Chapter Text
Paul Atredies does not visit Princess Irulan in the days before their wedding. Neither does Muad’Dib, or the Emperor, or even the Lisan al-Giab. It wouldn’t be quite right to say she waits patiently. She is confined to the quarters allotted to her. She eats her meals alone and does not ask the guards questions the few times a day they open her doors. She runs the bath twice a day, mostly to obscure the sound of her own voice.
“He isn’t trying to drive me insane. He doesn’t know what to do with me. It’s easier to keep me here.” She closes her eyes and and covers her face with her hands—an appearance of distress but in reality a tactic to obscure her lips from spying eyes. She isn’t foolish enough to think she has total privacy, even in her bath. She also knows that if she doesn’t speak, doesn’t keep herself sane, doesn’t count the footsteps by her door and the ticking of her stomach, her mind will be another casualty of Muad’Dib’s Holy War.
She recites the things she knows about Paul, careful to differentiate between the things she suspects and the things she knows. She knows where he was born, can name his lineage in 5 generations on both his maternal and paternal lines. She knows they are 4th cousins once removed; their great- and grandmothers were sisters, though she suspects he does not know this. She knows Jessica defied the Revernd Mother in order to bear Leto Atreides a son. She knows Jessica has been training him in the Weirding Way, she knows he has the Voice. She suspects he has been training in secret for many years, perhaps his whole life. She knows he is proficient in both combat and politics, if his tactic in both is to strike with brutal confidence. She knows he is marrying her for politics. She knows it.
She knows when her lady’s maid is finally brought to her that it can only be for one thing—the wedding. They do not speak aloud; both know that if they weren’t being observed before, they certainly are now. Irulan does not ask where her maid has gotten the luxurious white gown that hangs in her dressing room the next morning. She wonders, fleetingly, if her seamstresses have spent the duration of her captivity making her wedding dress.
She isn’t allowed to see anyone else before the ceremony, not even her father. It is him, alive, that brings tears to her eyes when the large doors are heaved open to the cavernous hall. It is him she walks towards as her heels click loudly on the smooth stone floor. The elaborately-beaded veil and eerily fresh bouquet of flowers clasped between her hands prevent her from wiping her tears, but she is not sure anyone present even cares enough to notice. She recognizes hardly any of the guests, certainly not the diplomatic delegation she’d have expected for the wedding of the Emperor of the Known Universe. Shaddam keeps his eyes locked on his daughter like she is the only thing in the universe that matters. And maybe, just maybe, he is right. Irulan senses a reverence in the room, almost palpable in the rapt attention focused in on her, weightless despite the yards of fabric, being held by two silent attendants. On the long walk up the artificially-chilled aisle, Irulan thinks nothing, looks only at one face she'd known all her life, and yet learns everything.
When she reaches the glass altar, she looks briefly upon her promised spouse, greets his mother—the Lady Jessica—with a plainly cold glare. Though they are both Bene Gesserit, they share no sisterly communion. And just as her father delivered her gaze onto her new Emperor, he takes and then relinquishes her hand, placing it on the open palm of her new Husband. Irulan tries to will the moment to extend into infinity. For one split second, gratitude blooms in her chest, for the slim moment of her father's fingers under her own, smooth and soft and wrinkled and stiff. She hopes she will be able to remember this moment for as long as she may live.
When her father gives her away, when she is finally delivered, it's a moment almost too complex for human understanding. The man she sees is beautiful and cold and tortured and magisterial. When they kneel, Irulan wonders if it feels as much like damnation to him as it does to her.
“Will you, the Princess Irulan of the House Corrino, take the Emperor Paul Muad’Dib of the House Atreides, to be your lawfully wedded husband?" The Judge of the Emperor's Court asks when the Fremen priestess has wrapped their clasped hands in a brilliantly blue women scarf.
“I will.” Irulan looks at the Judge, who she has known for a decade. Her face is still cloaked in the strands of beaded lace, so she risks a glance across the ocean of mystery. Even turned dutifully away from her, his blue-on-blue eyes are striking. His curls are smooth and loose, pushed back over his high forehead, sloping in dark, deep waves into the stiff black collar of his jacket.
"Will you promise to honor, comfort, and love him as long as your both shall live?”
“I will.” His hand is cold and still against hers, but rougher than she might have expected. His other hand is pressed tightly into the small of his back, counterbalancing the kneel. And there's something about his posture, about the piping on his cuffs, the sharp corner of his elbow, that makes her realize suddenly and all at once that Paul is wearing his father's military uniform.
“And will you obey him in all matters, as your husband and Emperor?”
“I will.” She has no other role but to say this, no other way to save her father's life if not to say these words. And so she says them, and Paul repeats them—save obey with “protect.” A deep and curious fear sets itself into Irulan’s ribcage when she wonders if he means it. After they have agreed three times and are blessed three times, they are declared married. She has said not but six words, met her husband precisely once, touched him precisely once, and they are married. The Herald plays the Emperor’s flourish and everyone in the room rises from their seats to kneel in front of the couple. Paul offers her his hand this time, instead of receiving it from her father, whose head is bowed so deeply she cannot even see his face as her new husband escorts her down the aisle. Half-way down, they stop. Irulan does not look, but she feels her attendants return to the train of her skirts, lifting and fluffing them. Paul shifts his body slightly and looks expectantly, holding her hand ever so slightly higher. Just a fraction of her eyebrow raised, a monetary glint in his eyes, and the battle has been fought and won and lost. Irulan folds, collapsing her body into her skirts until her back knee hits the floor. Never in her life has Irulan needed a hand up from a curtesy before. Never in her life has Irulan been forced into subservience. Never in her life has Irulan been the subject of her husband.
Paul escorts her to a small sitting room and suddenly the two are alone for the very first time. He releases her hand and turns towards her, taking half a step forward and raising his hands. She doesn’t breathe, doesn’t move, doesn’t blink as he carefully pulls the veil back from her face. His hand is so close to her cheek she can feel the warmth of it. So close they are almost touching. Almost.
“Hello.” He retreats and offers her a seat. She considers him, but complies.
“Hello.” He pours her a cup of a tea from a prepared teapot, with a design she recognizes from his coat of arms.
“My apologies for all the security. It’s been a sensitive few days.” She watches his hands intently, epically poised, articulating their shared training beautifully. It is partially a wonder the same ruthless warrior who terrorized her House just days earlier is still ever the diplomat. Ever the Bene Gesserit.
“I’m sure. Have things gone well with the Great Houses?” They’ve gone well enough. Arrakeen has not been bombed into oblivion. They’re both still alive. She does wonder if perhaps that fact has been in more peril than she assumed.
“There is still opposition. But I imagine not for long.” His words send the notion of a shiver through her spine, though her body remains completely still. “Are your quarters to your liking? Is there anything else you require?”
“Staff. I’ve thus far only been allowed to see my lady’s maid and with far too little time for preparation. If I am to receive Court I will require more attendants.”
“Your seamstress is dead. I’ll arrange for you to interview replacements.” She receives the news with the same passivity as it is delivered, though she suspects the pain will lodge itself deep within her later, twisting further with all the unknowns surrounding the circumstance.
“Will I be meeting with Lady Jessica?” Though they are sitting, Irulan can tell from the gentle stutter in his fingers as he brings the teacup to his lips she has put him on his back foot.
“I am not the keeper of my Mother’s diary. She sees who she wants to.”
“Of course.” They are quiet a moment, drinking their tea and assessing one another.
“I did not have the opportunity to get you a wedding gift, please forgive me. What would you like?” It shouldn’t be a strange question, not really. After all, they have both known their whole lives their marriages would be arranged, strategically picked for the sake of progeny and politics and power. Surely, neither of them would have expected to know their spouse particularly well before the wedding, and certainly it would be expected for him to give her an extravagant wedding gift. And yet, Irulan finds it hard to come up with a material desire to the man who ended her family’s legacy and very nearly killed her father right in front of her.
It takes her too long to respond. She knows he sees the contempt on her face, the shock warring with vengeance. Perhaps they are both surprised to find one thing conspicuously absent: fear.
“A chess table.” She sets her tea cup down and her bangles tinkle together. He takes another sip and then smiles.
“A game of strategy.”
“A game of war.” He is still holding his teacup, but her hands have folded themselves against the raised threads lines weaving themselves this way and that through her dress. It isn’t a language she recognizes my sight or by feel, but she is certain there is meaning in it. “My father and I played.”
Paul seems to be in his element as he greets, receives, and introduces. His mother is introduced first, as the Reverend Mother. Then, to his sister, Alia.
“She is most excited to meet you, Your Highness.” Lady Jessica smiles sinisterly as she rubs her stomach, the beads of her elevated headdress tinkling as she tilts her head forward. Irulan cannot bring herself to smile, so she inclines her head just a few degrees, the respectful gesture enough to shuffle Lady Jessica out of view.
Paul’s loyalties are clear in the order of the presentation of his closest advisors to his new bride.
“Your Highness.” His most trusted Fremen advisor, a middle-aged man named Stilgar, greets her with reverence uncharacteristic of his people. Clearly, his reverence for the Lisan al-Giab extends even to her. He is followed quickly by the only other Atredies survivor: Gurney Hallock.
“Gurney!” Paul greets him with a genuine smile and open arms, despite the table between them. Gurney reciprocates with a hinged bow.
“My Lord. Your Highness.” He then bows equally to her, something notable for their unequal titles.
“Gurney has known me since the day I was born—,” Paul addresses Irulan.
“Long before then! I trained your father, too.” Gurney interrupts Paul, something that ignites a small ripple in Irulan’s composure. She’d been briefed the Atreides tended to be more casual, more intimate with their courtiers, but she was not quite prepared for it so openly. She wondered, dimly, if it was why Leto had never thought it important to marry Lady Jessica. Irulan listens for a few minutes to anecdotes of her new husband’s youth; poetry that speaks of a different time, a different World, a different Paul. She wonders, dimly, how long it has been since either of them were ever truly children.
“Don’t take it personal,” Paul whispers conspiratorially when Gurney walks on, "my mother will always be the Lady of the House to him.” She gathers from his affectionate tone that Gurney is given a pass on Paul’s official title out of familial history.
Irulan notes carefully the names, titles, and unspoken messages of each of the received, though people seem to occupy themselves by the time food and drink begin to flow. They are seated at a long table at the front of the hall, alone, as the rest of the guests mingle and dance. Unseen musicians pipe in from a balcony near a coupala at the top of the room, but Fremen soon begin to join in, crooning in their native language and passing an ornate hookah filled with Spice Melange. The contraption makes its way to their table several times, but each time Irulan respectfully declines with a shake of the head.
“You will not partake?”
“You are not,” she replies evenly, “so I should not.”
“Is that right?” She turns to look at him, sensing his slight smirk. In another life—in the world that should have been—he would have made an excellent duke. “Well, I am very sensitive to the psychoactive components.” Irulan does not look away from him, but his eyes glint like he is teasing her. About what, she isn’t quite sure.
“We should do this again.” Paul turns back to his audience and smiles, raising his hand in an approving gesture to a comrade on the dance floor. “When this War is over, we should do this again,” he motions his index finger in a circle, “but with a proper guest list. Get all the Great Houses, your sisters.” This tactic, at least, she is prepared for, and so does not react to the invocation of her sisters.
“You intent to keep me as your wife when this War is over?” She knows neither of them truly believe this War will ever be over.
“Irulan. Did you not listen to me early? You are my wife; we are bound. For now and as long as the universe shall stretch.” The use of her first name unnerves her. Few people have ever called her that, certainly none as young and bullish as Paul Atreides.
“Is that what you will call me, Irulan?”
“What would you have me call you?” This time when he turns toward her, it is different. As if he is sucking the air and light out of their vicinity. He is closing their conversation off, not displaying it. His fingers are steepled near his face and his eyes and shadowed and close to hers.
“If you call me Wife, I will call you Husband.”
“And if I call you Princess?”
“I will call you Emperor.” She expects him to demand she call him Emperor at all times, to make of show of her obedient subservience like he had at their wedding. But instead, just the slightest hint of smile flirts in his cheeks.
“Will you call me Muad’Dib?”
“Do you prefer it?”
“To Paul, yes. To Emperor, no.”
“To Atreides?” His eyes snap to hers and his jaw sets.
“Your father made quite sure all Atredies are dead as I remember it.”
“And yet, you live.”
“Indeed.” He sits back then, presumably satisfied, and scoops up his glass of wine, cradling the bowl and slipping the entire glass down his throat.
“Will you call me Lisan al-Gaib?” His mouth is at her ear in an instant, so close the hairs on her neck stand on end at the heat of his breath.
“Will you call me Empress?” She straightens but does not turn to him, looking straight ahead.
“No.” He sighs, but before the breath has time to hit her skin he is standing, his Herald announcing his departure. Irulan takes her cue as the Herald then begins her own name, punctuated with “Wife of Lisan al-Giab.”
In her chambers, the lady’s maid helps her to undress and draws her another bath. When she emerges, a new white nightgown and robe have been left for her, embroidered with the Atreides’ crest over the breast. She puts them on without question.
“I will reamin just down the hall, your highness. Send for me as soon as you have need.” Irulan understands her meaning and nods.
She paces the room in bare feet, climbs into her bed, lays on top of the covers, tries to read patterns in the bedsheets with her fingertips. But Paul Muad’Dib does not come. Finally, after what must be nearly half the night, she hears footsteps outside her door. She stands, smoothing the bedsheet she had been toiling with and striding into the receiving room, robe open to the nearly translucent gauze beneath. This is how he wanted her, after all. But the footsteps simply pass and in a moment of uncharacteristic id, Irulan rips the robe off her shoulders and throws it to the ground, erupting in a primal scream as she storms back into her bedchamber, literally tearing the nightdress off until it lays in a heap by the end of her bed. She pounces onto the huge, fluffy thing and punches and kicks the pillows until she is panting for breath.
I’m playing by the rules, Paul. I have not fought you, not once. She seethes until the dawn finally breaks behind the heavily tinted windows. She must sleep, for a few hours at least, for when she awakens, her maid has come in and tidied her outburst. A new set of clothes hang just behind the cracked door to the dressing room.
“My Lady.” The maid bows as Irulan sits up, pulling the sheet up to her bare chest. “You did not send for me last night.” She whispers as she turns down Irulan’s bedclothes, helps her out of bed.
“I had no need.” Irulan catches a glimpse of her naked body in a reflection from the open bathroom and reflects only upon the fact her hair needs to be combed.
Irulan does not assume the roles of a wife of a illegitimate Emporer. She does not even resume the role of a Princess. She is, at best, a Lady of the Atredies Court on Arrakis. She is permitted a staff, all unknown to her accept her maid. She takes meals with her Ladies and is sometimes called upon by other courtiers, but never for conversation, always for ceremony. She still does not see her husband. She is dressed and undressed and bathed and clothed again. She is paraded about and permitted to play chess, but not with her father. When she asks, she is permitted use of the library. She reads some, but mostly she searches. For clues. Signs. Patterns. Weaknesses. Explanations. She bides her time and gathers an army of information.
When her horde of study is full, she decides to end their little honeymoon. After dinner, when she is expected to retreat to her quarters for the evening, she instead emerges urgently.
“Get the Emperor’s Guard Chief. It is of the utmost importance. Get Gurney!” She cries desperately to the young Fremen standing guard at her door. It takes only a handful of minutes before Gurney Hallek comes bounding down the hall in his squat run and his creased face.
“Your Highness,” He bows perfunctorily “what is the matter?”
“I want to speak to my husband.”
“You Highness, I thought—,”
“I know he is busy. I do not know what he does all day, but, I suspect one has to make appointment to see him, yes? Make me an appointment then.” He seems conflicted more than confused. “I have caused no trouble, put up no fuss. If I must be on my husband’s schedule to see him, then on his schedule I will get.” She intends to smile sweetly at the end, to put up a good show of being the good wife. Bur she cannot quite manage it. Instead she stares dead ahead, nothing else in her entire world but her needing a meeting with Paul.
“Yes, Your Highness.” The man bows deeper this time and backs out of the room.
The following day, Paul makes an unannounced visit during lunch. Or rather, a previously unknown visit, as nothing the Emperor does nor anywhere he goes is truly unannounced.
"The Most Great and Honorable, His Royal Majesty Paul Muad'Dib, Emperor of the Known Universe, Duke of Arrakis, Heir to the Great House Atreides, Lisan al-Giab." His title is long enough that it gives the congregation time to rise, the Fremen time to assume prayer disposition, and for Irulan to assess her response. She rises, but stands tall.
"Ah! My Lady Wife!" He strides easily towards her and smiles the roguish smile that makes her want to wince. "I heard," he sets his fingertips on the tabletop and leans towards her over the table, "you wanted to speak to me." His eyes glint as he smirks privately, ostensibly just for the two of them.
"I had hoped to speak to you in private." Irulan balances her fingetips on the table but resists the urge to mirror his lean. It is a long, tense moment as husband and wife stare at each other. impossibly, Paul leans forward more, his hands sliding flat for balance, his hips nearly pressed into the table.
"Then come to my chambers tonight." The sound of his voice sparks heat and chill in equal parts. His is playing with her, he is purposely embarrassing her, he is performing. She refuses to match his demeanor, refuses to play his game in public like this.
"Now," Paul gestures without looking, "if you don't mind, I'd like to stay for the meal." He smiles and Irulan resists the urge to do the same. He doesn't realize, but he's made a crucial flaw in his performance visible to her. His hand flinched before he motioned for the chair. He glanced around the room before heading for her. He entered too soon, before his proclamation was finished. He isn't used to this, isn't as practiced as he wants—needs— his followers to believe. Perhaps he wouldn't have made such a good Duke after all, Irulan thinks.
She watches as he sits down, effortlessly grabs a roll of bread, tears it in two with his fingers. The assembled people shuffle back to their seats, slightly uncomfortable and unsure of their roles in this little play. Irulan can sense their attention and knows that if they weren't so singularly, almost obscenely, focused on her reaction to her husband, all her courtiers would be falling over each other to ingratiate themselves to Muad'Dib.
She follows, finally taking her seta and dropping her gaze only after she in confident she has won more than she's lost. Had she known he would give away so much so easily, she wouldn't have wasted so much time in the library. Still, it is something to add to her arsenal: he isn't as comfortable with the attention the performance brings as he would like to be. He doesn't understand the importance of the script he's enacting, not really. He still thinks himself, still thinks Paul, to be the primary actor in his life. And yet, his hubris is lethally dangerous. Perhaps my father was right to behead the Atreides serpent before it grew another head.