The Big Picture

• Valya Harkonnen sparks the feud between Harkonnen and Atreides, seeking vengeance for her family's disgrace after the Butlerian Jihad.
• Valya plays a crucial role in founding the powerful Bene Gesserit order, starting as the Sisterhood of Rossak and evolving into its influential form.
• The origins of the Bene Gesserit will be explored in Dune: Prophecy, showcasing Valya's journey from a vengeful noble to a formidable leader.

The first trailer for Dune: Prophecy is here, taking viewers to a whole new era of the universe created by Frank Herbert. The HBO series is set 10,000 years before the events of the original novel, showing the origins of the order that eventually became known as the Bene Gesserit. What took most people by surprise is that most of the trailer is actually narrated by a character named Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson). There is also almost no mention of House Atreides in the video, apart from her naming Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) when contextualizing when Prophecy takes place. So who is Valya, and what role does she play in the origins of the Bene Gesserit?

‘Dune: Prophecy’ Adapts One of the Many Prequels to Frank Herbert’s Novels

The Dune universe is vast, spanning a total of 26 novels. Frank Herbert wrote the original hexalogy of Dune novels, documenting the saga of House Atreides from Paul Atreides' arrival on Arrakis to becoming Emperor. The rest was written by Herbert's son, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson, setting up the universe as it was before the original Dune novel, and going further after the last of Frank Herbert's books, Chapterhouse: Dune. Dune: Prophecy will adapt Sisterhood of Dune, the first novel in a prequel trilogy known as Great Schools of Dune.

Sisterhood of Dune takes place around 10,000 years before the original Dune novel, but, more importantly, it's set 80 years after the end of the Butlerian Jihad. This is the conflict that ultimately resulted in the victory of humans over artificial intelligence (referred to as "thinking machines" in the novels), and that banished all kinds of computers from the universe. The Butlerian Jihad also sets up the board for the Great Families to take their place in the Imperium, with House Butler becoming House Corrino and taking the throne, House Atreides being set up as military heroes, and House Harkonnen falling from grace after one of their members is labeled a traitor and a coward at one of the Jihad's key battles.

The disgrace of House Harkonnen began when one of its earliest members, Abulurd Harkonnen, refused to follow a command that would involve sacrificing nearly two million humans in the final battle against the thinking machines from his superior, Vorian Atreides. Instead, he disabled the weapons in all the human fleet, which ended up causing even more casualties. Vorian then brands Abulurd a traitor, and he and his House are banished to the ice planet Lankiveil. This is the cause of the grudge between Houses Atreides and Harkonnen, which would last for millennia afterward.

Valya Harkonnen Perpetuates Her Family’s Grudge Against House Atreides

Valya Harkonnen is one of the most fascinating characters in the Dune continuity. House Harkonnen felt heavily the consequences of Abulurd's actions in the Butlerian Jihad, even if his intentions and moral standpoint were indeed justified. But, instead of contesting why they became disgraced after the war, the Harkonnens accepted the punishment and kept to themselves. Lankiveil is a harsh planet to live on, and they lead a poor life, completely different from the opulence that becomes associated with them by the time Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) leads the family.

The first Harkonnen to stand up to the way her family is treated is Valya. From her early years, she understands that the person responsible for her family's misfortune is Vorian Atreides, and that he had no more right to act as he did than Abulurd. So she vows to end the Atreides bloodline, convincing her siblings Griffin and Tula to help her. She is the person who effectively ignites the feud between Harkonnen and Atreides, and mobilizes the people around her to help her. For example, Griffin follows Vorian Atreides to Arrakis when the latter is exiled by the Emperor Salvador Corrino, who fears Vorian's status as a war hero, and, although Vorian and Griffin end up understanding each other, Griffin dies on Arrakis. Tula, on the other hand, successfully murders Orry Atreides on their wedding night.

While her parents and uncles didn't share Valya's hatred for House Atreides, they never did anything to stop her, either. She spends a year honing her own combat skills until she achieves the rank of Swordmaster, just so she can eventually challenge Vorian to a duel and kill him. Until that can happen, though, Valya decides to dedicate herself to another blossoming order in the Imperium, the Sisterhood of Rossak. And, thanks to her, the Sisterhood will eventually grow into the powerful institution known as the Bene Gesserit.

Valya Harkonnen Plays a Key Role in Turning the Bene Gesserit Into a Powerful Order

The main subject of Dune: Prophecy is the origins of the Bene Gesserit, an all-female order of priestesses that, by the time of the original Dune novel, is the most influential in the universe. They have members in all the Great Houses of the Landsraad, and carry out a secret eugenics program that crosses the genes of all noble houses to create a superior being, a powerful male Bene Gesserit, whom they call the Kwisatz Haderach. All this starts with Valya Harkonnen, as she is the person who creates the order as it is.

In the beginning, though, they weren't known as the Bene Gesserit, and were confined to a single planet named Rossak. The local flora is extremely rich, and produces the Rossak drug, a hallucinogenic substance that the Sisterhood of Rossak used as a precursor of the spice mélange to achieve their required levels of prescience. Valya starts her career as a student of Mother Superior Raquella Berto-Anirul, who, unknown to her, is actually a granddaughter of Vorian Atreides. She and Sister Dorotea are Raquella's best students, and are quickly initiated into the use of the Rossak drug, but Valya only pretends to use it, so she can first observe what its effects really are. Dorotea takes it, achieves prescience, and becomes the second-ever Reverend Mother. However, the Sisterhood still used computers for archival purposes, and this practice had been forbidden since the end of the Butlerian Jihad. Valya and Raquella destroy the machines, but Emperor Salvador Corrino still disbands the Sisterhood, some of them relocating to the planet Wallach IX.

This causes a schism in the Sisterhood. Some of them remained on Rossak under Emperor Salvador's watchful eye, and became known as the Orthodox Sisterhood, led by Reverend Mother Dorotea. Mother Superior Raquella attempts to placate both factions, but is only able to do it on her deathbed, when she calls both Valya and Dorotea to make them both co-Mothers. They accept, but Valya soon turns the tables. After she took the Rossak drug herself, Valya developed the Voice, the Bene Gesserit mind-control practice that is widely used in the Dune movies and novels. She uses the Voice on Dorotea, commanding her to commit suicide, thus becoming the sole Mother Superior of the Sisterhood.

As the Mother Superior, Valya Harkonnen is the person who effectively gives the Sisterhood a broader mission. She starts by renaming the order, now called the Bene Gesserit. She also sets up a Mother School, where new sisters are trained in what will become known as the ways of the sisterhood from a very young age. That's also when the idea of the eugenics program is first put into action, as a way of always keeping the Bene Gesserit behind the powers that rule the universe. Little did Valya know the Kwisatz Haderach would eventually be created by crossing Harkonnen and Atreides genes, a notion she would probably hate.

Dune is available to watch on Max in the US.

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