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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 9355771" data-attributes="member: 6777737">Wait, why would they try to "address" that? That would subvert the themes.The point was that Paul is not a good guy. He's a Duke from off-planet that is mistaken for a messiah by the indigenous population because thousands of years ago a Bene Gesserit left manipulative and false mythologies in place so that an outsider could swing in and be a savior and take control. He's a nobleman that comes to Arrakis, co-opts the religion of the indigenous population for his own political ends, and uses the power it gives him to literally make himself Emperor of the Known Universe.The reason Paul seems to fit the prophecies is because he's remembering the future subconsicously, but he's still taking advantage of the manipulative prophecies to make himself Emperor. That's his incomplete foresight. It just happens that first his mother begins the manipulation, and then later after Paul becomes the QH he explicitly takes the reins from the Bene Gesserits' hands.Paul is a white messiah trope. Intentionally. That we know it's an offensive trope is part of the dramatic irony, and we're supposed to find what he does offensive because it is. It's the same reason the Fremen call Paul "Mahdi." Nobody in 10,191 would know the history of the term, but we the audience should understand what the people calling themselves Mahdi were (and Frank Herbert's contemporaries in the 1950s did).</blockquote>

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