#paul was entirely too human and letos was never really human maybe ill make another post about that

[wyrmwhispers]

On the idea of “is Paul lying about this being the best path” my interpretation is no, he's not. At the very least not purposefully lying, although it may not be the actual truth. And by that i mean that there's no future where all the Harkonnens die miserable painful deaths and then yippee the Fremen rule Arrakis and Paul is there living happily ever after with Chani, that he sees. but what i do think is true is that the path Paul chooses is the one that allows him to meet all his goals which, in relative order of priority I'll say are:

revenge on the harkonnens

keep the people he loves alive (jessica, chani, alia)

free the fremen from harkonnen control (maybe, if it's convenient or if he has time)

and the really shitty thing about this list is that number three is extremely convenient and helpful for number one but not in a good way and number one is really non-negotiable for him. Like from his perspective he needs revenge against the Harkonnens, that's why he joins the fedaykin because fighting against the Harkonnens like that feels like revenge. But the idea of taking it all the way to the top and getting revenge not just against the Harkonnens but also the emperor for killing his family and the entire imperium for standing by and doing nothing is too tempting for him to ignore. And he caveat on the second point is that the people he loves being happy isn't necessary just that they're alive. (*cough cough* Chani in the movies *cough cough*)

So i think that the future Paul picks, the narrow way through is the one that satisfies all those best and you'll notice that “do right by the oppressed indigenous people” and “don't murder 62 billion people” aren't really on there. not because he doesn't care about those but… he doesn't really in comparison to the aforementioned goals. Post-water of life, he sees "the best path through" where he gets everything he wants and sees the jihad as an acceptable price and reasons it as "inevitable" whether or not it actually was.

all of this means that yeah, to him there very well may only be one way and yeah the one that he chooses is the best one from his perspective even if you've read the books you'll know that he kind of fails at point number two in trying to protect both Chani and Alia.

Lastly, in the later books Leto II talks about the Golden Path and that its the only way to save humanity and blah blah blah. Frank Herbert pretends like he mentioned it in Dune and Dune Messiah but he didn't. Although I do believe he had some ideas about it in Messiah but it wasn't fully formed until Children of Dune. How I always interpreted that in retrospect is that Paul saw the Golden Path but wasn't willing to make the sacrifices necessary (becoming a sentient sandworm god, living for four thousand years, etc. which... fair) and tried to half walk the Golden Path without ever fully committing to it and fucks it up and leaves it to Leto II. All of which to say, the Golden Path isn't a thing in the original book so the "narrow way through" is not the Golden Path because Frank Herbert hadn't made it up yet and its not what I'm talking about.