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House Atreides and supporters

Duke Leto Atreides

• Guile Hero: He's not really coldblooded enough to be The Chessmaster; that's Hawat's job. But he knows how to scheme and plot reasonably well.
• Happily Sort-of Married
• The Patriarch
• Reasonable Authority Figure
• Royal Who Actually Does Something: Watching the spice mining and interviewing local figures about the management of Dune.
• Taking You with Me: He attempted to kill Baron Harkonnen using a poison gas in one of his molars that would take out everyone in the room, including himself. Unfortunately... this doesn't actually work.
• Unwitting Pawn: Being lured into taking the title to Arrakis instead of going into exile. Alternatively, his seeming mistake was a successful Xanatos Gambit of his own.

Lady Jessica Atreides

• Beneath the Mask: Type B, hidden powers.
• Beware the Nice Ones
• Compelling Voice: a Bene Gesserit power, which she also taught Paul.
• Fallen Princess
• Happily Sort-of Married: Both she and Leto consider themselves married. The only reason they don't formalize it is to keep the possibility of an alliance with other Houses open.
• Hot Consort
• Lady of War
• Let's Get Dangerous
• Mama Bear
• Mind Manipulation: Used rarely, primarily in self-defense or in a demonstration of her secret powers when such is necessary.
• Minored in Asskicking: she may major in political manipulation, but she can take down any Fremen. And remember, those are the guys that easily beat up the freaking Sardaukar! In fact she's so good that when he first meets her (and she beats him up) Stilgar is worried that in the Fremen's Asskicking Equals Authority society, she may choose to become the leader.
• Rebellious Princess: rebelling against the Bene Gesserit that is.
• Nominal Sex Slave Jessica is officially a concubine for the purpose of diplomatic convenience but in practice she is treated as a Hot Consort.

Paul Atreides

• Awesomeness By Analysis: He was good before he got to Arrakis. However once the spice kicked in his analytical prowess Took A Level In God-like Prescience.
• A God Am I : Subverted brutally.
• Blessed with Suck : While he at first seems like a near-perfect hero destined for great and noble deeds, his ultimate fate is as unglorious and miserable as it gets. Mainly because Humans Are Flawed and Humans Are the Real Monsters.
• Came Back Strong: He almost dies when he drinks the water of life, and when he wakes up he is the Kwisatz Haderach.
• The Chosen One
  • and It Sucks to Be the Chosen One... Massively...
• Combat Clairvoyance
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!
• Dark Messiah: Sort of... He wasn't really a Messianic Archetype to begin with, but kept being persuaded about it by people full of wishful thinking to the point where he started believing in being the embodiment of an idea he previously scoffed at.
• Dreaming of Things to Come
• Even Badass Demigod Warlords Love Their Mamas: Just stay away from Jessica.
• Eye Scream: He gets blinded by an atomic weapon. He can continue to see sort of.
• Fallen Hero : By the time of Dune Messiah. And he's fully aware of it.
• Galactic Conqueror: Well, he did conquer the Imperium and become its new ruler.
• Going Native
• Gone Horribly Right: The Bene Gesserit are terrified of him.
• I Have Many Names : Hoo boy...
• I Just Want to Be Normal : What he would like to be after becoming the all-purpose political and religious figurehead messiah of humanity.
• Magnetic Hero : Why the Fremen decide to follow him.
• Marty Stu : More of a Deconstructive Parody crossed with a Tear Jerker.
• Mighty Atreides
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge : They nearly exterminated his entire House. Who wouldn't be angry...
• The Atoner : By the end of Dune Messiah and in Children of Dune.
• Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes : His whole life went all over the scale at different times. Even in the first book, Dune, he goes from a very mild version of I to a genuinely scary version of V (particularly by the end of the book).
• Stop Worshipping Me! : What he honestly starts wishing for (towards most of the Fremen) since the events portrayed in Dune Messiah. For one he weeps that the strong and independent friends that he had come to love were caught up in the fever too.
• Warrior Poet / Cultured Warrior
• Warrior Prince
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds
  • Though that is mostly Because Destiny Says So.
• You Can't Fight Fate: And he can see that constantly.
• Young Conqueror
• Zen Survivor : A "living in secrecy version" in Children of Dune.
  • But since that apparently wasn't troperrific enough, Herbert combined this trope with Badass Preacher. Evidenced in a scene in CoD, where Paul cleanses the courtyard of the temple in Arrakeen from vendors selling various Muad'Dib-related souvenirs, icons and relics. The Irony is not lost to Herbert : In a clever twist, one of the objectives of the old and weary version of Paul is to actually try mocking and outright destroying the whole state religious cult built around him by the Fremen.

God-Emperor Leto Atreides II

• Achilles' Heel: Water, in large amounts.
• A God Am I
• And I Must Scream: His awareness supposedly exists in each of the sandtrout and sandworms produced from his body. In his words, he is a pearl of awareness locked in an endless dream.
• Arc Words: The Golden Path
• Aristocrats Are Evil:
• Badass Abnormal
• Biological Mashup: With sandtrout.
• Body Horror
• Brother-Sister Team: With Ghanima.
• The Chessmaster
• The Chosen One: Kwizatch Haderach.
• Combat Clairvoyance
• Creepy Twin
• Dark Messiah
• Dead Guy, Junior
• Dreaming of Things to Come
• The Emperor
• Emperor Scientist
• Foe-Tossing Charge
• Genetic Memory
• God-Emperor: The first of the two standard Trope Codifiers. Also possibly the Ur Example of the construct-title of "God-Emperor", at least in the English language.
• Holy Child: As a kid, along with his twin sister Ghanima.
• Last of His Kind: As the last of the sandworms.
• Living Lie Detector
• Lonely at the Top
• Long Game
• My Death Is Just the Beginning / Heroic Sacrifice
• Monochromatic Eyes / Technicolor Eyes
• Necessarily Evil
• Not Quite Dead
• Omniscient Morality License
• Orwellian Editor: Being a Kwisatz Haderach, has full access to his masculine and feminine genetic memory which stretches from about the year 100,000 back the beginning of human awareness. What does he do with it? He has historians burned alive for misconstruing the facts that he has personal access to. Of course, this was partly mystique-building, as he secretly rendered them unconscious first.
• Prescience Is Predictable
• Psychic Powers
• Really 3,500 Years Old
• Royal Who Actually Does Something
• Silent Scapegoat: Even the Bene Gesserit, thousands of years after Leto sacrifices himself, don't realize what it was he was trying to accomplish.
• Thanatos Gambit
• Ubermensch
• Wise Beyond His Years
• Xanatos Roulette

Thufir Hawat

• Alternate Character Interpretation: He's an idiot. See the entry in It Just Bugs Me.
• The Chessmaster
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: In the 1984 film, he is required to milk a cat for the antidote to the poison he has been administered by the Harkonnens.
• The Consigliere
• Evil Chancellor
• The Obi-Wan
• Old Retainer
• The Spock
• The Spymaster
• The Stoic

Dr Yueh

• Double Agent
• I Have Your Wife : What lead to his Sanity Slippage and eventual agreement to betray the Atreides.
• It Was His Sled : To a strange degree, almost to the level of parody. Hell, it was stated he was The Mole in the very first chapter of the book.
• The Commies Made Me Do It
• Determinator
• The Medic: Well, family doctor.
• The Mole
• Tragic Villain
• The Woobie

Gurney Halleck

An Atreides retainer and one of Paul's teachers.

• Badass Grandpa / Cool Old Guy
• Badass Normal : He sure knows his fencing.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars : His scar was made by an inkvine whip used by Harkonnen slavers. He's not evil at all, the scar is just a reminder of how much he hates the Harkonnens.
• The Obi-Wan : To Paul, but not overtly.
• Old Retainer
• Ugly Cute : Somewhat hunchbacked and with a scar on his jaw, he's a badass and friendly old mentor nonetheless.
• Warrior Poet / Cultured Warrior

Duncan Idaho

Another Atreides Retainer.

• Ascended Extra : In later novels of the series.
• Back from the Dead : Repeatedly in the later installments.
• Butt Monkey: He is reincarnated as a ghola. Again. And again. And again. And again. And killed (rather than dying of old age) only a slightly smaller number of times.
• The Casanova
• Chick Magnet: Hinted at.
• Cloning Blues
• Heroic Sacrifice : Why he dies in Dune.
• Master Swordsman : Seems to be even more skilled than Gurney.
• Old Retainer
• They Killed Kenny

Fremen

Liet-Kynes

A half-fremen Planetologist continuing his hope of bringing water to Arrakis. Temporarily appointed Judge of the Change.

• Badass Bookworm
• Emperor Scientist
• Going Native: His father went native, and took his son along.
• Heroic Vow : Bringing back water to Arrakis and terraforming it into a lush world.
• I Have Many Names : "I am accepted in both siech and village."
• Proud Warrior Race Guy
• Nature Hero
• Seeker Archetype
• Noble Savage
• Science Hero

Stilgar

Fremen Chief who Mentored Paul

• Asskicking Equals Authority : The method by which Fremen choose their chiefs, with Stilgar being no exception.
• Fremen Rescue Service
• HAD to Be Sharp
• Noble Savage : A subversion, as with the Fremen in general. He's certainly among the most noble Fremen, but even he is not without shades of gray.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy : You bet !
• Reasonable Authority Figure : He's both a friend and father figure to Paul after Leto perishes.
• Wasteland Elder

Harkonnens and Supporters

Baron Harkonnen

• The Chessmaster
• Complete Monster
• Fat Bastard: Is so overweight he needs antigravity support to move.
• Faux Affably Evil
• Depraved Homosexual
• Survivors Guilt: Averted so hard. When most of his men were killed when Leto attempted to poison Harkonnen while dying from it, his immediate reaction was joy that they had died and he survived.

Piter de Vries

• Anyone Can Die: Is taken out by Leto's attempted Taking You with Me, whose real target was the Baron. See also Contractual Immortality below.
• Awesome By Analysis
• Contest Winner Cameo / Take That, Critics!: Possibly named for the American novelist Peter de Vries.
• Contractual Immortality: Subverted in the prequels--despite appearing in the original novel, he is killed in them. Turns out that the Piter from the prequels was simply another clone of the same Mentat and the Baron ordered a replacement.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: He intended to do this, but the Baron convinced him that with Jessica it was a really stupid idea.
• Psycho for Hire
• Spell My Name with an "S": His name is given as 'Piter de Vried' in some editions of the first book.

Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen

• Badass Normal: Holds his own against the Kwisatz Haderach. Questionable how normal he is though.
• Bastard Understudy
• The Dragon
• Evil Counterpart
• The Sociopath: "On his seventeenth birthday, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen killed his one hundredth slave-gladiator"

Imperial

Count Fenring

A councellor and friend of The Emperor; an assassin. Was one of the Bene Gesserit's recent failures.

• Badass: Implied. After the Emperor sees Paul fight he concludes that Fenring would be able to take him easily even if he wasn't exhausted.
• Obfuscating Stupidity
• The Dragon
• Eunuchs Are Evil: Sort of. He is one of the most sympathetic of the villains and serves out of loyalty to the Emperor.
• Happily Married: Very much like Jessica and Leto.
• Punch Clock Villain
• Sexless Marriage : Obviously.
• My Master, Right or Wrong
• Not So Different: Even Paul admits this at the end.
• Retired Badass : Implied.
• Ron the Death Eater: Not in fanfiction, but the prequel books make him way more evil and cowardly than he was originally presented.
• Spell My Name with an "S": "Children of Dune" spells his first name as "Hassimar".

Princess Irulan

Emperor's daughter who is forced to nominally marry Paul to secure him the throne. Also provides commentary at chapter headings.

• And Now You Must Marry Me
• Author Avatar: Used to make commentary
• Fallen Princess: Well not quite, but this is closer then the others.
• Proper Lady
• Sexless Marriage
• Stockholm Syndrome: Shows a remarkable amount of devotion to Paul considering how he treated her. Not abuse exactly, but "not one whiff of tenderness" is a bit hard after effectively kidnapping her.
  • Fridge Horror: One of Irulan's biographical chapter openings mentions having to dodge multiple assassination attempts in childhood, assassination attempts that her own father may likely have been behind. As well as being raised in a royal cloister by concubines and virtually never seeing her father. Paul may never have shown Irulan any personal tenderness or warmth but by actually making her a responsible part of his household and family (remember that Irulan, not Chani, is effectively Paul's chamberlain), actually talking to her every day, and oh, not trying to have her murdered, Paul actually is treating Irulan with more kindness than she's ever known before in her life.
  • re: 'kidnapping her' -- Irulan had known her entire life that she had exactly zero say in deciding who she would marry, being a nobleman's daughter in an environment rivaled only by Game of Thrones for aristocratic levels of suck. Given that her father just lost a war and got deposed, and her family is about to be dispossessed, an offer of 'How would you like to help the new Emperor solidify his claim with a marriage of state?' is by far a superior offer to anything else she can expect in her current bargaining position, such as 'How'd you like to be a poor exile we stuff in some kind of nunnery that we can never allow to have children with anyone else ever as they might be possible rivals?', or 'How would you like your stabbed corpse to piled right next to your father's?'. She's not in Stockholm Syndrome, she's just a cold-blooded pragmatist who is fully aware that while she might not be happy with what she's being offered it is still by leaps and bounds the best possible alternative compared to anything else that could be happening.
• The Woobie: While Irulan got off far easier than an inconveniently still-alive princess after the violent overthrow of a royal house usually gets, she is still trapped in a loveless marriage with a man that she only realizes she genuinely did love after he was killed, while every ally that she should have had (her own father, the Bene Gesserit, etc.) instead openly treats her as an expendable pawn. The only person who is really sympathetic to Irulan and would actually be willing to be friends with her is the one person she hates above all else, Chani, because that's the woman who actually has Paul's love. And worst of all, she really didn't do anything to deserve any of this. It's not Irulan's fault who her father is, and while she's not exactly a nice person she only does anything even approaching wrong only once. (While she did secretly dose Chani with contraceptives she explicitly avoided dosing her with anything more harmful, even when it was strongly suggested that she should, and only went even that far because the instant Chani bears the Imperial heir Paul has no need for even a token Imperial wife anymore as the new dynasty will be secure in itself and no longer need a prop from the old one.)
  • For extra sad irony points, Chani is the person who actually suggested to Paul that he finally take Irulan to bed and give her his children, as she was unable to give him an heir. (This was admittedly before Chani found out why she was infertile, at which point she quite understandably had an urge to stab Irulan in the face for a while, but even then she eventually got over it because she understood she'd have done the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot.) If only Paul had actually accepted the offer, they could have all been happy.

The Sardaukar, the Army of The Emperor

• Always Someone Better: The Sardaukar are so good because they are trained on the Death World of Salusa Secundus. Leto (and Paul) correctly figure out that Arrakis is an even worse Death World and so its inhabitants, the Fremen, will be able to beat the Sardaukar.
• Asskicking Equals Authority
• Back-to-Back Badasses: In close combat and when outnumbered, Sardaukar are trained to fight in formations of three so they never show their backs to the enemy.
• Badass Army
• Badass Decay: By the time of the first Dune book, the Sardaukar, though still considered formidable can't hold a candle to their glory days (considered to be on the tenth Ginaz level and matching the abilities of a Bene Gesserit adept), which might explain their comparatively poor performance against the Fremen. Farad'n's Sardaukar avert this, however.
• Common Ranks: Their ranks are a combination of traditional Western ones and Arabic titles to go with Dune's cultural mix theme, such as "Colonel Bashar".
• Crazy Prepared: To the point of equipping themselves with fake toes (with stabbing implements!) and garrottes in their hair in the form of shigawire.
• Cultured Warrior : Well, Tiekanik and other higher ups are definitely an example.
• Death World: All the Sardies get a Training from Hell upbringing on Salusa Secundus, the devastated former seat of House Corrino (a wasteland planet similarly harsh and inhospitable as Arrakis).
• Evil Army : At least from the Atreides and Fremen point of view. But make no mistake - they can be cruel and thorough.
• False-Flag Operation: See Paper-Thin Disguise below.
• Our Master Right Or Wrong
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Shaddam Corrino IV sends two full legions of Sardaukar in the guise of Harkonnen soldiers to bolster their assault on the Atreides after Yueh's bertayal. The Atreides pick up on this almost immediately, recognizing the incredibly distinct and vicious fighting style of the Sardaukar. The Sardaukar even attempt disguising themselves as Atreides soldiers during the assault.
  • That last one actually works - the Spacing Guild is apparently entirely fooled by the ruse and has no idea it wasn't actually Atreides troops that sacked the Guild Bank during the confusion of the attack, and so respond by placing House Atreides under a travel ban and leaving any surviving members or troops trapped on Arrakis and unable to flee. (Of course, as the Guild Bank station chief on Arrakis was a Harkonnen agent, its entirely possible they knew all along and just pretended not to.)
• Penal Colony: Where they are trained
• Praetorian Guard
• The Spartan Way
• The Stoic: Captain Otto Aramsham, who refuses to submit under capture by Paul and the Fremen until he uses The Voice.
• Training from Hell : How they become as skilled as they are.
• Villainous Valour
• Weaponized Exhaust: The Sardaukar used this to barely eke out a victory/capture of some Fremen.
• We Have Become Complacent: For many years, the Sardukar were able to coast on their reputation as being unbeatable in combat, and thus their skills atrophied, though they were still a force to be reckoned with by the time of the first book.
• Worthy Opponent: To the Fremen, at least in comparison to Harkonnen Soldiers.