The Tragedy of Alia Atreides
Alia Atreides might be the most tragic figure in the Dune series. The first pre-borne Reverend Mother we’re introduced to, we first meet her as a simple spark in her Mother Jessica Atreides’ womb as Jessica goes through an experience so painful and transformative it’s called literally the ‘spice agony.’ By consuming the spice essence and having her awareness opened to the genetic memory of all of her ancestral lives, Jessica throws Alia into that same mind bending experience that many do not even survive from as she gestates in the womb. Combined with the reception of memories from Sietch Tabr’s Sayyidina passing along to Alia and Jessica alike before she dies, one can only fathom the depths of awareness of human natures — both kindly and cruel — that Alia experiences even before she is born. The experience of many lives makes her an immediate outcast among the Fremen, even Jessica herself thinks “what have I borne?” As she realizes the immense peculiarity of her daughter.
Hera of Sietch Tabr, watching over Alia asks her about her pre-borne experience once, and Alia relates the terrifying memory of “one day I woke up, I was frightened.” This basic human instinctual fear, combined with waking up to extremely elevated consciousness through Other Memory would have been too much for anyone and Alia would have died in the womb if not for Jessica. Alia remembers that as she was losing herself in the womb, she felt her mother soothing her, helping her find herself again. Jessica looks at Alia academically from her Bene Gesserit eyes, saying without really much empathy “it was a cruel thing, no one should wake into consciousness thus. It’s a wonder you survived at all,” seeing her hand in saving Alia but not taking personal responsibility for causing that pain in the first place.
Hera soothes Alia in Jessica’s stead, saying “she has never been a little girl,” causing Alia to cry, which is such a rarity among the Fremen it shows the internal pain she is feeling, saying “I know I’m a freak.” Hera again, not Jessica, scolds her saying “you’re not a freak! Who dare say you are a freak! Who said it!” showing the motherly affection missing so often in Alia’s life.
Alia is an extremely powerful mental figure from the outset. As the first Dune book comes to its eventual climax, Alia plants a future memory for Paul Muad’dib’s to find, telling him of her capture by Sardukar forces and her killing of their mutual grandfather Baron Harkonnen, something we really dont see again in the entire series and that Alia knows is unique to her, saying “‘even you can’t do that my brother” as the future-memory she planted fades.
As she grows up in Paul Muad’dib’s imperium, she takes on the role of a religious leader. We get a glimpse of her new standing in the imperium at the peak of the honest religious fervor in Dune Messiah when Paul Muad’dib goes to her temple to find a secret Naib guide. Pilgrims crush into the temple floor chanting ‘Alia! Alia! Alia!’ Growing louder and louder until she speaks. The prayer to Alia starts low, “she stills all storms, her eyes kill the enemies, and torment the unbelievers. From the spires of tuono, where the dawnlight strikes and water runs as you see her shadow. In the shining summer heat she serves us bread and milk..she is Alia! Alia! Alia!”
On this last roar she emerges to lead the religious zealots in a chanting prayer, drinking the raw spice essence and changing it to be safe to consume as a demonstration of her powers. Paradoxically this is happening while Paul Muad’dib is losing his grip on the religion of his creation, seeing this ceremony and thinking that the religious fervor Alia is whipped up as unjust, and that the supplicants “hungered for absolutes which could never be,” but Alia only grows more accustomed to it, more comfortable wielding the religious leader mantle.
At this time a teenager in love with an icy ghola, Alia’s eternal mental struggle continues as she consumes more and more of the spice, a dangerous thing for a pre-born reverend mother. In a scene near the end of Dune Messiah, she laments her inner lives that arise higher and stronger with every taste of the spice melange, saying to the ghola “I wish I could burn this thing out of me…But I’m sister to an emperor who is worshipped as a god. People fear me. I never wanted to be feared. I don’t want to be part of history, I just want to be loved. and love.” She cries into the gholas arms.
As Paul Muad’dib executes his political plan at the end of Dune Messiah with the precision of a Kwizatz Hadderach, he walks off into the desert, exposing his traitors which Alia and Stilgar execute unceremoniously — the traitorous Guildsman, Reverend Mother Moahim, Korba the old Fedaykin, the Tleilaxu Scytail and several others showing Alia’s fremen colors. Her killings are due in part to her blunt anger at Paul Muad’dib for abandoning her, never once filling her in on his plans or scheming throughout or really preparing Alia in any way for the future to come.
So as Children of Dune, the third book in the series, opens, we see an Alia that has been clinging onto that religious mantle in order to lead the imperium Paul had left her. You see after Dune Messiah, Alia was abandoned by more than just Paul. Jessica, her mother, runs back to Caladan with Gurney Halleck. Duncan Idaho reawakens his original memories and is no longer the icy ghola figure she fell in love with. Irulan remains and disobeys the bene gesserit, but Alia doesnt really like her anyway. And she was thrown into the seat of imperial power, and left with Paul’s twins to take care of as Chani died birthing them.
The twins themselves, Leto the 2nd and Ghanima were pre-born reverend mothers (and more) much like Alia, so understand her well. In the early pages it is through their eyes that we see Alia as in far more pain than ever before, Leto saying that the lack of a secure personality before being launched into those memories made Alia succumb to the inner lives easier than other reverend mothers or Paul the Kwizatz Hadderach, the fate of all pre-born to fight. Through their bene gesserit memories they know Alia knows this as well, the common Bene Gesserit phrase being that the preborn are “likely to develop into adults with nasty habits” if not full Abominations as they call them. Leto and Ghanima pity her as a victim of the bene gesserit scheming and Jessica’s brutality.
And Alia Atreides deserves to be pitied. For years through adolescence of the first two book she had been relying on prana bindu training to stave off the increasingly-powerful sense of Other Memories within her to try and retain her own sense of self against the onslaught of ‘all those others.’ Like with Paul’s initial awakening, the melange-rich environment of everything she encounters on Arrakis made this exceedingly difficult, and the rituals she performed for the Fremen worshippers even more so. Most Fremen who build up that same awareness release it in the orgy of the Sietch, exposed briefly to prescience and a partial views of naked time, and once seeing it, fear and reject it, coming back into themselves as the “high” wears off. Alia had no escape with the in-bred Other Memory of a pre-bourne reverend mother, “no such release, no [such] denial.”
As she is abandoned and thrown unwittingly into the seat of power, she digs deeper in her mother’s awareness for help because the physical Jessica had long since disappeared. Jessica had been Alia’s rock, her reason for being and the closest mirror of herself. But even the inner voice of Jessica sneers at her plans as Alia rules the only way she knows how — as a religious despot. As Alia starts to look for other avenues of advice within her, all the fading Jessica voice can do is demand that Alia focus on Atreides Law, and it’s implied she wants her to think that way rather than focus on religion as the way to lead, something Alia just cannot do, has no experience in doing, nor even knows where to being.
Almost the same few moments after Alia had finally foregone the Jessica within, she becomes bombarded with other inner lives and tragically lost herself completely. Not just to anyone, but to the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen himself, seeking revenge on his Atreides enemies from beyond the grave. Explaining later, Leto says that this happened because “Alia denied what she was and became that which she most feared. The past within cannot be relegated to the unconscious. It is a dangerous course for any human, but for us the pre born it is worse than death.” Alia turns to the Baron because as a recent maternal grandfather his voice is strong in Alia’s genetic (as well as actual) memory, and he can hold the horde inside her going back eons at bay. She relishes this mental gate, calming the inner clamor, but of course the Baron has other plans for her and slowly begins twisting her to his will. As she writhes with this inner turmoil on a bench outside the keep, her guards simply see her as taking a morning nap. Alia is truly alone.
As Alia rules with the bloody edge of the late Baron Harkonnen inside her, she becomes increasingly unnerved at every detail around her throne. She discards those close to her, pushing the newly-returning-Jessica to be abducted by Duncan Idaho (who can see clearly with his new mentat abilities just what she had become), planning to kill him too, both sent to House Corrino and Feradyn the prodigal grandson of Shaddam IV, who she expects will simply kill them both. She co-opts jessicas plans for Leto the 2nd, sending a Naib in her trust to Jakarutu to try and kill Leto who she sees as a threat to her, as well as with instructions to kill Gurney Halleck afterwards. She spends more and more time at her various spy-holes, looking over the masses and picking out targets for her rage, especially the Preacher of Arrakeen. Even Stilgar eventually starts to question the undying loyalty to Alia and Fremen fealty that is his life’s rock, seeing the callous way Alia uses people and discards them, a true despot in every way. In an early climactic confrontation with Jessica, the Baron voice within booms out for all to hear, and being able to hide it no longer she screams out her anger at the great injustice Jessica wreaked upon her, half through her voice and half through the Barons own, in the best articulation of how she came to fall to the Barons inner voice:
“Now you know mother. Do you think a granddaughter of baron harkonnen would not appreciate all of the lifetimes you crushed into my awareness before I was even born? When I raged against what you’d done to me, I had only to ask myself what the Baron would’ve done. And he answered! Understand me, Atreides bitch! He answered me!”
After this tragic scene and throughout the rest of Children of Dune, we see an increasingly lonely Alia turn ever more to that one remaining sense of honest companionship she has, the Baron within. Her supplicants and aids are simple power-hungry sycophants, and she keeps picking poor choices for her inner circle due to her lack of experience in leadership and Harkonen hedonism. The various powers of the imperium see her weakness, only heightening her fear as she feels “her thin grip on the imperium as a physical thing” as the Landsraat houses, CHOAM, the Bene gesserit, and more all close in around her. In response she crafts an insane plan to speed up the beautification project of Dune, ridding the world of the sandworms and spice, in order to corner the market on the most powerful substance in the universe. Ironically this is nearly exactly what Leto II does in his reign, but more on that later. The feydaikin see this as the ultimate betrayal, and the confrontation scene with Jessica begins a small scale civil war between the old and new factions on Dune that we catch glimpses of throughout book. As alia grips the power ever tighter, it spins that much more out of control. Her loneliness leads her to the Preacher one day, who calls her sister confirming it’s Paul, which leaves Alia just absolutely shattered. “She stood intoxicated with an absolute despair, a distress so deep that she could only tremble with it, unable to command her own muscles. What will I do? What will I do? She asked herself. Now she did not even have Duncan to lean upon, nor her mother. The inner lives remained silent…Everyone has turned against me. What can I do?
The baron within Alia twisted her to push everyone away. The more she resisted the more he implants fears in her to sharpen her resolve. These moments show glimpses of the still young woman within, who just needs to be reached out to by a loving hand but never is. As Leto, far off into the deep qanat desert now imbued with the sandtrout skin powers begins smashing up Sietches, Alia back in her keep, now a bit chubby with too much hedonistic pleasure indulgence through giving herself up to the Baron Harkonnen, hears of this and simply cannot believe its Leto. Ghanima, swearing he’s dead and having gone through a truthsayer, only helps to convince her that it’s probably just the wonton destruction of the civil war raging still in the desert. The last gasp of her we get is on the death of her twin lovers — Idaho and Javid, as a way to hurt the Atreidies, each death for reasons of stupid pride that Idaho knew would hurt Alia as he does after her transformation. This shock of the death of her husband and lover creates the most intense depiction of tragedy in Alias inner self:
“Tears sprang from her eyes, forced out against the great Fremen conditioning. Her mouth drew down into a frozen grimace and she sensed the old battle begin within her skill, reaching out to her fingertips, to her toes. She flet that she had become two people. One looked upon these fleshly contortions with astonishment The other sought submission to an enormous pain spreading in her chest. The tears flowed freely from her eyes now and the Astoned One [read: Baron Harkonnen] within her demanded querulously: “Who cries? Who is it that cries? Who is crying now?”
But nothing stopped the tears, and she felt the painfulness which flamed through her breast as it moved her flesh and hurled her onto the bed.
Still something demanded ouf of that profound astonishment: “Who cried? Who is that…”
This scene is brutal. Alia cannot even mourne without the beasts within questioning her. Cannot find solace at all from the inner lives even during the most powerful moments of loss without it being thrown back at her. There is no escape for Alia, and madness is the only path her tale can take her.
The last moments of Children of Dune bring the climax of Alias plans, before they are destroyed immediately. She has Stilgar and Irulan in prison, captured for killing Idaho and joining the resistance. She has Feradyn returning to marry Ghanima, who promises to kill him for the “death” of her brother, and they all join Alia to watch the Preacher one last time, who speaks blasphemy and gives Alia her final warning “You bear the burden of our desert! The whirlwind comes from that place from that land! One last blasphemy remains! And the name of blasphemy is Alia!” The religious zealots of Alia cannot take this and strike Paul down as moments later the one ton doors blow open with Leto II, standing there as a symbol of the future, shattering Alias carefully worked plans.
In the confrontation with Leto, Alia cowers in fear before launching into an assault and is quickly overpowered. Realizing her plans are doomed Alia again loses control over her mind and voices come pouring out of her: “Her chest heaved and voices began to pour from her mouth. They were disconnected, cursing, pleading. “You see! Why didnt you listen?” and again: “Why’re you doing this? What’s happening?” And another voice: “Stop them! Make them stop!’”
And more and more voices rage out of Alia “I’ll kil you!” Hideous curses erupted from her. “I’ll drunk your blood!” The sounds of many languages began to pour from her, all jumbled and confused.”
Alia is out of control, and the as the Baron fights to regain control Alia cant take it anymore, stumbles her way to the nearby smashed open window to throw herself out to her death as the Baron rages from her mouth “Stop! Stop it, I say! I Command you!”…Stop it and I’ll help you. I have a plan. Listen to me. Stop it, I say. Wait!” … But in one jerking motion, Alia pulls herself over the windowsill and was gone. She did not cry when she fell to her death, the last sound she made was the thump as Alia struck the ground far below.
Her mind totally gone, Alia’s suicide was a final act of victory over her inner lives. The only way she could quell and control the voices. It was an act of ultimate bravery and for all her faults, you have to feel that she was let down by the people around her, the best treatment she received being pity from Leto and Ghanima while everyone else just heaped scorn her way. She could likely have been saved if she were not abandoned to the brutalities of her mind, but she was not, and by throwing herself out the window to her death sealed the fate and story about the Tragedy that was Alia Atreides.