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I'm re-reading the original Dune book, and in the end of (the inner) Book 1 (Dune) it says:

He had seen two main branchings along the way ahead - in one he confronted an evil old Baron and said: "Hello, Grandfather." The thought of that path and what lay along it sickened him. The other path held long patches of grey obscurity except for peaks of violence

This is Paul's newly acquired Seeing, where he sees into the future. We know that eventually he chose the path of violence and Jihad, so I wonder: are there any details about the other path, and why it makes him sick to think of it, even more than the violent path?

Note: I'm talking only about the book(s), not the movies.

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    This is, as far as I'm aware, the only reference to these other possible futures that Paul discarded.
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 7 at 18:11
  • I'm guessing the latter path is Paul hiding in exile, bitter and periodically striking out against the Harkonnen and the Emperor, but with little actual impact on events.
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 7 at 18:13
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    @Valorum my own guess is that Paul choose to side with the Baron, and this way spare humanity the jihad, and thus it sickens him, but.. pretty far fetched guess, so was hoping for some reference saying something more solid.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 7 at 18:44
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    Note that these are 'branches' off of the hard path that Paul has chosen. Neither are especially palatable to him. The first is where he sides with the Baron, the second is presumably where he leaves Arrakis for relative safety. Neither are well described.
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 7 at 18:46
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    I think there is a passage in Children of Dune, in the section immediately before the beginning of the Golden Path when the twins are delving into past lives for the last time, wherein Leto says something about the paths not chosen by their father but I'd have to reread it to be sure it even exists let alone what it says. That whole section is a massive piece of historical exposition.
    – Ash
    Commented Sep 8 at 0:30

2 Answers 2

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The future with the confrontation with the Baron is the Golden Path. This confrontation ultimately happens in Children of Dune with Leto II in the course of his transformation into the God Emperor and his destruction of the Alia-Baron abomination. This is the "Typhoon Struggle" or Kralizec.

The other future is the Jihad which is the future Paul takes in Dune Messiah. This leads to the "Mahdi" dead end and his self-imposed exile into the desert. Paul took this path as he could not face losing his humanity and the enforced stasis required to maintain the Golden Path. Leto II also had a superior vision of the future which enabled him to see that ONLY the Golden Path would avoid the total extinction of humanity.

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  • I often wondered if the author might have been coincidentally riffing on the phrase "crying uncle", but I believe this answer is the correct explanation. - There's however another (speculative) one. Paul saw the shadow-uncle within himself as a potential future-threat..... The loss of all and sinking into the careless use of power and hedonism.
    – Jiminy Cricket.
    Commented Oct 17 at 0:39
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    There's a bunch of quotes in Children of Dune to support this. I'm at work but I'll update when I get home.
    – WOPR
    Commented Oct 17 at 0:49
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    I still have to re-read both Children of Dune and Dune Messiah, but yeah I have vivid memory of them, and of course search can give me their plot. Anyway this does make sense, and backing it up with references or quotes would help.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Oct 17 at 11:06
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My best guess, from having read the series a few (20+) times about 25 years ago (yes, I'm old) was that the other path was to be complicit with evil and displace Feyd from within. Being his grandchild would make him a viable heir to the Harkonen dynasty, and no other person could more completely betray the Atriedes than Paul. Remember when Shaddam 4 offered Irulian to Feyd to put down the upstart? That could have been Paul he offered it to.

You can also see, to a lesser degree, how Leto 2 stood on his fathers shoulders in rejecting those paths and the death they would guarantee, in his great path.

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  • This feels like a complete guess.
    – Valorum
    Commented Oct 16 at 19:10
  • @Valorum - you are guessing it is a complete guess? Ask for a better back up or references. Ask for supporting data. It comes off as feeling less ad hominem. Give me a day or two.
    – EngrStudent
    Commented Oct 17 at 5:20
  • @Valorum well, I don't think it's a worse guess than others. Few quotes to back it up would help, sure, but even then it would still be a guess.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Oct 17 at 11:04
  • @ShadowWizard - Call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather see no answers than a bunch of supposition and guesswork
    – Valorum
    Commented Oct 17 at 11:05

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