#also sideyes at the framing of religious fanaticism as southern in an american movie -- the books never say this!

[strikeslip]

When considering the purpose of Kynes in the book, I think it's also important to look at Dune's space feudalism. This feudalism isn't just an excuse for dukes and barons and knife fights, it's also part and parcel with the Bene Gesserit human breeding project, and the greater terrible purpose that Frank Herbert puts above all intentional actions within the book. It's not something you get away from just by stepping into the desert.

The Emperor sits atop Dune's feudal structure, and he sits there because of Salusa Secundus and the Sardukar it produces. House Corrino is said to originate from Salusa Secundus as well. And then repeatedly, we see parallels and connections drawn between Salusa Secundus and Arrakis. I don't just mean that both planets are put forward as a source of the highest possible quality of military recruits, because of their harsh conditions, but also that the Emperor goes about dressed as a Sardukar, which I would argue parallels Paul acting as a Fremen. In the early novel, Duke Leto says of the general idea of a military cult, while speaking of the Sardukar, "It can be done. It has been done on many worlds in many times." He then goes on to point out the Fremen are ripe for this. He doesn't say that the Kynes family are the ones doing this to the Fremen at the time, in part because he doesn't know about Liet and in part because the Kynes family is too weak to be directly militant, but...

In a feudal structure like the faufreluches of Dune, you join a power structure through blood ties. We're not surprised when Paul marries Irulan for the imperial title. To understand the purpose of the Kynes family, you need to recognize that Chani is not just a love match-- as Liet-Kynes' daughter and Stilgar's niece, she's the other half of Paul's power structure. Marrying into the family of the ecologist prophets is part of his legitimacy. But even that is too seemingly-planned to address how the terrible purpose comes into it all, which brings me to the other subtle connection between the Fremen and the Sardukar.

From the same indices that bring us the story of Pardot Kynes, we know that the Fremen are refugees, and moreover, that Fremen traditions say they were slaves on Salusa Secundus for nine generations. We know that House Corrino came from Salusa Secundus and that Duke Leto was a distaff cousin to House Corrino and therefore may also trace his ancestry back to that hell planet. And when Jessica and Stilgar speak after their first encounter in the desert (in a scene that every film cuts and I wish they kept), there's this quote:

What is his ancestry? [Jessica] wondered. Whence comes such breeding? She said: "Stilgar, I underestimated you."

I'd argue this specific attention to Stilgar, Chani's uncle, and Liet-Kynes' brother, is not a coincidence. The feudalism and the breeding project and the terrible purpose are all linked, through Salusa Secundus. The Fremen are part of the wild card, which appendix three calls "the higher plan of which they [the Bene Gesserit] were completely unaware," and which we as readers can name as Paul's terrible purpose, the species-wide consciousness and drive to chaos. Leto II comes from this bloodline.

None of this empowers the Fremen, unless you consider putting the Sardukar on a level with them as a manipulated population to be empowerment. I don't think there's any getting away from the powerlessness that Frank Herbert thrusts upon his characters, except possibly by rewriting the story, which the current films are certainly attempting to do. But Liet-Kynes isn't a random quasi-king figure, and honestly, I'd have taken Kynes considering betraying the Atreides until the Harkonnens forced his hand (a far more viable consideration when you consider him a proto-House-Corrino) and Stilgar's political acumen and status in the books over the clueless Fremen 'southern' fanaticism and lampshading of the white savior plot in the current movies any day.

We lost the tragedy of "I have seen a friend become a worshipper," and we lost Stilgar saying he could absolutely kill Paul if Paul was just another member of the sietch and not also a religious figure, and we lost Hannah going from keeping Paul's coffee service to becoming one of Stilgar's wives and Alia and Jessica's ally. You can't fit all that and the subtle historical lines of descent and the feudalism in a movie and have it be comprehensible to a modern audience (or under five hours, probably). But it's really easy to see how everyone misses the twist on Paul-as-savior when all the movie has to offer in return for what it has removed is complaints that get swept away in one speech, and even Chani walking away at the end can be framed as a romantic betrayal and not a political protest.

Paul Muad’dib Atreides is a really interesting deconstruction of the white saviour trope. But Liet-Kynes, and his father Pardot Kynes play the trope uncomfortably straight. Paul’s arrival seemingly empowers, but at the same time exploits the Fremen, it entangles them in a millenia-long-galaxy-wide imperial power struggle in which even Paul himself is just a pawn. It disrupts their own internal multi-generational project of terraforming parts of Arrakis and reaching paradise solely on their own terms.

So I think it undermines the narrative when we find out that the ambitious terraforming project didn’t actually originate from within Fremen culture and tradition, but from outside, from a scientifically literate off-planet ecologist who immediately understands the nature and possibilities of Arrakis better than the natives. Ugh. Kynes as a scientist-gone-native whose intelligence, wry humour and deep sense of justice allows him to be at home in two cultures right up until the moment when he’s ground to dust by the conflict between them would have been great character. Kynes as Liet, the secret quasi-king of the Fremen is a bad idea, especially with the Marty Stu-ish addition in the appendices that as a young man he killed a hundred warriors and became a sandrider. I would have loved the revelation that his father married a Fremen woman just to create a half-Fremen heir who could navigate both worlds and carry on his terraforming project, I’d love how well it fits with the themes of Bene Gesserit genetic/dynastic manipulations, if it didn’t seriously undermine Fremen agency, and imply that everything cool or smart the Fremen have done, including bribing the freaking Navigators’ Guild to help them hide half their civilisation from the Harkonnens, was an outsider’s idea.

(I like that the 2021 movie cast a black woman as Kynes, but I especially like that they made Kynes cooler but also less powerful, and added multiple brief scene implying that terraforming was an ancient goal and tradition of the Fremen, something that Kynes supported, but didn’t invent.)