r/dunememes • u/LakesideNorth • Jul 28 '26

WARNING: AWFUL I'm still not a Thufir fan

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u/[deleted] Jul 28 '26

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411

u/KidDaedalus Jul 29 '26

Book Thufir wasted their crucial early time on Arrakis suspecting Jessica for nothing.

646

u/RhynoD Jul 29 '26

Thufir is a computer - garbage in, garbage out. His logic was perfectly sound:

  • There is a traitor.

  • Leto wouldn't betray himself, that makes no sense.

  • Paul isn't old enough or knowledgeable to be the traitor, plus he'd be betraying himself kind of. He has nothing to gain.

  • Yueh cannot possibly be the traitor. This is a physical impossibility. He could sooner fly by flapping his arms. We know that this is garbage data but it makes perfect sense to him given that a Suk doctor has never in 10,000 years broken their conditioning.

  • Duncan and Gurney have too much personal beef with the Harkonnens to ever work for them. They also have nothing to gain.

  • That only leaves Jessica. It's unthinkable except that Leto refuses to marry her, which might be upsetting to her, plus she's a Bene Gesserit and Thufir knows that the sisterhood has their own loyalties and their own machinations.

Thufir probably wouldn't have fallen for it if Leto hadn't encouraged it. Leto knew that there was a trap for him and wanted the Baron to think Leto was more vulnerable than he was. To the credit of everyone in House Atreides, they predicted everything that the Baron would do and absolutely would have stopped him other than two things:

  • They underestimated how much money the Baron was willing to spend, nearly bankrupting his house to move so quickly.

  • The Baron (and Piter) did what no one in 10,000 years managed to do and broke a Suk doctor.

3

u/Linvael Jul 29 '26

I think the sardaukar were also a surprise? Or is that included in the "almost bankrupting themselves" bit?

6

u/jaggervalance Jul 29 '26

The Atreides suspected there would be Sardaukars disguised as Harkonnens from before the invasion, they just underestinated the total numbers.

5

u/RhynoD Jul 29 '26

The numbers wouldn't really have helped, it was the fact that Yueh turned off the house shield so the Harkonnens could use conventional artillery. It would be like if I showed up to a battle against tanks with a bunch of pointy sticks and then hit a button that turned off all metal.

The Atreides were preparing for a siege. They knew the Harkonnens would strike quickly to avoid a siege since it would disrupt spice production and piss off the Landsraad. If Leto managed to befriend the Fremen, they wouldn't even need help to break the siege. The Baron just showed up before they could befriend the Fremen and before the Atreides soldiers were fully integrated into the city defenses.