One cannot look at Muad’Dib the man and fail to see Paul Atreides the boy, and the events and experiences that created him. He was a human being sculpted by treachery and tragedy. As a young man of twelve, he was flung into a War of Assassins that encompassed more than three noble Houses and threatened to decapitate the Imperium itself. Although Paul had been trained for years to face the dangers that were part of the upbringing of any duke’s son, when Viscount Moritani from Grumman made his initial attack, those lessons suddenly became real. Paul found himself a target, hunted by assassins, caught in the center of a whirlpool of blood.

These experiences, though, had an even greater effect on his father, Duke Leto Atreides, who became not broken but hardened… tempered rather than destroyed. Duke Leto — the Red Duke, Leto the Just — had to fight repeatedly against treachery and betrayal, in matters where my father, the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, was not innocent.

Through those pivotal events, Young Paul watched his father prepare and respond with an extremism that some might have called ruthlessness. The ultimate lesson he learned from this, though, was that despite all of his father’s retaliations, Duke Leto Atreides ultimately failed because he did not learn to be ruthless enough.