Abulurd Harkonnen went into exile on the cold backwater world of Lankiveil. Banished for cowardice and reviled by the League, he accepted his fate in this forbidding and unwelcome place. He wanted nothing more than to withdraw and never be seen again.

Though Abulurd had wanted only to save the innocent human shields at the Bridge of Hrethgir, and though the machines had been vanquished in the end, Vorian was never able to forgive him for disobeying orders. The Supreme Bashar had considered the act not only a betrayal of his military duties, but of their relationship as well.

After all his service, unable to recover from his disgrace, Abulurd was disgusted with the League of Nobles, with his brother Faykan and his petty politics— and most of all with Vorian Atreides, the man whom he had loved but who had proved to be just as inhuman as the Titan Agamemnon.

Abulurd had expected to be forgiven, but coldhearted Vorian Atreides had shown no compassion whatsoever.

Worst of all, Vorian would never follow through on his promise to remove the unfair stain from Xavier Harkonnen’s name. If Abulurd had returned a hero, he and Vor could have rehabilitated Xavier’s memory, making the League of Nobles remember his grandfather as the great man he truly was. Just as he went into exile, the parliamentary task force that Vor had set up to look into the matter was disbanded.

Before Abulurd’s trial, the Supreme Bashar had briefly visited Abulurd in his Zimia holding cell. He stared at the prisoner in silence for a long moment, and Abulurd waited, prepared to endure what he had to.

Measuring his words carefully, Vor said, “Xavier was my friend. But it is no longer possible to sanitize the Harkonnen name. People will say the blood runs true, that the taint of dishonor from your grandfather has passed through to you. Because of your treachery, you’ve lost whatever glory your family had.” Contempt and scorn etched his face, and he left.

The encounter had lasted less than a minute, yet it burned like acid in Abulurd’s memory. At the time, he had been deeply hurt; now, thinking back on Vor’s words, he felt simmering anger.

But even banished from the League of Nobles, Abulurd had enough income to sustain himself on Lankiveil. Viceroy Faykan Corrino, wrapping himself in his protective and glorious mantle, had proclaimed that Abulurd and all his descendants must retain the reviled Harkonnen name. And in time, few would remember that Harkonnens and Corrinos had ever shared blood ties….

Abulurd built his new home in the heart of a dismal village at the head of a steep-walled fjord on Lankiveil. The people were fishermen and farmers, living outside the influence of the League and uninterested in politics or current affairs. They did not care about their new lord’s shame, and eventually he learned to live with it, still convinced of his own rightness at the Battle of Corrin.

After a few years, he married a local woman and produced a family with three sons. After he told them of his past, his wife and children fantasized about the riches that had been stolen from their family, and seethed about the opportunities forever denied to the Harkonnens. They resented the very thought of Vorian Atreides. Abulurd’s sons came to see themselves as princes in exile, cut off from their noble heritage even though they themselves had never done anything wrong.

One day, one of Abulurd’s sons— Dirdos— found his father’s old green-and-crimson uniform from the Army of Humanity, neatly pressed and stored away, and tried it on. It hurt Abulurd to see his son in the once-revered uniform, and he immediately took it away and burned it. But that only inspired the Harkonnen children to make up new tales of lost glory.

Decades later, when Abulurd and his wife both died from a fever that swept through the fishing village, the Harkonnen sons blamed Atreides. Without any proof to support their claim, the sons said Vorian Atreides himself had spread the malady, just to wipe out their family.

Abulurd’s sons passed countless stories to their own children, exaggerating how important the Harkonnen family had been and how far they had fallen. All because of Vorian Atreides.

Isolated on Lankiveil, later generations swore vengeance against their mortal enemies the Atreides. In the centuries that followed, by the time the Harkonnens made their tentative return to the new Corrino empire, their stories became accepted as fact. And the Harkonnens never forgot.