Leto Atreides I
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Duke Leto Atreides I (10,140-10,191 A.G.) is a fictional character in the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. He features in the novel Dune by Frank Herbert and in the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
In David Lynch's 1984 film version, Duke Leto was played by Jürgen Prochnow. In the Sci-Fi Channel's 2000 miniseries, William Hurt played the role.
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[edit] Prelude to Dune
Leto I was born in year 10,140 A.G. ("after Guild") on planet Caladan, to Paulus Atreides and Lady Helena Richese-Atreides. Paulus was the reigning Duke of House Atreides, their noble House having ruled Caladan for 26 generations. House Atreides is distantly related to the Imperial House Corrino (through Leto's maternal grandmother) and had carried a deep feud with House Harkonnen (going back to Vorian Atreides, founder of the Atreides family line).
Duke Paulus arranged for Leto to spend a portion of his adolescence on planet Ix in the care of House Vernius and its then-Earl, Dominic Vernius -- against the hostile objections of Lady Helena. There, Leto became fast friends with the Earl's son and daughter, Prince Rhombur and Lady Kailea. They returned to Caladan after the uprising of Ix's working class of mentally-limited subhumans, and subsequent Tleilaxu invasion, forced Leto and the members of House Vernius to flee from Ix. While Earl Dominic and his wife, Lady Shando Balut-Vernius, each had to flee to different locations, Paulus granted sanctuary to Rhombur and Kailea -- again, against the objections of Helena, whose family of House Richese had been economic competitors (nearly to the point of being hostile enemies) of House Vernius.
Duke Paulus regularly engaged in the sporting event of bullfighting mutated Salusan bulls, both for the sport and for the spectacle; he would play every bull for all it was worth, and the people of Caladan loved him for it. Soon after the Vernius heirs were given sanctuary, Paulus was killed by his treacherous wife through a bull drugged to extraordinary levels of rage, strength, and endurance by a stableman, Yresk, a loyalist to House Richese and Lady Helena. She intended to rule House Atreides as regent through her son Leto, who now inherited his father's title of Duke at only 16 years old. Leto immediately realized what she had done and banished her to exile in a remote location with the Caladan Sisters of Isolation, rather than have her executed; public knowledge of what happened would have brought serious negative impacts on House Atreides and all of Caladan.
Leto kept the head of the beast wall-mounted next to a portrait of his father, as a grisly reminder of the event.
Leto eventually took Kailea as his concubine, and they had a son named Victor. However, Leto declined to take Kailea as his wife or name Victor as his heir, obligated to keep a political marriage a possibility. Leto and Kailea eventually grew apart, and after the arrival into his household of the Bene Gesserit acolyte Jessica, to whom Leto eventually found himself freshly attracted to, Kailea attempted to take matters into her own hands by attempting to kill Leto. Kailea's plot failed, but her brother Rhombur was severely injured and her son Victor killed in the process, whereafter she committed suicide.
Leto and Jessica both fell in love and she became his bound concubine. Unknown to both of them, she was the illegitimate daughter of his rival, Vladimir Harkonnen. They never married in order to maintain, as always, the possibility of an alliance with another Great House — although this would ultimately never occur. Leto and Jessica were utterly devoted to each other in every way; any marriage on Leto's part would have been purely political, and meaningless to him. In year 10,176 A.G., Jessica gave birth to Paul Atreides, their son.
Leto was known in some Imperial circles, and especially by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV, as "the Red Duke" (in reference to House Atreides' red hawk symbol). He gained fame as an effective politician, a fair and just statesman, and a capable leader of his small military. He recruited skilled individuals -- including Thufir Hawat, Gurney Halleck, and Duncan Idaho -- to lead and train his military forces. Jessica and Hawat also served as his two main advisors. Leto was admired, as well as disliked, by Emperor Shaddam IV due to an early incident in which Leto (reluctantly) had made a bluffing attempt to blackmail the Emperor into intervening on his behalf in Landsraad court, where he had submitted to a Trial by Forfeiture to prove that he had not fired on a Tleilaxu ship inside a Heighliner in foldspace. He had, in fact, been framed for this by lifelong enemy, Vladimir Harkonnen.
Several years afterward (the same year of Paul's birth), Leto's successful military overthrow of the joint Tleilaxu and Emperor's Sardaukar occupation forces on Ix, and his role in the subsequent political censure of Shaddam in the aftermath of Ix and the Emperor's other destructive actions across the Imperium, would ensure Duke Leto a vengeful enemy in Emperor Shaddam. This would culminate into the history-shaping events on Arrakis 15 years later.
[edit] Dune
In year 10,191 A.G., Leto's two greatest enemies conspired against him. Under the pretense of Baron Harkonnen being forced to surrender Arrakis to House Atreides, Emperor Shaddam obligated Leto into being required to leave Caladan and transfer his entourage and military to the inhospitable desert planet. Fully aware of these threats, Duke Leto played along in the hopes of gaining time in order to establish relations with the Fremen and form an unprecedented alliance with these fiercely independent natives of Arrakis, to circumvent his enemies' plots against him and his House. Leto's efforts to forge a formidable army by unleashing what he termed Arrakis' "Desert Power", would not come to be until after his death; carried on by Paul and Jessica.
His term as planetary governor of Arrakis would prove short, as he was betrayed by Dr. Wellington Yueh, his family physician, and surrendered alive to the Baron. Yueh, in revenge against the Baron for killing his wife, provided Leto with a false tooth filled with poison gas, designed to kill those nearby when Leto bit down on the tooth and exhaled, in the hope that he would manage to kill the Baron along with himself. Unfortunately for both Yueh's plan and Leto, he only managed to kill the twisted Mentat, Piter De Vries.
Leto died at age 51 and was survived by Paul and Jessica, who was pregnant with Leto's daughter, Alia, at the time of his death. Paul would later name his first son, Leto, and then his second son, Leto II, in honor of his father.
[edit] Sandworms of Dune
In Sandworms of Dune, the Reverend Mother Sheeana, on the no-ship Ithaca, begins to grow a ghola of the Duke in secret. However, the awakened ghola of Wellington Yueh, unknowingly manipulated by a Face Dancer imposter on board, poisons the axlotl tank in which the Duke grows, killing him before he is born.
At the novel's conclusion, a second ghola of Duke Leto has been created and is being raised back on Caladan in the care of the restored gholas of Jessica and Yueh.
