Heretics of Dune

Miles Teg is the former Supreme Bashar for the Bene Gesserit who returns from retirement to serve as Weapons Master for the young Duncan ghola. Teg is a direct descendent of Ghanima Atreides, Leto II’s twin sister, and shares an uncanny resemblance to Duke Leto I. He is over two meters tall and is a “regal figure” at 296 years old. Teg does not consume spice to lengthen his life span and is naturally fit at his age (the average lifespan is 300 standard years). He is the son of Janet Roxbrough, a Reverend Mother and descendent of Leto II’s Fish Speakers, and Loschy Teg, a minor official in the CHOAM trade conglomerate. Teg’s “[s]quare shoulders” represents dependability, and his belt buckle, converted from a sunburst medallion awarded to him during his retirement ceremony, represents his utilitarianism. Teg epitomizes fairness, integrity, and equilibrium, and Taraza nicknames him “Old Reliability.”

Like Odrade, Teg exhibits remarkable empathy, and Taraza values his ability to “really feel things the way the enemy feels them” (162). Teg possesses a combination of Mentat reasoning and his mother’s “heretical” training which permits him to see beyond the Bene Gesserit’s masks. He also embodies the loftier principles of House Atreides which holds that great leadership is evident in the people’s genuine support. He believes that verdicts must be perceived as fair to all parties involved, for “[t]he people upon whom judgment was passed must feel the fairness of it” (48). 

Taraza compliments his skills at “argu[ing] both sides of an issue with equal force” and states, “[W]hen you’re in that mental frame there is no enemy for you” (161, 162). Despite being a celebrated military leader, Teg is no warmonger and believes “[i]f we cannot adjust our differences peacefully we are less than human” (151). He is skeptical of law and justice, as he sees how those in power can manipulate these terms. 

Teg’s sense of balance and fairness extends to his relationship with nature. He detests the use of chairdogs and other living creatures converted into furniture and prefers “solid furniture,” a symbol of dependability. He lives a life of retirement farming and is attuned to his natural surroundings, preferring “woolens and cotton” to synthetic fibers (504). His intimate appreciation of the natural world symbolizes his modesty and incorruptibility.

Alma Mavis Taraza is the Reverend Mother Superior, the highest level of authority in the Bene Gesserit. She is also the most cryptic character who reveals little about her personal feelings or her grand design with the ghola project. Taraza represents impenetrability, discipline, and melancholy, as much of her genuine affections are repressed and redirected into a fortified commitment to the Bene Gesserit’s survival. She is described as having “a suave facial mask from which little escaped to betray her true emotions” (17). The novel’s main protagonists, Teg and Odrade, are the only two characters to interact with Taraza personally and elicit her tacit approval of their heretical behavior. Even though Taraza remains locked in her position as the staunch Bene Gesserit leader, she is confident that Teg and Odrade can achieve the change required to ensure Bene Gesserit’s survival. 

Taraza’s friendship with Odrade represents a window of affection that Taraza closed since becoming the Mother Superior. Taraza is slightly older than Odrade and was her mentor when they were young. In contrast to Odrade’s passionate mouth that requires bridling, “Taraza’s mouth opened minimally when she spoke: superb control of movement” (17). The imagery of terseness represents the precision of Taraza’s self-discipline and reliance on secrecy. However, Odrade is the only one to perceive the rage behind Taraza’s imposing figure, an anger rooted in her resentment and lack of agency in prioritizing the organization over her welfare. The two women’s friendship offers a glimpse into Taraza’s hidden sentiments and provides a sympathetic depiction of her as someone who has sacrificed her happiness to the Bene Gesserit cause. 

At the novel’s end, Taraza considers herself the victor and thinks to herself “I have won!” (631) when she is fatally injured. The brutality of her violent death, in which she is literally cut in half, demonstrates Taraza’s torn obligations and steely resolve to protect the Bene Gesserit. She comments, “[T]he pain was great. Not as great as the spice agony, though” (631). Taraza compares the physical pain of her wounds as no match for the all-encompassing pains of being a Reverend Mother. She transfers her memories to Odrade before dying, and the act is a final consolation for the leader who gave up her autonomy to serve the Sisterhood. Taraza reunites with her best friend as part of Odrade’s Other Memories.

Duncan Idaho is the 12th ghola in the Bene Gesserit’s ghola project and the only character to appear in all six of the Dune Chronicles novels by Frank Herbert. He is about 12 years old at the start of this novel and approximately 16 years old by the end. Duncan functions much like Paul Atreides did in the first book. He is meticulously trained as a child in the military and Bene Gesserit arts, possesses an unknown gift that is awakened, and challenges the way the Bene Gesserit uses him. Because of his access to his original memories, Duncan strongly represents the ideals of House Atreides under Duke Leto I such as honor, service, and protection. As a loyal Swordmaster, the original Duncan sacrificed his life to save Paul and Jessica Atreides, and his countless returns as a ghola throughout the millennia function as a test of whether such values have become corrupted or outdated. As in the other novels, Duncan also functions as a symbol of idealized male virility. He is the antidote to the fear of emasculation, and his sexual superiority over Murbella is an uncritical glorification of hypermasculinity. 

Duncan is also a symbol of humanity, and his manufactured origins as a ghola allow the novel to explore the ways different characters define what it means to be human. To Schwangyu, Duncan is a liability and a thing, and she believes “[t]here was not one hint that the child [...] shared a common humanity” (12). Likewise, Reverend Mother Bellonda considers what the Tleilaux do with their tanks to “make monsters.” In contrast, Teg is sympathetic to the ghola’s condition and recognizes that the “ghola psyche, shattered and forced to reassemble, was always psychologically scarred” (330). Teg feels his task in awakening Duncan to his memories is “distasteful” and “dirty,” and he questions whether their exploitation of a ghola’s life is ethical. Like Teg, Odrade acknowledges that a “ghola’s awakening must be a shattering experience [...] Only the ones with enormous mental resilience would survive” (518). Both Teg and Odrade treat Duncan as a human with natural rights, and they regard Bene Gesserit’s practice of raising gholas as akin to abuse and inflicting trauma.

Sheeana Brugh is a native Rakian who lost her family and entire village during a sandworm attack when she was eight. She is of Fremen heritage and is a descendant of Siona Atreides. She has brown eyes, olive skin, and “[r]eddish sun streaks [...] in her hair. [...] She looked like the Fremen portraits” (86). Sheeana is 14 when Odrade takes over her training to become a Reverend Mother one day. Sheeana functions as a younger version of Darwi and invokes Darwi’s childhood memories and experiences of love and loss. Sheeana represents curiosity, youthful freedom, and the dangers of indoctrination. She often asks questions to the priests, Odrade, and even the worms to understand the world and her role in it. The priest Dromind considers her queries “the most childish questions” (124), but Sheeana’s desire to understand who “good” and “bad” people are points to an investment in ethics that have long been lost in the adult world. Her persistent questions are a healthy contrast to the adult members of the Bene Gesserit who accept orders without question or full comprehension. 

Sheeana also represents the manipulations of the Missionaria Protectiva to create gods and messiahs in the religious imagination to control populations. Sheeana is such a fictive “Holy Child,” and her chance emergence from the desert, as if somehow birthed from the sand, is upheld as part of her divine origins. Sheeana keeps it a secret that she is from a neighboring poor village destroyed by a sandworm. 

Sheeana is a religious ploy that the Bene Gesserit exploit, and the Sisterhood uses her cult following to gain the upper hand in their dealings with the Tleilaxu. Sheeana’s ability to communicate with the worms is not the “holy event” that the Rakian priests and Waff believe it to be. Instead, Odrade recognizes that Sheeana’s seemingly miraculous skills are rooted in her ability to perform a version of the Fremen’s sandwalk, an ancient technique that has evolved from a movement to evade the worm into a dance that summons it. Sheeana’s ability to “dance a worm” continues her cultural heritage and genetic lineage (624). She can control the worms due to her Fremen survival tactics in the desert and the “wild talent” of being an Atreides descendant who can communicate with the pearl of Leto’s consciousness in the worms. Thus, Sheeana represents tradition, heritage, and the credulity of religious devotion.

Lucilla is the young Reverend Mother sent to sexually imprint the Duncan ghola. Lucilla is described as “a young Odrade” due to her physical resemblance to Darwi Odrade and their shared Atreides lineage as descendants of Siona (10). Lucilla was bred for her “motherly disposition” and relies on the Other Memories of Jessica Atreides to guide her decisions. Both Odrade and Lucilla share a physical resemblance to Lady Jessica. In their surrogate mother-son relationships with Duncan, they each mirror Jessica’s struggle to raise Paul in service of the Bene Gesserit and for his welfare. 

Lucilla represents compassion, loyalty, and aspiration, and like Odrade and Teg, she is sympathetic to the ghola’s predicament. She finds Schwangyu’s “coldly impersonal” treatment of Duncan offensive and empathizes with the boy’s loneliness and hatred of them. Yet, Lucilla is adamant about completing her mission to imprint him and climb the ranks of the Bene Gesserit. When she first meets Schwangyu at the Gammu Keep, she thinks, “[P]erhaps I will be a power in the Bene Gesserit as well” (2). Teg also remarks on her aspiration to earn the title “Lady” before her name, an aristocratic practice from the Major Houses of the Old Imperium that has recently been revived. Lucilla begins the novel as a young Reverend Mother ambitious for accolades, but in her experiences with Duncan and Teg, Lucilla becomes a “heretic” by questioning her treatment as an “expendable” pawn in Taraza’s designs. She also realizes in Gammu that the Sisterhood’s training has insulated her from the real world and deprived her of rich and genuine emotions. Lucilla’s character highlights how the Bene Gesserit have become static and irrelevant, and like Duncan, Lucilla experiences her awakening to her memories of being held and loved.

Tylwyth Waff is the Master of Masters in the Tleilaxu secret council of leaders. His physical features highlight the Tleilaxu talent for deception, as his “[e]yes, hair, and skin were shades of gray, all a stage for the oval face with its tiny mouth and line of sharp teeth” (65). The Tleilaxus’ ability to “stage” their appearance signifies their duplicity, and they align themselves with the Honored Matres and the Bene Gesserit while betraying both. Waff represents opportunism and religious gullibility, as Taraza and Odrade easily manipulate his secret faith and reverence of Sheeana to control his actions. Waff and the other nine Tleilaxu Masters are gholas who have been reincarnating themselves over the millennia in an immortal and extreme oligarchy. Their serial regeneration functions as a contrast to the genetic diversity of the Scattering and the novel’s theme of the importance of diversity and change.