All the factions in the Dune universe, explained
By Dan Selcke
The Dune universe, dreamed up by author Frank Herbert for his 1965 book Dune, is a vast and complicated place. The events of Dune are set thousands of years into our own future, after humanity fought and won and brutal war against thinking machines, spread out to populate planets orbiting distant stars, and divided itself into a number of factions, peoples and houses, all jockeying with each other for power in a cold, uncaring universe.
We met a lot of these factions in the two Dune movies from director Denis Villeneuve, but there are many more from Herbert's books that may yet turn up in future movies. Let's run down the lot of them and see if we can make sense of this strange future.
House Atreides
Let's start with the obvious: everyone knows the Atreides. This is the upstanding family at the center of Dune. In Dune: Part One, we meet Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), the good-natured leader who inspires loyalty in all who follow him. Then he dies brutally. In Dune: Part Two, his son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) gets revenge and becomes emperor of the galaxy. House Atreides is on the rise.
Not that it wasn't doing well before. House Atreides is one of several powerful families within the Dune universe, all of which serve under and in opposition to the emperor. Like the other great houses, House Atreides is ancient, having first risen to prominence during the Butlerian Jihad, a bloody war between man and machine, that wrapped up thousands of years before the events of Dune.
At the beginning of Dune, the Atreides hold sway over the forest planet of Caladan but are soon moved to the desert planet of Arrakis. They are known to be loyal, fair and brave, in direct opposition to their long-time rivals the Harkonnens.
House Harkonnen
Like the Atreides, the Harkonnens are an ancient family who came to power during the Butlerian Jihad, when a long-dead Atreides had a long-dead Harkonnen banished for cowardice following a decisive battle with the deadly thinking machines. The houses have been rivals ever since, which I remind you means they've been rivals for 10,000 years. In the future, our ability to hold a grudge will be much expanded.
If the Atreides are the prototypical heroes, then the Harkonnens are the prototypical villains: manipulative, bloodthirsty and cowardly. All of the Harkonnnens we meet are monsters, whether it's the megalomaniac Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), his violent nephew Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista) or his psychotic nephew Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler). Even their home planet of Giedi Prime is depicted as a washed out nightmare world shriveling under a black sun.
The Harkonnens are roundly defeated at the end of Dune: Part Two, but their lineage lives on through Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and her son Paul Atreides.
House Corrino
Members of House Corrino have served as emperors of the galaxy ever since the defeat of the thinking machines in the Butlerian Jihad. At the time of Dune, the emperor is Shaddam Corrino IV, played by Christopher Walken. We also meet his daughter Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), who will be a major character going forward.
While the Emperor obviously has a lot of power, it's not unlimited. We saw at the end of Dune: Part Two that Paul used his Fremen followers and his control of the spice to cow the Emperor into submission and replace him on the Golden Lion Throne. Even before that, the reason that Emperor Shaddam gave stewardship of Arrakis to House Atreides was because he feared House Atreides was gaining too much power, and wanted to lure them into a trap. To be an emperor is to always be looking over your shoulder for the knife in the back. That's a lesson Paul will learn in Dune: Part Three, which will be based on Frank Herbert's book Dune Messiah.
Sardaukar
The Sardaukar are a group of fanatical soldiers loyal to the the Padishah Emperors of House Corrino, and have long been crucial for those emperors to maintain their grip on the Imperium. They are trained in secret on the prison planet of Salusa Secundus, where the harsh conditions ensure that only the absolute strongest survive. At the time of Dune, the Sardaukar are thought to be the most fearsome military force in the galaxy, but then again, few had fought against the native Fremen people of Arrakis.
The Landsraad
The Landsraad is a political organization formed by all the great houses in the Imperium. Houses Atreides and Harkonnen are part of the Landsraad, as are other houses like House Fenring, which we encounter briefly in Dune: Part Two.
As I mentioned, while the Emperor is purportedly in charge of the galaxy, in a way he only rules at the pleasure of the great houses. With his Sardaukar and control on the spice trade, the Emperor has a lot of influence, but if the great houses combine forces, they can provide a check and keep the Emperor from overreaching. That's what the Landsraad is for.
The Landsraad shows up at the very end of Dune: Part Two, but no one names them as such. Paul is just told that "the other great houses" are in orbit around the planet Arrakis. That's the Landsraad, whether they use the word or not.
CHOAM
CHOAM, which stands for Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles, is a universal development corporation that controls the trading of all goods in the galaxy, from lumber to livestock to the precious spice melange. CHOAM is controlled by the Emperor and by the great houses, all of whom depend on its profits.
CHOAM represents the single biggest source of wealth in the galaxy, which makes it crucial to the operation of this outer space economy. There was no mention of CHOAM in Denis Villeneuve's Dune movies, maybe because tariffs and taxes aren't as interesting as sandworms and crysknifes, but it's important all the same.
The Spacing Guild
Another crucial organization not given much focus in the new Dune movies is the spacing guild, which controls interstellar travel and banking throughout the galaxy. While the Emperor and the the great houses control CHOAM, the spacing guild is independent and nominally apolitical, but their monopoly on space travel means they exert a huge influence over everything that happens in the galaxy. You can't sell goods if you can't get them from place to place, and you can't do that without the spacing guild.
Spacing guild navigators take huge amounts of the spice melange. This allows them limited prescience to the point where they can safely guide spaceships from one planet to the next, but it also morphs their bodies such that they can only exist floating in specialized tanks. No guild navigators showed up in the new Dune movies, but director David Lynch did feature them in his 1984 adaptation, as you can see above.
Smugglers
The smugglers aren't as formal an organization as any of the above, but they're legion and merit a mention. Trade is the lifeblood of the interstellar economy, but if you don't want to deal with CHOAM or the spacing guild or the great houses or the Emperor — and given how many rules they have in place, why would you? — then you want to hit up a smuggler. They can get around the authorities and get what you what you want, although the price may be higher on account of the danger involved, and there's risk of official reprisal.
After House Harkonnen hobbles House Atreides at the end of Dune: Part One, House Atreides retainer Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) joins up with smugglers mainly so he has an excuse to screw over the Harkonnens.
Bene Gesserit
The Bene Gesserit feature very prominently in the story of Dune, which is interesting because they're far more of a clandestine organization than most of the ones we've discussed so far. While CHOAM and the spacing guild operate above board, the Bene Gesserit — an organization of women who use the spice to deploy a number of nigh-supernatural abilities — prefer to work from the shadows. They serve as advisors to the leaders of great houses and even the Emperor, and are often so influential that they're said to be the power behind the thrones. They are engaged in a centuries-long breeding program designed to create the Kwisatz Haderach, a messianic being capable of great power whom the Bene Gesserit could control.
We know that messiah ended up being Paul Atreides, but because of a number of factors the Bene Gesserit did not account for, he was beyond their control. But the Bene Gesserit remain a powerful force nonetheless, a silent partner in nearly everything important that goes on in the galaxy.
Mentats
Like Bene Gesserit sisters, Mentats often serve as advisors to the most powerful people in the galaxy, but they're usually seen as far less sinister. Remember: everyone in the Dune unverise is living in the shadow of the Butlerian Jihad, where humanity only barely beat back the existential threat of thinking machines. Therefore, use of computers is forbidden on a moral, practical, and religious level. To compensate, Mentats are trained to be human computers, capable of analyzing and synthesizing large amounts of data and summarizing it for their masters.
The first Dune movie, we meet Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson), a good-hearted Mentat in service to House Atreides, and Piter De Vries (David Dastmalchian), a twisted Mentat in service to House Harkonnen. Mentats don't show up in Dune: Part Two, though, even though Thufir has more to do in the book.
Fremen
We're only now getting to the Fremen, the native inhabitants of the desert planet Arrakis. Like the Sardaukar, the Fremen have grown up in a harsh environment, which has turned them into strong warriors. They're also regularly exposed to the spice melange, which only exists on Arrakis, which helps to sharpen their senses. The difference is that while the Sardaukar are widely seen as the most powerful military force in the galaxy, not many people pay attention to the Fremen.
That's their mistake. Once the Fremen decide to follow Paul Atreides, who becomes an honorary member, Paul has no problem becoming the new emperor of the galaxy. That's how fearsome the Fremen are. So dangerous and fanatical are they that, after Paul becomes emperor, they set out into the universe to wage a brutal holy war against all those who don't believe in Paul's divinity, whether Paul wants them to or not.
Chani, Paul's Fremen paramour played by Zendaya, doesn't approve of this, but the Fremen leader Stilgar (Javiar Bardem) is all about it. We'll see more of the Fremen, and their ancestors, in future Dune movies.
Suk Doctors
In Dune: Part One, we meet Dr. Yueh (Chang Chen), a graduate of the Suk School. Suk doctors are considered the most reliable medical practitioners in the galaxy, mainly because they're conditioned to be literally incapable of causing harm to their patients. However, Baron Harkonnen is still able to turn Dr. Yueh into a spy inside House Atreides by abducting the doctor's wife, so thier conditioning is not absolute.
Tleilaxu
One faction we haven't met at all yet in Villeneuve's movies are the Bene Tleilax, also called the Tleilaxu. The Tleilaxu are genetically engineered humans who mostly keep to themselves. They can engineer clones of people, called gholas, as well as artificial body parts. Some Tleilaxu can even change their appearance to look like other people, which they use for spy craft. These individuals are called Face Dancers.
The Tleilaxu play an important role in Dune Messiah, the sequel book to Dune. If all goes well, we'll get to know them better in Dune: Part Three.
Ixians
We've talked about how computers are prohibited in the Dune universe. The people who come the closest the breaking this prohibitions are the Ixians, who live on the technologically advanced planet of Ix. They provide machinery to other parts of the Imperium, but are treated with mistrust because of the spectre of the Butlerian Jihad. In that way they're not unlike the Tleilaxu, who provide things people want even if those same people treat those who made those things as morally deranged.
Fish Speakers
Okay, now we're going to jump forward over a thousand years after the end of Dune to the time of God Emperor of Dune, the fourth book in Frank Herbert's series. At this time, the galaxy is ruled over by a seemingly immortal, half-human/half-sandworm god emperor. The Fish Speakers are his all-female army, as well as the priestesses of the religion that worships him.
This is when the Dune franchise starts getting really weird, and it wasn't exactly straightforward to begin with. Milennia after God Emperor of Dune, the descendants of the Fish Speakers are known as Rakian Priesthood, who keep the faith long after the God Emperor of Dune is gone.
Honored Matres
This late period is the setting for Frank Herbert's final two Dune books, Heretics of Dune and Chaperhouse: Dune. In this period, the Bene Gesserit have become the dominant power in the galaxy, but soon have to contend with a new threat: the Honored Matres, an offshoot of the Bene Gesserit who left known space over a thousands of years before, developed new powers, and came back.
The Honored Matres have lost some powers the Bene Gesserit used to have, but they've become faster, more capable fighters as well as developing new techniques designed to...sexually enslave men by giving them orgasms so powerful the men become addicted to them. I wonder if Frank Herbert was ever in therapy.
I told you things got weird. It's anyone's guess whether the Dune movies will ever reach this point.
Butlerians
We've mentioned the Butlerian Jihad several times already, so it's time to talk about the Butlerians, the religious fanatics who, in the wake of the war of man vs machine, brutally enforced the prohibition on thinking machines even as organizations like the Mentats and the Bene Gesserit were in their infancy.
The Butlerians mostly seem to have died out by the time of Dune, but some of their philosophy is passed down through the Orange Catholic Bible, one of the most important religious texts in the galaxy. Also, the upcoming Max TV show Dune: Prophecy sounds like it may be set in the aftermath of the Butlerian Jihad, so we may be getting to know the Butlerians pretty well.
Next. dune. All 23 Dune novels, laid out in chronological canon order. dark
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