ATREIDES, ALIA, COME ABOMINAZIONE

The Bene Gesserit were the first to refer to the daughter of Lady Jessica and Duke Leto Atreides as "The Accursed One." Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam in 10193 told the Bene Gesserit General Council of the existence and nature of Lady Jessica's second child in a report which caused great consternation. The first reaction of the B.G. hierarchy was to order secret assassinations of both mother and daughter in spite of the enormous risks involved. More rational thought prevailed, however, and the Sisterhood decided on a safer course. They would undertake the study of this Abomination while wooing her mother back into the ranks. In this way, the precious genes the Bene Gesserit had cultivated for so many centuries need not be thrown, uselessly away, and studying Alia might provide them with information they would need to destroy her.

A number of B.G. spies (the Princess Irulan being the most public and therefore least effective of them) were introduced into Muad'Dib's household following his defeat of Shaddam IV. Posing as retainers, these spies remained close to the Lady Alia for many years; some of them served her during her years as Regent, staying with her until her death in 10220. Their observations, along with those of various Reverend Mothers who came into contact with the Emperor's sister during her lifetime, provided the basis for the Report on Alia Atreides. The Report led to the Bene Gesserit Judiciary Council decision in 10211 to declare Alia an "Abomination to be Abhorred." The overall tone of the report is condemnatory:

Had the Lady Jessica arranged the birth order of her child as she was supposed to do, the question of Abomination would never, however innocently, have arisen. The fetus she was carrying in 10191 was to have been male, not female.

The document saves the bulk of its condemnation for Alia herself, however. The Sisters who assembled the final draft of the Report after Alia's death were unanimous in their opinion that Alia Atreides willfully chose Abomination's way for herself, spurning all attempts to save her humanity:

Much has been made of the effect her isolated position had in shaping Alia's destiny. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that it was her pattern to choose isolation. Even Lady Jessica recalls times from her daughter's childhood in Sietch Tabr when Alia took herself off to the desert, away from her companions, in order to listen to her voices within.

Such instances occurred with increasing frequency as Alia grew older until, as reported by Princess Irulan, she absented herself from her brother and the rest of the Court whenever her presence was not commanded. Following her elevation to the Regency, the public record indicates that she was unavailable except for official duties, such as greeting pilgrims and sitting in judgment of cases brought to her for trial.

During the same years in which she held herself aloof from family and friends, Alia indulged in massive doses of melange, ostensibly for the purpose of broadening her prescient vision. Since we have reliable accounts of her confession that she lacked her brother's prescient ability, and that the spice-trance most often failed her, it seems reasonable to assume- that her purpose in entering the spice-trance with such regularity was quite different from that stated.

The same drug which had initially keyed her sensitivity to her ancestral voices could be depended upon to keep those same voices from becoming blurred or unavailable. Alia's heavy melange consumption was just another means of maintaining contact with her internal advisors.

(The Bene Gesserit were not alone in this view. Bronso of Ix, in The Atreides Imperium, dismisses Alia as "a self-made disaster." A similar opinion is held by Lors Karden, author of Truth and Fancy in the Oral History, published some eight hundred years after the B.G. Report.)

Alia's actions during her Regency are depicted in the Report as those of a power-hungry woman aided by the memories of generations of ambitious rulers and princelings. Her every maneuver, including her marriage to the first Duncan Idaho ghola, is seen as having been performed in order to solidify her own position, and her manipulation of the children in whose names she ruled is declared the most devious maneuver of all:

Not content with having destroyed herself she set about to lead her niece and nephew into similarly destructive ways. Since the most direct way of achieving this goal involved the children's becoming enmeshed in their ancestral memories, Alia continually tried to interest them in the spice trance.

The Regent's suicide relieved the Sisterhood, and their Report carries this tone despite the Lady Jessica's vigorous attempts to change it (Jessica's contribution to the final report was her last act of involvement with her former Sisters):

The kind of ruler Leto II will become cannot at present be known. He has undergone a strange transformation that we do not fully understand, and the danger of his following his aunt's path must still be present, regardless of his assurances of the contrary.

That is unimportant at the moment. Of far greater importance was the freeing of the Imperium from the control of the Lady Alia. Had it not been for her death-reported by witnesses on the scene as an obvious suicide, perhaps as a result of a final takeover by her inner voices- she could have continued to rule for several centuries by regenerating her cellular structure. As with all Abominations, the only cure is death.

The Report concludes here, but an appendix indicates that the Sisterhood had already begun investigations of two other possible Abominations: Leto II and Ghanima.

Further references: R.M. Lucius Ellen Callen and R. M. Hallus Deborah Seales, eds., Report on Alia Atreides, Lib. Conf. Temp. Series 169; Bene Gesserit Judiciary Files, File No. 2078475, pp. 2889-2999 (available only upon application to the Bene Gesserit).