Leto II Atreides is a fictional character from the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. Born at the end of Dune Messiah (1969), Leto is a central character in Children of Dune (1976) and is the title character of God Emperor of Dune (1981). The character is brought back as a ghola in the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson sequels which conclude the original series, Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007). Leto also appears as a child in the prequel The Winds of Dune (2009).
Leto II Atreides is a fictional character from the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. Born at the end of Dune Messiah (1969), Leto is a central character in Children of Dune (1976) and is the title character of God Emperor of Dune (1981). The character is brought back as a ghola in the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson sequels which conclude the original series, Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007). Leto also appears as a child in the prequel The Winds of Dune (2009).
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Leto II Atreides () is a fictional character from the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. Born at the end of Dune Messiah (1969), Leto is a central character in Children of Dune (1976) and is the title character of God Emperor of Dune (1981). The character is brought back as a ghola in the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson sequels which conclude the original series, Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007). Leto also appears as a child in the prequel The Winds of Dune (2009).
Leto is the son of Paul Atreides and his Fremen concubine Chani, and the twin brother of Ghanima. Leto is named for his paternal grandfather Duke Leto I Atreides, who is killed in the Harkonnen invasion of the desert planet Arrakis (Dune) during the events of Dune (1965). Leto II is the second child of Paul to bear that name, the first having been killed as an infant by the Emperor's Sardaukar in Dune.
Leto is portrayed by James McAvoy in the 2003 miniseries Frank Herbert's Children of Dune. The character will be played by Nakoa-Wolf Momoa in the upcoming Denis Villeneuve film Dune: Part Three.
Dune Messiah
Chani dies giving birth to Leto and his twin sister Ghanima near the end of Dune Messiah. Blinded by the blast of a nuclear weapon called a stone burner, Paul is at a disadvantage when the Tleilaxu Face Dancer Scytale holds a knife over the newborns and threatens their death if Paul does not surrender his Empire to the Tleilaxu. Paul suddenly finds that he is able to see through the eyes of the infant Leto, allowing him to aim and throw a crysknife that kills Scytale.
In Children of Dune, Leto and Ghanima are nine years old. Because of the melange ingested by their mother, which causes unusual effects for the Atreides bloodline, the twins are "pre-born", meaning that as fetuses they had been awakened to consciousness and to their genetic memories; they had been born as fully matured human beings in the bodies of infants. At the start of the novel, Leto is not prescient to the degree that his father Paul had been, but he senses the test his father had faced — to embrace a prescient vision of the universe is to set the universe on that path, a terrible responsibility that comes with terrible power. At the end of Dune Messiah, Paul had forsaken that responsibility by walking into the desert — his time as the Fremen messiah had shown him that he was not strong enough to be messiah/tyrant to the universe. Leto believes that he must face the same test.
At the same time, the Imperium created by Paul is ruled by his sister Alia Atreides as regent. The horror of the pre-born—the reason the Bene Gesserit call them "Abominations"—is that they are easily possessed by the ego-memories of their ancestors. When Bene Gesserit awaken to their "other memories" in the rite of the spice agony, they are adults with fully formed personalities, and can withstand the inner assault of their forebears; the pre-born have no such defense. Like Leto and Ghanima, Alia had been pre-born, and she succumbs to the pressure under an intense dose of spice. Among her ancestors is the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, still hungry for revenge against his enemies, the Atreides. Alia is possessed by him, and unconsciously turns against the Atreides empire, plotting to kill Leto and Ghanima and to tear down the Imperium in a bloody civil war.
Independently, Leto and Ghanima both solve the problem of the pre-born. Leto constructs his own personality out of an executive committee of his ancestors; with all (the important ones) inhabiting him, none can possess him individually. Following an assassination attempt by House Corrino, Leto disappears into the desert leaving Ghanima behind. As part of Leto's plan, Ghanima hypnotizes herself to believe that Leto had been killed. The intense mental discipline needed for this self-deception builds a safe haven in Ghanima's mind for her own personality to safely develop, with the memory of Chani acting as a guardian.
Leto finds Jacurutu, a sietch that has been forbidden to anyone by Fremen law. There he faces the test his father had refused to take, and embraces prescience, its visions, its attendant power, and the terrible price it will extract — to follow his vision, Leto will become a symbiote with the sandworm, setting the universe on the Golden Path, a future in which humanity's survival is assured. After consuming massive amounts of spice, he allows many sandtrout to cover his body, the concentration of spice in his blood fooling the creatures:
The sandtrout squirmed on his hand, elongating, stretching ... becoming thin, covering more and more of his hand. No sandtrout had ever before encountered a hand such as this one, every cell supersaturated with spice ... Delicately Leto adjusted his enzyme balance ... The knowledge from those uncounted lifetimes which blended themselves within him provided the certainty through which he chose the precise adjustments, staving off the death from an overdose which would engulf him if he relaxed his watchfulness for only a heartbeat. And at the same time he blended himself with the sandtrout, feeding on it, feeding it, learning it ... He located another, placed it over the first one ... Their cilia locked and they became a single membrane which enclosed him to the elbow ... This was no longer sandtrout; it was tougher, stronger. And it would grow stronger and stronger ... With a terrible singleness of concentration he achieved the union of his new skin with his body, preventing rejection ... They were all over his body now. He could feel the pulse of his blood against the living membrane ... My skin is not my own.
This layer gives Leto tremendous strength and speed, acting as a living powered exoskeleton and also protection from mature sandworms, who mistake his sandtrout-covered body for a lethal mass of water. He calls it a "living, self-repairing stillsuit of a sandtrout membrane," and soon notes that he is "no longer human." Leto returns to wrest the Imperium from Alia and
