#i know pauls final decision was retconned in children of dune but thats for another post

[asmalltooth]

Ah, now, Paul—we see the knife, now. Who knows where it might be shifted next?

— Duke Leto to Paul in Dune

For most of Messiah, Paul is the anti Duke Leto. Barely recognizable as his father's son: a prophet tyrant disconnected from his past and his people and hiding behind his own mystery. But the way Paul chooses the long walk into the desert, the way he chooses the vision that leads him into darkness, that's pure Leto.

That's the Duke Leto landing on Arrakis. The Duke Leto who sees the Harkonnen trap and walks into it.

Paul's final vision in Messiah is a cosmic trap and he knows it. He knows the limits of prescience better than anyone but he treats his vision as an absolute, horrified by the alternatives... the alternatives he has seen.

Duke Leto saw the alternatives too, when he took House Atreides to Arrakis.

He didn't challenge the Emperor and didn't go renegade. A known danger is better than an unknown one, that's what he tells his son.

We choose the knife we see.

In Messiah Paul knows there are alternatives, other futures, futures he hasn't seen yet. But he will not risk plunging into the unknown, facing the chaos of an unforeseeable future rather than the clarity of his vision. It takes a lot from him: sitting on his green throne of mourning he is just as tired and desperate and filled with death as Leto was on Arrakis. He becomes his father. He chooses the knife he sees.

Duke Leto is the unnamed ghost of Messiah: long dead, an old wound in Paul that will never heal, the memory of a love that makes a ghola cry and at last a name, a legacy passed down to another son. But all the way through he lives in Paul, reemerging in Paul's most desperate moments, and when Paul walks into the desert that's something else he leaves behind.

His father's legacy. His father's name. His father.

That too is part of his freedom.

Play us out, Irulan.

How do we approach the study of Muad’Dib’s father? [...] You see him there—a man snared by Destiny, a lonely figure with his light dimmed behind the glory of his son. Still, one must ask: What is the son but an extension of the father?

— Dune