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Chapter 22

Posted: 01 Mar 2008 12:34
by Freakzilla
"Another Festival so soon?" the Lord Leto asked.
"It has been ten years," the majordomo said.
Do you think by this exchange that the Lord Leto betrays an ignorance of time's
passage?

-The Oral History

Durring the private audience prior to the Festival, Leto spends more than the alloted time with the new Ixian ambassador, Hwi Norree. Leto finds it obvious that she has been bred to charm him and find a chink in his armor. Despite this, he enjoys her company. He notes that she has been delicately trained by the Bene Gesserit. They talk about her ancestor who tried to assasinate him whom he crushed with his body, then turned the assasin's lasgun against himself to demonstrate his invulnerability (not aiming at his face, hands or arms, of course). He warns that none can escape his wrath, not even the colony they've planted beyond the Imperium. Hwi gets Leto's juices flowing again after a long time and makes him feel that he is still needed. He tells her to inform her superiors that she is precisely the kind of bait to dangle in front of him. He questions her about her childhood and admits he cannont discearn her birthplace. He deduces that she was born in a machine the Ixians are attempting to perfect for the Guild. He tells her to inform her master that he knows what they are doing and of their alleigance with the Tleilaxu. He makes her permanent ambassador and if they interfere with this order he will crush them. He then orders her to leave and can tell she is deeply saddened for his lost humanity and they both feel that in other circumstances they would have been lovers. He feels the Ixians are cruel for doing this to both of them. She reminds him of her uncle Malky, a former ambassador. The ambassadors always ask Leto why he tolerates Ix. He needs Ix, without their machines he couldn't write his Journals nor steer his cart. He decides though, that he must remind Ix of the danger of AI and the Guild of the dangers of their alliance with the Tleilaxu. If this new Machine works, the Guild will lose it's monopoly on space travel.

Re: Chapter 21

Posted: 18 May 2010 01:34
by SandRider
good point - all the interviews I've read with him center on the first three books ...

the last interview in the T(A)U archive is the 1981 Plowboy .... God Emperor had just
been published, but the interview is about windturbines and geopolitics ....

http://tau.solahpmo.com/viewtopic.php?f=615&t=1221" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

if there's a transcript of an interview about God-Emperor online, I didn't find it ...

the 1984 essay When I Was Writing Dune is only about that - and that he had
the general arc of the first three books in mind ....

http://tau.solahpmo.com/viewtopic.php?f=616&t=1225" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Do you want an absolute prediction? Then you want only today, and you reject tomorrow. You are the ultimate conservative. You are trying to hold back movement in an infinitely changing universe. The verb to be does make idiots of us all.
that's not Leto II, that's Frank in Omni Magazine, July 1980 ... I've always seen God-Emperor as the
repository for Frank's political, philosophical, anthropological (&etc) musings floating around in his head
for most of his adult life ... I think that when Leto II speaks, you're hearing what Frank thinks ...

as to the Love Story, it may be as simple as his relationship with Beverly ...
or something else entirely ....

good question, thanks - somebody go dig up an interview with Frank about God-Emperor,
post it here and in the archive at T(A)U ...


>> wait, what ?

I swear there was a post here about Leto and Hwi I was responding to ...
I generally steer away from posting in the reading groups, cause it's like,
serious, and I'm like, mostly full of shit, but the question about Frank's
basis for the love story was intriguing ....

so WTF ?

Re: Chapter 21

Posted: 18 May 2010 01:47
by SandChigger
(You're not imagining things, I just read it a few minutes ago, too. Who was the poster, Merkin?)

Remember that FH supposedly first wrote GEoD all in first-person narrative, then went back and rewrote it, keeping some passages from the original drafts for the epigraphs, etc. ;)

Re: Chapter 21

Posted: 18 May 2010 01:53
by SandRider
okay - gotta source on that, plz ?

posty-posty in archive ?

Re: Chapter 21

Posted: 18 May 2010 01:54
by merkin muffley
Oops. Sorry, I deleted it and was going to re-post on a different, more general God Emperor thread. But it should go here because I was prompted to write the post after reading Chapter 21.

"Why do your masters torture me?
"Lord?"
"By sending you!



I basically said that I've been really impressed by the love story between Leto and Hwi Noree, and I don't think I've ever read anything like it. I was wondering if Frank Herbert has ever done an interview where he talks about how the idea came about, and if he identifies any influences.

Re: Chapter 21

Posted: 18 May 2010 01:58
by SandChigger
Don't DO that! :lol:

Some of us have a tenuous-at-best grip on reality. Scares us when we think we're seeing/imagining things! :P

I've no idea where I came across that, 'Rider. Maybe Freak or someone else can verify? I'll have a trawl around, just the same. ;)

Edit: Was as easy to find as Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Emperor_of_Dune#Style" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"God Emperor of Dune is unique in the series, however, because almost all of the quotations are from The Stolen Journals (and not from the complete journals found at Dar-es-Balat). They were written by Leto to personalize himself to distant readers in the future....Written in the first person (the early drafts of God Emperor show that Herbert wrote most of the novel in the first person and left notes for himself to transcribe into the third person; material that he did not transcribe resulted in the journal quotations), they range informally and thought-provokingly over a broad range of subjects from government to prophecy to the nature of language...I believe this is their primary function, for Leto so dominates the book that the other characters seem to exist at times only to bring out differences in him. Even in their most private thoughts they are all obsessed with the God Emperor." (pg 87, Touponce (1988))
Touponce, William F. (1988), Frank Herbert, Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers imprint, G. K. Hall & Co, ISBN 0-8057-7514-5

Re: Chapter 21

Posted: 18 May 2010 02:03
by merkin muffley
SandChigger wrote:Remember that FH supposedly first wrote GEoD all in first-person narrative, then went back and rewrote it, keeping some passages from the original drafts for the epigraphs, etc. ;)

Thanks, I just registered with the archive.

I didn't know that FH wrote GEoD in first-person narrative. That's really interesting. I, basically, missed everything the first time I read God Emperor.

Re: Chapter 21

Posted: 18 May 2010 02:07
by SandRider
yeah, I'm not drinking near like I use to,
and I've cut down on most of the drugs,
so something like that makes me think
I've finally hit Granpa Simpson stage ....

and here's another reason why I stay out of the reading groups ....
I'll derail a serious discussion in a heartbeat ...

Re: Chapter 21

Posted: 18 May 2010 03:46
by Freakzilla
SandRider wrote:...and here's another reason why I stay out of the reading groups ....
I'll derail a serious discussion in a heartbeat ...
I really do appreciate that. :wink:

Re: Chapter 22

Posted: 23 Jul 2012 15:24
by Freakzilla
Revised

Re: Chapter 22

Posted: 23 Dec 2022 06:33
by stilgarr
I liked this chapter a lot. To me this chapter humanizes Leto II for the reader. Until this point you get the point that everybody fears the God Emperor. All of a sudden this new Ixian ambassador named Hwi Noree comes by and Leto II starts to like her or even love her? Leto II is lonely and hasn't felt human for a long time and is feared by everybody. Hwi is special in a sense since she seems the opposite of Leto II (showing emotions & empathy).
Hwi, too was tortured. There was no mistaking the deep sadness in her for the humanity Leto had sacrificed.
Also thanks to this chapter I finally realized, that the Ixians can be secretly dangerous too like the Tleilaxu. In my mind Ixians were the Tech-Innovators of Dune and I never thought of them much as a threat.

Re: Chapter 22

Posted: 09 Feb 2023 00:31
by Freakzilla
stilgarr wrote: 23 Dec 2022 06:33 and hasn't felt human for a long time
Very humanizing :Adolf:

Re: Chapter 22

Posted: 09 Feb 2023 10:25
by georgiedenbro
stilgarr wrote: 23 Dec 2022 06:33 Also thanks to this chapter I finally realized, that the Ixians can be secretly dangerous too like the Tleilaxu. In my mind Ixians were the Tech-Innovators of Dune and I never thought of them much as a threat.
I've never quite gotten clear on the timeline, but doesn't the book give us evidence that the Tleilaxu did in fact infiltrate the Ixians? The plot with Malky and Hwi smells like a Tleilaxu setup.

Re: Chapter 22

Posted: 18 Apr 2023 12:34
by Freakzilla
georgiedenbro wrote: 09 Feb 2023 10:25
stilgarr wrote: 23 Dec 2022 06:33 Also thanks to this chapter I finally realized, that the Ixians can be secretly dangerous too like the Tleilaxu. In my mind Ixians were the Tech-Innovators of Dune and I never thought of them much as a threat.
I've never quite gotten clear on the timeline, but doesn't the book give us evidence that the Tleilaxu did in fact infiltrate the Ixians? The plot with Malky and Hwi smells like a Tleilaxu setup.
That's revealed a few chapters later