You didn’t read them all, he is all that Paul could not be in the end of all that used to be Atreides. Just as we betrayed H. erectus, H. neanderthalis, Duncan endured because of Paul’s love and of course he betrays them as all children and heirs do their progenitors. In the Heretics, that is Duncan, not Paul, who woke in the null safe house. Paul is the desired heir of the eugenic line (the Mothers), Duncan is the bastard that upends it all (natural forces of desire, natural selection and striving). He is also what Leto II was working towards (both prescient and unique).
I believe you mean the Scifi series. They made those series before they decided to change their name to Syphilis.
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This is why I think the series lost its way. In my view, Leto II was all that Paul could not be, and the purpose of the Tyrant’s Golden Path was to free humanity from the curse of prescience much as the Butlerian jihad had freed it from the curse of machines that did their thinking for them.
To say that a prescient Duncan was the culmination of development is to miss the point that Leto II saw his omniscience as a boot stomping on the face of humanity. The purpose of the Golden Path was to make humanity a fountain of surprises. Only then could no death find all of humankind.
The first sequel (Dune Messiah) is so… simple… compared to the original. It’s relatively brief, linear, and really can only be interpreted one way. The complexity returns later in the series but I could never figure out how Herbert could have conceived of that particular follow-up. Took me a long time to read beyond the first sequel. Haven’t touched the Anderson novels.
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