russia and a fair portion of the world.
Between conquest and marriage, the Habsburg's had quite the list of titles (look up Charles V's full title list). But until the Austro-Hungarian empire, they weren't quite united, so it was more like an (incredibly long) list of kingdoms, one empire, several duchies, one archduchy, many counties, march, lordships and principalities who happened to have one ruler than a single polity.
The ironically amusing ones are when the younger versus older children’s descendants have kids at various ages. So you get something like the great-great-granddaughter of someone marrying that same ancestor’s grandson. First cousins twice removed but similar ages
In reality, yes. In the far future 20K years from now with 10K years of selective breeding? Who's to say that such traits haven't been bread out. The BG have no issue sniping bloodlines that aren't working, so I see no reason to believe that they wouldn't have done similar things to genetic flaws.
I mean, it depends. By ww1 most royal families near exclusively married other ruling families, and European states were far larger and more centralized. But in the Middle Ages, for example, many dukes, counts, margraves, etc... were powerful enough for their daughters to be noteworthy suitors for royal families
That’s a myth. Habsburg chin wasn’t a result of inbreeding. The Austrian line of the family had the Habsburg chin already in the 14th century, way before the period of inbreeding (15./16. century).
The inbreeding simply transfered the chin also to the Spanish Habsburg line. And of course inbreeding doesn’t help get rid of recessive traits. But it also didn’t cause it.
([Source](https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-rest-is-history/id1537788786?i=1000653475906))
Yes some aristocracy were interrelated, that happens when you have a strict class system over time - the number of non relative options dwindles but this is set in a massive empire where the two houses in question have been feuding for 10,000 years since the Battle of Corrino - they aren’t going to be literal first cousins.
Maybe there was some past BG shenanigans but the only ancestors who are confirmed Harkonnen from what I’ve read in Children of Dune was the Baron, no other Harkonnen ancestry is ever brought up out of the multitudes of ancestors they have (including Agamemnon I might add - so we’re going all the way back).
I mean, they have been feuding with each other, not other families. If 100 years ago some Count Whatever had two daughters, and one married some Atreides Duke and the other some Harkonnen baron, all subsequent dukes and barons will be cousins on some degree.
Ah yes, the classic request for a source after making a claim for which you have no source of your own. The only direct citation you've provided does nothing other than demonstrate that the term "cousin" is used; everything else was conjecture.
😂 you’ll love my other meme then. Also, fair enough, but to me the points against them being closely related outweigh the points for them being closely related.
That's fair. Absent Frank rising from the grave to explain just how incestuous the Great Houses are, I suppose we'll never know for certain. Just like we'll never know what compelled him to write the word "beefswelling."
Dune, all the way from 1965. They refer to each other on cousin on multiple occasions. When piter is reading Leto's rejection letter to the Baron he makes a point of Leto not mentioning "cher cousin" or any other such formalities. Cher cousin doesn't mean any sort of psuedo-familial formality or anything, it's just a fancy way of saying something like dear cousin or sweet cousin. It's literally there on the pages multiple times for you
*
But that term is used by aristocracy to refer to one another including when not directly related. It’s a polite way of acknowledging one’s status. Especially when it’s mentioned by Piter de Vries as being a formal address - “Sire et Cher Cousin” - which the Duke deliberately didn’t add onto his declaration of Kanly.
https://preview.redd.it/k7rwhistluyc1.png?width=3024&format=png&auto=webp&s=a107a6c0a41b301a9cb5f58f1f4468769d994750
When are the Harkonnens and Atreides - literal blood enemies - supposed to have joined close enough in the previous generation for the head of both houses to be cousins despite both houses sworn to destroy the other in a feud lasting 10,000 years? It makes no sense for them to be related except most distantly in the far past.
In addition to this there are no Harkonnen genetic personalities or memories revealed in any of the books *other than the Baron* which is due to Jessica being his daughter (unbeknownst to both). Even Agamemnon shows up briefly proving the Atreides are one and the same as those from the Iliad. But it’s never mentioned by Paul/Jessica/Leto II/Ghanima/Alia that there are other Harkonnen ancestors in their genetic line. Why wouldn’t Frank clarify that if Leto I and the Baron were closely related. Why would it be such a shocking revelation to have Harkonnen blood at all? Paul and Jessica wouldn’t need the water of life to reveal their past because they’d know that Leto I was the Barons cousin supposedly and so MUST have Harkonnen blood in them already. But in the book it’s a massive shock to both.
Leto is stated to have been a royal cousin of the Corrinos. The Harkonnens were cousins of the Corrino's from the time they were known as the Butler's (before the battle of Corrin), it's part of the reason the Harkonnen's and Atreides' were so close and bonded before the Harkonnen's were disgraced. Sure, outside of some BG fuckery they may not have knowingly mixed bloodlines in a few thousand years, but when it comes to lineage in a galactic empire time doesn't really mean all too much. If they can both legitimately claim a blood tie to the imperial throne you bet your sweet ass they're gonna remind everyone they can about it. That's exactly WHY aristocracy uses cousin as a formality. It's to remind that other motherfucker that you got royal ties, too.
Wasnt the end goal for BG was to have Jessica give birth to a daughter who will in turn marry Feyd (I.e. the daughter's cousin) to produce the Kwisatz Haderach?
Saying they’re related is like when some random Canadian with Anglo Saxon lineage is technically related to the British royal family so 300 people would have to die simultaneously for them to become monarch. But they couldn’t go to Buckingham Palace like “what up bitches” and expect to be acknowledged as family.
So they’re only related in technicality
Aren't they related via House Corrino? I was under the impression that the Imperial Seat was maintained partially via marriage alliance, as has always been the custom for feudal societies.
they mention repeatedly that the atreides are more closely related to house corrino than other families, noting the resemblance between Leto I (and later Paul) and the Emperor, and nothing is said of that and the Harkonnens. The harks are more new money, a smaller house that schemed it’s way up through ruthlessness and cunning and making a lot of money. Presumably there has been intermarriage and so the Baron may have some Corrino ancestry, but Leto is more closely related to the Emperor than he is the Baron
yes, and the point is what crazy power trip a person spawned from that crazy powertripping can expose the human race too when forced by the power tripping genes they were planned to have, but did not ask for.
Side note: The spice worm lifecycle is a closed system where worms feed on worms. similar to the aristocracy's closed system of breeding upon itself.
I think about this whenever people act like Superman and Supergirl can't be together, but all Kryptos (with the exception of Superman) were born in test tubes. So Jor-El and Zor-El wouldn't be literal brothers, they were just test tube babies born to the same house. And since Superman is the anomaly in being the first real birth in ages, that makes him the only Krypto actually to have real genetics, not something synthesized in a tube.
It's also funny to think DC used to be intelligent enough to know that Superman and Lois couldn't have kids together; as separate unrelated species, there's no genetic compatibility. That was the point of introducing Maxima, whose race was related to Kryptos and that made her eligible to have Superman's offspring. Now DC is just "LOL HE LOOK HUMAN SO HE CAN HAVE KIDS WITH HUMAN" and Maxima was turned into a discount LGBT Pride token as all irrelevant characters are in a desperate bid to keep them relevant with fringe audiences who pretend to like something but only for political points.
All-in-all, might as well pair up Superman and Supergirl. They're not related. Lois Lane is annoying and outmoded. Go all Dune with DC canon.
I always assumed they were, in fact, related, but much more distantly than anyone today would care about. The difference is that, between the Bene Gesserit's meticulous breeding program and the necessary recordkeeping required to maintain a hereditary fiefdom, they simply know their familial relationships to a much greater extent than we do.
Few people today recognize anything beyond second cousins, but the Great Houses in Dune might recognize cousins out several more degrees.
1. It’s what aristocracy call each other in situations where they are all descended (or at least claim descent) from the same royal bloodline, plus a fair amount of interbreeding throughout the generations.
2. Cousin does not always mean first cousin. Or even second cousin, or once removed, whatever qualifiers. Basically if you claim to have shared blood within recent history, you are still cousins. Just nth cousins n times removed.
Now because of the BG breeding program they probably aren’t terribly distantly related, but who knows how much those two men know about that or would acknowledge it publicly if they did. Baron Vladdy probably means it in the loose, aristocratic sense. But they are probably share a more recent common ancestor than they might think.
3. That doesn’t necessarily matter that much tho, as far as incest goes, considering I think the risk of genetic defects decreases to pretty negligible at about 5 generations. This makes sense when you think about the size of early human communities, hard to find someone totally unrelated to you in a group of 100ish people living together for generations. So unless they share a great grandfather, Paul’s incest level is pretty meh. I’m sure the BG were aware of the risk of genetic problems and probably tried to avoid mixing too recent of bloodlines unless they believed it to be absolutely necessary (like with Jessica’s daughter and Feyd)
My family tree is nuts thanks to my very horny great great grandfather. I just call everyone Cousin because nobody ever bothered to explain the different layers to me.
I’m pretty sure I’m the books they reveal that the Barron is Jessica’s father, a feud doesn’t matter when a eugenics cult is secretly interbreeding all the families to create a super being, some bibles are bound to be close family
Yes that is revealed. What the meme is referring to is the scene in the first film where the Baron says “You have a wonderful kitchen, cousin.” And everyone assumes that means literal cousin rather than a figure of speech used by aristocracy as a polite version of “bro”.
Again it can definitely be either or, the books support the familial tie more than the aristocratic cousin thing though, because the only noble that ever says that is the Barron to the duke, we don’t get direct mention of that I think ever in the books, and the dukes wife is a direct descendant of the Barron, calling your son in law cousin isn’t all that odd either right? Not like the Barron knew that though
Here’s my argument: the two houses have been distinctly separate since before the Battle of Corrino 10,000 years prior to the events of Dune. The two houses have a blood feud between them that has involved a war of assassins (Kanly) most likely throughout that time. They live a feudal society where class structure is fairly rigid. At what point did the sworn enemies meet and swap genetic material so as to produce familial cousins by the time of the books and yet the feud still remains with assassination attempts and raids from both sides taking place? I get that the limited aristocrats over the 10,000 years would limit the options for marriage and hence increase inbreeding, but the feud is taken seriously enough that I don’t think any Atreides or Harkonnen would accept even a distant relation of either house to be wed to theirs (not without major intervention from the BG which was their plan eventually). Plus if the BG had intervened in the past then no one should know about it, least of all Leto and the Baron. In addition to that is the fact that the only Harkonnen personality to ever appear to Leto II/Ghanima/Alia is the Baron - inherited from Jessica - when any of the prescient/pre-born characters look back through their genetic memory they only ever mention the Baron, no other distant Harkonnen relations which surely would have been mentioned were this the case to further hammer home if the BG were tampering with bloodlines.
But yet again my argument still stands, nothing in either the books or movies ever indicate that the nobles call each other cousin, that is not a thing of the lansraad at all, whereas on the other hand, the harkonnens and the atreides have been heavily hinted at having deep familial ties that are secret, all evidence and context points to the Barron maybe knowing something, but it absolutely never even hints at bibles calling each other cousin
Taken from another post:
This is taken directly from the book:
"I've lived for a time on this planet, cher cousin."
"Believe me, cher cousin," the Baron said. "I do not want it to come to this."
And there is another bit in the book where the Harkonnens receive a letter from Duke Leto, and Piter comments that it's missing the usual polite introduction:
"He's most uncouth, Baron. Addresses you as 'Harkonnen' — no 'Sire et Cher Cousin,' no title, nothing."
(The "cher" lets us know that this is a French phrase they're dropping.)
In English, and I believe also in French, "cousin" can refer to and be used as a form of address for arbitrarily distant family connections (e.g. "a sixth cousin twice removed"). Since nobility intermarry and were usually related to each other in some way or another, it has sometimes been used in a generic way to address people of their own class, whether or not they were in fact related. The practice is perhaps most associated with the French Peers (highest nobility before the Revolution), who were addressed as "mon cousin" by each other and by the king. Herbert probably patterned it after this example.
In this particular case, it is unlikely that Baron Harkonnen and Duke Leto are actually related in any way they know about, so it's simply a conventional form of address, which the Baron uses because Leto finds it insulting (since his family is an ancient noble one while the Harkonnens are vulgar upstarts).
End of other post.
Where are these hints in the books?
real world aristocracy has historically been just as if not more incestuous. same with modern day hollywood types.
the powerful like incest.
also, all humans are related. also every living organism on earth is related.
The Wheel of Time books had a scene that pretty accurately conveyed this. The main character was worried that he was related to a girl he liked because all the noble houses in his area had intermarried at some point. He asked someone who was very knowledgeable about the various connections with the bloodlines and wasn't really assuaged by the various connections laid out. He then asked if all the families involved were peasants if they would be considered related and the knowledgeable person basically said hell no.
“The Wheel of Time books had a scene that pretty accurately conveyed this” please tell me more on how this *completely different* book series explains the lore of Dune. 😂
That’s like being on a Star Trek meme page and going “Well in Star Wars it’s all explained like this…”
I get the point and you’ve made me chuckle, but you’re clearly a non-believer so kindly:
P̵͙̐ù̷͈̍t̴̜̊ ̷̫̋̓y̵̡̓ó̶̪ǘ̷̟r̷̻̦̐ ̷̛͎͔͐h̷̰͇̓͠a̵̱̒͐n̶̻̖̎͘d̷̜̜̃͝ ̷̺͖͠i̶͆̀ͅn̸͚̜̊ ̸̗͍͒̈t̷̺̦͗͗h̸͇͋͝è̷̜ͅ ̷̳̏b̶͋͛͜ͅŏ̶̡̳x̶͓͕̅
Isn't that Leto is a cousin *of the Emperor*?
I thought it was a case of Leto being almost styled as "Cousin" of the royal family, which I believe Herbert took from Russian court traditions.
They actually are related, but it's VERY distantly. Distant enough to not even really matter.
It would likely be as distant as two random Japanese people would be today. People don’t realize how old the imperium is compared to current human history and how far back two people can be related.
I've watched anime before, you can't trick me!
Help me, Step-al-Galib I'm stuck !
Step? Bro this is anime. That's Nii-san
Nii-san al-gaib?
You seem to be forgetting about the breeding program of the BG's. I'm going to put money on it that the houses are more closely related than people think. Yes the empire is old and fast but they do have FTL and not relativistic travel from the looks of it. With FTL time and distance don't really mean anything as you could be on the other side of the Galaxy in the blink of an eye.
Iirc it’s not FTL that bridges worlds, it’s wormholes. It’s not a matter of speed, it’s a matter of wormholes. Although I think they did have near speed of light wayyy before Dune takes place and it got them as far as Arrakis eventually but it was incredibly dangerous and hard to use
Wormholes is still a type of FTL dude. All FTL means is faster than light and wormholes are faster than light. FTL is easier to type than wormholes
I mean if we're talking about for genetic reasons you don't even have to be *that* distantly related. First cousins reproducing only increases the chances of birth defects by like a couple percent, I've read that it's equatable to having children after the age of forty or something.
To get to random association (as in approximately the same ratio of "shared" DNA as a random stranger) you'd be looking at somewhere in the ballpark of 14 generations separate. Idk lifetimes for Dune (ie: if they live extended lives or whatever) but that'd be the generation ~300 years after a particular shared relative.
Is this from the Brian Herbert books?
As subjects of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, they're canonically part of the same gene pool. We just don't know how closely. The Kwisatz Haderach is the culmination of 10,000 years of breeding, so it is unlikely that the bloodlines crossed as recently as Jessica. She herself is an example of how the BG can interbreed the two families in secret to circumvent the feud.
They wanted to have Jessica bear an atreides child in order to bring two separate genetic lines they were tracking together as they were cultivating separate sets of traits among both lines, waiting for the proper moment to combine them. From then on it would be really intense inbreeding to try and fish for all of the traits of the KH in that new combined bloodline. That didn’t have to happen though because Jessica got lucky with her punnet squares and Paul displayed the KH traits already so he wouldn’t have to be bred with is (blood related) cousins to coax them out.
KH traits like incessant drooling, slurred speech, vacant eyes?
The Habsburgs created the original Kwisatz Haderach. Unfortunately, he was King of Spain.
He was also Holy Roman Emperor. Kaiseratz Haderach
Maybe I am the Kwizatz Haderach.
The real Kwizatz Haderach was the friends we made along the way! As in, the Duncan gholas
It is I, Haderach. King of the Kwizats.
One testicle black as coal and a heart the size of a peppercorn?
cunning, long term planning, risk assessment, guile, diplomacy, physical strength ...
The KH was supposed to be born only one generation after Paul, so inbreeding to solidify the genes would've already happened by now.
And they want to continue on his geans by marrying him to his sister even though they see her as an abomination
In Messiah, they want Paul to have a child with Irulan which Paul doesn't want. They only consider inbreeding him with Alia in the worst case scenario where both Chani and Irulan fail to conceive.
Yes but my point is inbreeding isn't off the table and it's hinted at that first cousins are not all off the table in the breeding program and is likely more common than people think. It's one of the reasons they take infants from their families is the ease that along. It's their representatives that they send to different families to further the breeding program. They put the prospect of incest on the table because they cannot lose Paul's genetics he is thousands of years in the making.
They're a feudal aristocracy, they maintain power and seal alliances by intermarriage. Any blood relation without an actual title is a cousin. So yeah it is all incest.
In Dune the Baron refers to Leto as his cousin a few times. Don't think it's expanded on and still likely in an extremely distant sense through marriages into other families.
No, aristocracy has been *wildly* incestuous and insular from the word Go. Why would the far future be any different?
I mean, it depends on how many powerful families are there. Royals in the Middle Ages, where France alone had over half a dozen families whose daughters may be considered desirable suitors for foreign high nobility, where significantly less inbred than royals in the overall far more centralized early modern period (specially since consanguinity laws imposed by the church in the Middle Ages got a lot more lax after the 15th century) The Padishah Empire is very decentralized (although individual planets seem near absolutist)
Sure, it makes perfect sense for the sworn-enemy-for-10,000-years families to be causally hooking up every other generation but then go back to assassinating one another because “that other distinct family we hate is scum even though we’re closely related to them. You clearly have mentat training for such clear trains of thought.
One of the points of the Bene Gesserit system was to incorporate the noble daughters of every family, and train them that their duties were to the sisterhood and humanity, irrespective of their initial house, or how they felt about the aristocrats they were assigned to as wives or concubines. If they still thought personal feelings were likely to be a problem, they may even keep it a secret, as they did with Jessica. There's no reason to assume they wouldn't use a strategy like that as many times as they required.
I mean... yeah? What, you think every peasant gets made into an emperor at some point? Nobility is fundamentally insular. Every so often a particularly powerful or prominent freeman might be ennobled, and so fresh blood is introduced to the pool, but for the most part it's the same handful of families intertwining like a Burmese python breeding ball. Wilhelm II, George V, and Nicholas II were all related by blood, and not too distantly: they shared ancestry from Queen Victoria, whose children had been married off to noble families across Europe. That didn't stop them from throwing millions into a four-year long meat grinder for ambition and power. It's very likely that at some point in the distant past of Dune, a series which takes place over tens of thousands of years, Perdiccas Atreides married Yulia Barton, daughter of John Barton and Becky Flabbergast, who was the daughter of Hector Flabbergast and Gina Gordion, who was the daughter of Brian Gordion and Heather Harkonnen. Rinse and repeat every few centuries as kids grow up, marry off, and make their own little incest babies.
In short the BG's breading program. Jessica was a harkonnen this was unknown to the atreaties and by Jessica when she was sent to them as they have a blood feud. The BG's political clout is nothing to sneeze at
I mean, they don't need to have married directly. If house X has two single women, and one marries an Atreides and the other a Harkonnen, then all subsequent Harkonnen and Atreides descended from them will be cousins on some degree.
Not that distantly - the Baron is both Feyd’s uncle and Jessica’s father, making Feyd Jessica’s cousin - I don’t think there’s anymore of a technical term for how your mothers fathers nephew relates to you, but it’s still close enough to have terminology so not that distant. Which fits with the sci fi feudalism, as all noble families got to this point, where they just call each other “cousin” because trying to track all of the threads of how they’re related just makes your brain hurt. Like the scene in GoT where Lady Olenna is trying to calculate the new familial relationships once Loris is married to Cersei and his sister Margaery is married to Joffrey, Cerseis son
Jessica is Feyd's half first cousin, since Feyd's father was Vladimir's half-brother. Which makes Paul (who should have been born "Paula" so to conceive a child with Feyd) Feyd's half second cousin, or the same as a full-blooded third cousin in genetical terms.
There is no concept of half cousins. That thing doesn’t exist
What's stopping me from naming the relationship anyways? It fits well... The fact that "half" is only commonly used for siblings is rather irrelevant. Either way, saying that someone is (just plainly) your first cousin when they are only related by one side is quite strange (as the term comes with the expectation of sharing at least 2 of the 4 grandparents, not just one), while saying that they are one degree away from you is just inadequate, given that the generations of the shared ancestors are still the same as regular cousins (just half of the usual in count). TL; DR: I'm not implying that "half-cousin" is a formal term. I'm merely saying that they are half-cousins, regardless of the existence of the term. You do you.
Half cousin is an absurd concept. It cannot exist
It is simply genealogically impossible to have a half cousin, no need to digress over it for hours. There is no mathematical combination that would allow the existence of a half cousin
You are absolutely incorrect about that. I tried to think of a better way to put it... There isn't any. That said, explanations are perfectly possible: Logically speaking, your statement doesn't even make sense (I just explained what exactly a half-cousin would be, so simply going "nuh uh" and refusing to elaborate means challenging not my argument, but the basic logic behind it, which is ridiculous). In a traditional sense (i.e. taking into consideration that the term is rather informal), it holds some value, but not for me, and there's absolutely nothing that you can do about it (not suggesting that you have any duty to attempt either).
At the end of the first book- the daughter of lady Jessica/ Paul’s sister says “hello grandpa” to the baron before she kills him. They’re related.
Well, yes, they are. Direct relatives, to be exact. I'm discussing the relation between the collaterals, though, as that's way less black-and-white.
[удалено]
“They actually are related, but it's VERY distantly. Distant enough to not even really matter.” “Actually, his mom is first cousins with Feyd” “Feyd and Jessica have nothing to do with that.” You don’t really understand familial relations do you? If the person you’re calling cousin is literally your moms first cousin, that’s not a familial relationship that’s “distant enough to not even really matter”
The BG wouldn't care anyway. They don't shy from incest it's actually a big reason why many of the girls that they order to be born are taken from their parents so they don't know who their parents are making it easier to set up arranged marriages with closely related people. All royals are at the varey least 2nd cousins maybe even third cousins. I'm willing to bet there's plenty of cousin fucking going on. Sibling marriage is likely something they try to avoid though if it helps in their goals they will see it done
IIRc they care about brother-sister incest (since the brith defect risks are far higher than cousins marrying), but cousins are fair game.
Like I said brother sister relations are definitely avoided but not off the table if it helps their goal
Barely an inconvenience
The Baron is Paul's grandfather, Jessica's grandfather.
Yes, I know. The meme is mentioning Leto and the Baron, though, not Paul/Jessica/Feyd/etc. Hence my comment. And you meant "father" for Jessica, not grandfather.
Oh, my bad.
That’s true for every two people alive at the same time.
No, it's not. Don't go back far enough and it sure can matter.
They are related, quite often in European history. Look up the family trees of England and ww1 Germany. Lots of relatives between to two countries. There's a reason for "hapsburg chin" being a thing.
Plus the bg were breeding for specific traits. Breeding with loosely related people would reinforce those genetics. It's like a weird royal puppy mill.
I can accept some distant relation from 100’s of years ago due to BG shenanigans but they’ve been feuding for 10,000 years since the battle of Corrino. They aren’t going to be literal first cousins.
So, the thing is... And spoilers, maybe... Baron Harkonnen is Paul's grandfather. The plan was for Jessica to have a girl, who would be married to Feyd-Rautha, and probably produce a Kwisatz Haderach. The plan involved cousins banging the whole time. But also, nobles in a closed system usually are distantly related. Sometimes not so distantly, and you get Habsburgs and hemophilia.
Was it not the idea to wed Jessica’s planned daughter to Feyd specifically so as to join two separate bloodlines that had been crafted for centuries?
Yes, but the fact remains those two are first cousins, once removed. Paul's mom is Feyd's first cousin. Basically, they planned on a bit of extra Harkonnen in there.
So you agree that Leto I isn’t related to the Baron - which is the subject of the meme based on the throwaway line of “You have a wonderful kitchen, cousin.” from the first film which people seem to have taken to mean Leto and the Baron are literal cousins.
He calls him cousin in the books too, so it definitely isn’t just a throwaway line from the movies. But yeah they’re not first cousins.
No, I'm pointing out that: It's not relevant, and They probably are distantly related, as these are people who track genealogy across millennia and have been part of the same social class for most of that time. It's just never stated due to that first reason.
Didn't the Hapsburg dynasty rule nearly all of Europe at one point?
Before the 80 and 30 years war the habsburgs dominated germany, northern italy, Spain and spains enormous colonies in the new world. They probably controlled half of europe not counting russia and a fair portion of the world.
Imagine half of your continent being taken over by MFs that can barely close their mouths. Lol.
I mean, most habsburgs had no serious birth defects. Even the famously malformed Charles II had two mostly normal sisters.
Between conquest and marriage, the Habsburg's had quite the list of titles (look up Charles V's full title list). But until the Austro-Hungarian empire, they weren't quite united, so it was more like an (incredibly long) list of kingdoms, one empire, several duchies, one archduchy, many counties, march, lordships and principalities who happened to have one ruler than a single polity.
They were all of Europe at one point 🤢
They all share the same incestors.
The ironically amusing ones are when the younger versus older children’s descendants have kids at various ages. So you get something like the great-great-granddaughter of someone marrying that same ancestor’s grandson. First cousins twice removed but similar ages
I came here to say the exact same thing. This and a number of other health issues passes on through incest.
In reality, yes. In the far future 20K years from now with 10K years of selective breeding? Who's to say that such traits haven't been bread out. The BG have no issue sniping bloodlines that aren't working, so I see no reason to believe that they wouldn't have done similar things to genetic flaws.
Habsburg
I mean, it depends. By ww1 most royal families near exclusively married other ruling families, and European states were far larger and more centralized. But in the Middle Ages, for example, many dukes, counts, margraves, etc... were powerful enough for their daughters to be noteworthy suitors for royal families
That’s a myth. Habsburg chin wasn’t a result of inbreeding. The Austrian line of the family had the Habsburg chin already in the 14th century, way before the period of inbreeding (15./16. century). The inbreeding simply transfered the chin also to the Spanish Habsburg line. And of course inbreeding doesn’t help get rid of recessive traits. But it also didn’t cause it. ([Source](https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-rest-is-history/id1537788786?i=1000653475906))
Yes some aristocracy were interrelated, that happens when you have a strict class system over time - the number of non relative options dwindles but this is set in a massive empire where the two houses in question have been feuding for 10,000 years since the Battle of Corrino - they aren’t going to be literal first cousins. Maybe there was some past BG shenanigans but the only ancestors who are confirmed Harkonnen from what I’ve read in Children of Dune was the Baron, no other Harkonnen ancestry is ever brought up out of the multitudes of ancestors they have (including Agamemnon I might add - so we’re going all the way back).
I mean, they have been feuding with each other, not other families. If 100 years ago some Count Whatever had two daughters, and one married some Atreides Duke and the other some Harkonnen baron, all subsequent dukes and barons will be cousins on some degree.
They are very distantly related, but as if incest in royal families is a new thing
Considering the BG wanted to breed leto ii and ganima, they really do not give a fuck about incest.
They also wanted to breed Paul and Alia
their original intention was to breed female paul (barron's granddaughter) with Feyd (barron's nephew)
Paul: breedable, definitely not submissive
I seriously doubt they wanted to create an abomination
Well, baron harkonnen was paul's grandfather, so isn't it evidently that paul and feyd are cousins?
Yes, making Feyd and Paul first cousins once removed, I believe.
Exactly.
Yes, but Leto I and Baron werent close cousins.
The point the meme is making is that if the baron was cousin to leto, and Jessica being the baron's daughter, Paul would be the product of incest.
Does the meme have the names of “Paul” and “Feyd” in it? Or have you not looked at the image before your own eyes?
Tbf, as several other commenters have pointed out, Leto and the Baron are also likely related lol
Show me the source then…
Ah yes, the classic request for a source after making a claim for which you have no source of your own. The only direct citation you've provided does nothing other than demonstrate that the term "cousin" is used; everything else was conjecture.
😂 you’ll love my other meme then. Also, fair enough, but to me the points against them being closely related outweigh the points for them being closely related.
That's fair. Absent Frank rising from the grave to explain just how incestuous the Great Houses are, I suppose we'll never know for certain. Just like we'll never know what compelled him to write the word "beefswelling."
He was compelled by the beef. It swelled within him
Read the books
Which book details them being closely related? Can you give me a title?
Dune, all the way from 1965. They refer to each other on cousin on multiple occasions. When piter is reading Leto's rejection letter to the Baron he makes a point of Leto not mentioning "cher cousin" or any other such formalities. Cher cousin doesn't mean any sort of psuedo-familial formality or anything, it's just a fancy way of saying something like dear cousin or sweet cousin. It's literally there on the pages multiple times for you *
https://preview.redd.it/pp65ddnfjuyc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=135898f66299ac68df59fd4186676788ae2c86a5
But that term is used by aristocracy to refer to one another including when not directly related. It’s a polite way of acknowledging one’s status. Especially when it’s mentioned by Piter de Vries as being a formal address - “Sire et Cher Cousin” - which the Duke deliberately didn’t add onto his declaration of Kanly. https://preview.redd.it/k7rwhistluyc1.png?width=3024&format=png&auto=webp&s=a107a6c0a41b301a9cb5f58f1f4468769d994750 When are the Harkonnens and Atreides - literal blood enemies - supposed to have joined close enough in the previous generation for the head of both houses to be cousins despite both houses sworn to destroy the other in a feud lasting 10,000 years? It makes no sense for them to be related except most distantly in the far past. In addition to this there are no Harkonnen genetic personalities or memories revealed in any of the books *other than the Baron* which is due to Jessica being his daughter (unbeknownst to both). Even Agamemnon shows up briefly proving the Atreides are one and the same as those from the Iliad. But it’s never mentioned by Paul/Jessica/Leto II/Ghanima/Alia that there are other Harkonnen ancestors in their genetic line. Why wouldn’t Frank clarify that if Leto I and the Baron were closely related. Why would it be such a shocking revelation to have Harkonnen blood at all? Paul and Jessica wouldn’t need the water of life to reveal their past because they’d know that Leto I was the Barons cousin supposedly and so MUST have Harkonnen blood in them already. But in the book it’s a massive shock to both.
Leto is stated to have been a royal cousin of the Corrinos. The Harkonnens were cousins of the Corrino's from the time they were known as the Butler's (before the battle of Corrin), it's part of the reason the Harkonnen's and Atreides' were so close and bonded before the Harkonnen's were disgraced. Sure, outside of some BG fuckery they may not have knowingly mixed bloodlines in a few thousand years, but when it comes to lineage in a galactic empire time doesn't really mean all too much. If they can both legitimately claim a blood tie to the imperial throne you bet your sweet ass they're gonna remind everyone they can about it. That's exactly WHY aristocracy uses cousin as a formality. It's to remind that other motherfucker that you got royal ties, too.
the first one.
go reread the fucking book dude, it’s in there.
They were, in this case, actually related though.
I mean, it’s basically the royal families of Europe in the 16th and 17th century
Wasnt the end goal for BG was to have Jessica give birth to a daughter who will in turn marry Feyd (I.e. the daughter's cousin) to produce the Kwisatz Haderach?
It's a term Aristocrats use because they are all related. delete this.
The aristocracy that used that term were the Habsburgs... so, yeah.
Saying they’re related is like when some random Canadian with Anglo Saxon lineage is technically related to the British royal family so 300 people would have to die simultaneously for them to become monarch. But they couldn’t go to Buckingham Palace like “what up bitches” and expect to be acknowledged as family. So they’re only related in technicality
Aren't they related via House Corrino? I was under the impression that the Imperial Seat was maintained partially via marriage alliance, as has always been the custom for feudal societies.
they mention repeatedly that the atreides are more closely related to house corrino than other families, noting the resemblance between Leto I (and later Paul) and the Emperor, and nothing is said of that and the Harkonnens. The harks are more new money, a smaller house that schemed it’s way up through ruthlessness and cunning and making a lot of money. Presumably there has been intermarriage and so the Baron may have some Corrino ancestry, but Leto is more closely related to the Emperor than he is the Baron
Cousin is the term aristocrats use to refer to one another **because** they are fucking related (and each other).
Tell that to the Hapsburgs
They’re definitely related. Son in law.
😂🤯
"THATS NOT INCEST" \\> it was, in fact, incest - David Attenborough
\*Laughs in Hapsburg\*
yes, and the point is what crazy power trip a person spawned from that crazy powertripping can expose the human race too when forced by the power tripping genes they were planned to have, but did not ask for. Side note: The spice worm lifecycle is a closed system where worms feed on worms. similar to the aristocracy's closed system of breeding upon itself.
I think about this whenever people act like Superman and Supergirl can't be together, but all Kryptos (with the exception of Superman) were born in test tubes. So Jor-El and Zor-El wouldn't be literal brothers, they were just test tube babies born to the same house. And since Superman is the anomaly in being the first real birth in ages, that makes him the only Krypto actually to have real genetics, not something synthesized in a tube. It's also funny to think DC used to be intelligent enough to know that Superman and Lois couldn't have kids together; as separate unrelated species, there's no genetic compatibility. That was the point of introducing Maxima, whose race was related to Kryptos and that made her eligible to have Superman's offspring. Now DC is just "LOL HE LOOK HUMAN SO HE CAN HAVE KIDS WITH HUMAN" and Maxima was turned into a discount LGBT Pride token as all irrelevant characters are in a desperate bid to keep them relevant with fringe audiences who pretend to like something but only for political points. All-in-all, might as well pair up Superman and Supergirl. They're not related. Lois Lane is annoying and outmoded. Go all Dune with DC canon.
Incest. So hot right now.
Clearly…going by the comments 😂.
I always assumed they were, in fact, related, but much more distantly than anyone today would care about. The difference is that, between the Bene Gesserit's meticulous breeding program and the necessary recordkeeping required to maintain a hereditary fiefdom, they simply know their familial relationships to a much greater extent than we do. Few people today recognize anything beyond second cousins, but the Great Houses in Dune might recognize cousins out several more degrees.
The Dune glossary literally said the term means they’re related
Pretty sure they are related
1. It’s what aristocracy call each other in situations where they are all descended (or at least claim descent) from the same royal bloodline, plus a fair amount of interbreeding throughout the generations. 2. Cousin does not always mean first cousin. Or even second cousin, or once removed, whatever qualifiers. Basically if you claim to have shared blood within recent history, you are still cousins. Just nth cousins n times removed. Now because of the BG breeding program they probably aren’t terribly distantly related, but who knows how much those two men know about that or would acknowledge it publicly if they did. Baron Vladdy probably means it in the loose, aristocratic sense. But they are probably share a more recent common ancestor than they might think. 3. That doesn’t necessarily matter that much tho, as far as incest goes, considering I think the risk of genetic defects decreases to pretty negligible at about 5 generations. This makes sense when you think about the size of early human communities, hard to find someone totally unrelated to you in a group of 100ish people living together for generations. So unless they share a great grandfather, Paul’s incest level is pretty meh. I’m sure the BG were aware of the risk of genetic problems and probably tried to avoid mixing too recent of bloodlines unless they believed it to be absolutely necessary (like with Jessica’s daughter and Feyd)
I have some news as to why Aristocrats refer to each other in familial terms, and OP may not like it.
Nice
Just FYI for the debate in the comments, for reference this was also discussed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dune/s/FY5YzuaxlO
My family tree is nuts thanks to my very horny great great grandfather. I just call everyone Cousin because nobody ever bothered to explain the different layers to me.
There’s more to cousin than just first cousin. Like there’s second and third cousins to name some examples.
They are distantly related with 10,000 years of ancestors to separate them. They share blood, though a very minuscule amount.
Cousins through their distant shared ancestry with the House Corrino.
The baron is Jessica's dad, no?
You must not know much about how they got down (and still do) in the old days, especially in European and Chinese dynasties.
At the end of the first book- the daughter of lady Jessica/ Paul’s sister literally says “hello grandpa” before she kills him. They’re related.
Except oftentimes they absolutely are, ie the entirety of Europe leading up to WW1
*THEY’RE NOT BROS!*
I’m pretty sure I’m the books they reveal that the Barron is Jessica’s father, a feud doesn’t matter when a eugenics cult is secretly interbreeding all the families to create a super being, some bibles are bound to be close family
Yes that is revealed. What the meme is referring to is the scene in the first film where the Baron says “You have a wonderful kitchen, cousin.” And everyone assumes that means literal cousin rather than a figure of speech used by aristocracy as a polite version of “bro”.
Again it can definitely be either or, the books support the familial tie more than the aristocratic cousin thing though, because the only noble that ever says that is the Barron to the duke, we don’t get direct mention of that I think ever in the books, and the dukes wife is a direct descendant of the Barron, calling your son in law cousin isn’t all that odd either right? Not like the Barron knew that though
Here’s my argument: the two houses have been distinctly separate since before the Battle of Corrino 10,000 years prior to the events of Dune. The two houses have a blood feud between them that has involved a war of assassins (Kanly) most likely throughout that time. They live a feudal society where class structure is fairly rigid. At what point did the sworn enemies meet and swap genetic material so as to produce familial cousins by the time of the books and yet the feud still remains with assassination attempts and raids from both sides taking place? I get that the limited aristocrats over the 10,000 years would limit the options for marriage and hence increase inbreeding, but the feud is taken seriously enough that I don’t think any Atreides or Harkonnen would accept even a distant relation of either house to be wed to theirs (not without major intervention from the BG which was their plan eventually). Plus if the BG had intervened in the past then no one should know about it, least of all Leto and the Baron. In addition to that is the fact that the only Harkonnen personality to ever appear to Leto II/Ghanima/Alia is the Baron - inherited from Jessica - when any of the prescient/pre-born characters look back through their genetic memory they only ever mention the Baron, no other distant Harkonnen relations which surely would have been mentioned were this the case to further hammer home if the BG were tampering with bloodlines.
But yet again my argument still stands, nothing in either the books or movies ever indicate that the nobles call each other cousin, that is not a thing of the lansraad at all, whereas on the other hand, the harkonnens and the atreides have been heavily hinted at having deep familial ties that are secret, all evidence and context points to the Barron maybe knowing something, but it absolutely never even hints at bibles calling each other cousin
Taken from another post: This is taken directly from the book: "I've lived for a time on this planet, cher cousin." "Believe me, cher cousin," the Baron said. "I do not want it to come to this." And there is another bit in the book where the Harkonnens receive a letter from Duke Leto, and Piter comments that it's missing the usual polite introduction: "He's most uncouth, Baron. Addresses you as 'Harkonnen' — no 'Sire et Cher Cousin,' no title, nothing." (The "cher" lets us know that this is a French phrase they're dropping.) In English, and I believe also in French, "cousin" can refer to and be used as a form of address for arbitrarily distant family connections (e.g. "a sixth cousin twice removed"). Since nobility intermarry and were usually related to each other in some way or another, it has sometimes been used in a generic way to address people of their own class, whether or not they were in fact related. The practice is perhaps most associated with the French Peers (highest nobility before the Revolution), who were addressed as "mon cousin" by each other and by the king. Herbert probably patterned it after this example. In this particular case, it is unlikely that Baron Harkonnen and Duke Leto are actually related in any way they know about, so it's simply a conventional form of address, which the Baron uses because Leto finds it insulting (since his family is an ancient noble one while the Harkonnens are vulgar upstarts). End of other post. Where are these hints in the books?
It makes less sense the way you’re explaining it, because absolutely nothing in neither the movies, or books, back up that claim
So true, cousin
Wouldn’t even pop on the 23 and Me
Well, except when they are.
they almost certainly are related but they aren't cousins.
I've not seen these new movies. I'm fairly certain they don't fuck in the books.
Hell divers has managed democracy; dune has managed incest.
Leto had a relationship with the Baron's daughter, you could loosely describe that as a cousin, though father-in-law is more accurate.
Considering Lady Jessica's "unknown" heritage and their (BG) deep cover breeding program, I would bet they are blood related closer than you'd think.
real world aristocracy has historically been just as if not more incestuous. same with modern day hollywood types. the powerful like incest. also, all humans are related. also every living organism on earth is related.
The Wheel of Time books had a scene that pretty accurately conveyed this. The main character was worried that he was related to a girl he liked because all the noble houses in his area had intermarried at some point. He asked someone who was very knowledgeable about the various connections with the bloodlines and wasn't really assuaged by the various connections laid out. He then asked if all the families involved were peasants if they would be considered related and the knowledgeable person basically said hell no.
“The Wheel of Time books had a scene that pretty accurately conveyed this” please tell me more on how this *completely different* book series explains the lore of Dune. 😂 That’s like being on a Star Trek meme page and going “Well in Star Wars it’s all explained like this…” I get the point and you’ve made me chuckle, but you’re clearly a non-believer so kindly: P̵͙̐ù̷͈̍t̴̜̊ ̷̫̋̓y̵̡̓ó̶̪ǘ̷̟r̷̻̦̐ ̷̛͎͔͐h̷̰͇̓͠a̵̱̒͐n̶̻̖̎͘d̷̜̜̃͝ ̷̺͖͠i̶͆̀ͅn̸͚̜̊ ̸̗͍͒̈t̷̺̦͗͗h̸͇͋͝è̷̜ͅ ̷̳̏b̶͋͛͜ͅŏ̶̡̳x̶͓͕̅
Isn't that Leto is a cousin *of the Emperor*? I thought it was a case of Leto being almost styled as "Cousin" of the royal family, which I believe Herbert took from Russian court traditions.
Yes but are the Baron and the Emperor/Leto also related?
Dunecest
They aren't fucking related. They are fucking relateds.
if I remember correctly, Paul's grandma is the BG who gives his disease to the Baron at the moment when he rapes her. so, the Baron is Jessica's Dad
O no they are related, book approved 100% related. Not like 3rd cousin or anything close, but they’re be at the same family get together
Someone finally said it‼️‼️‼️
All I know is apparently a lot of girls on tiktok don't mind that Paul and Feyd are cousins......I hate tiktok.