Arrakeen
Arrakeen, the first settlement on the desert planet Arrakis and its long-time seat of planetary government, is the political and military heart of the world known as Dune. It is the city where the House Atreides, under Duke Leto Atreides, attempted to establish its fief, only to be betrayed and destroyed; it is also the city where his son, Paul-Muad'Dib, returned years later to crush the combined forces of the Harkonnens and the Padishah Emperor, seizing the Imperial throne. Arrakeen is thus the central stage on which the fall of one Great House and the ascension of another are played out, a place of stark contrasts between the water-rich opulence of its rulers and the desperate thirst of its people, and the symbolic prize that determines the fate of the entire Imperium.
Setting and Character of the City
Arrakeen is a smaller city than the Harkonnen-built megalopolis of Carthag, some two hundred kilometers northeast across the Broken Land, and it was chosen by Duke Leto as his seat of government precisely because it was easier to sterilize and defend. The city is dominated by the Residency, a giant anachronism of a building with buttressed walls and dark hangings, its arched ceiling two stories high with great crossbeams that must have been shipped across space at monstrous cost, as no planet of this system grows trees to make such beams. The Duke found the whole city cold, a dirty, dusty little garrison town, and the sky above it looked black and cold, so much darker than the warm blue of Caladan. The people of Arrakeen are described as prune dry and undernourished, their eyes a wash of deepest, darkest blue without any white, and the city's water-sellers cry out their mournful call, "Soo-soo-Sook!" The contrast between the rulers and the ruled is starkly illustrated by the custom the Duke abolished: guests at the Residency would ceremoniously dip their hands in basins of water, slop several cups onto the floor, and dry their hands on towels that were then flung into a growing puddle, with beggars gathering outside to get the water squeezings from the towels afterward.
The Atreides Residency and Its Perils
The Residency, formerly the home of Count and Lady Fenring, becomes the focus of the Atreides' brief and tragic tenure. It is here that the Lady Jessica is given the crysknife by the Fremen housekeeper Shadout Mapes, a blade that must never be seen by the uncleansed. It is also here that Paul Atreides narrowly escapes assassination by a hunter-seeker, a tiny sliver of metal guided by a nearby operator, which he catches and smashes against a doorplate. The house itself conceals a wet-planet conservatory, a room of massed greenery and a small fountain that uses water enough to support a thousand persons on Arrakis, a deliberate statement of power and wealth. It is in this conservatory that Jessica discovers a hidden message from Lady Margot Fenring warning that the Duke and his son are in immediate danger and that a trusted companion or lieutenant will defect. The Residency is also the site of Dr. Wellington Yueh's betrayal, where he uses a drugged dart to paralyze Duke Leto and delivers him to the Harkonnens, and where the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen later gloats over his captive before the Duke uses the poison capsule tooth planted by Yueh to kill his captors.
The Battle of Arrakeen and the Fall of the Old Order
The final confrontation of the novel takes place in and around Arrakeen. The Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV establishes his command in a giant metal hutment, a temporary lodging place for five legions of Sardaukar, erected around a starship lighter on the landing field. Paul-Muad'Dib, now the leader of the Fremen, launches his attack under the cover of a massive coriolis storm, using atomics to blast a breach in the Shield Wall and then sending his Fedaykin and the city's populace, who have been driven from their homes by the Sardaukar, to overwhelm the enemy. The battle culminates in the Emperor's surrender and his forced abdication. Paul, now the ruler of Arrakis, takes up residence in the old Residency, which Rabban had restored, and it is there that he confronts the Emperor, forces the Guild to obey him, and duels Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen to the death, finally claiming the Imperial throne and the hand of Princess Irulan in a political marriage.
Significance and Legacy
Arrakeen is more than a city; it is the symbol of the Atreides' claim to Arrakis and the center of the new order that Paul-Muad'Dib establishes. Its capture marks the end of the Harkonnen rule and the beginning of the Fremen ascendancy. The city's name, with its good sound filled with tradition, represents the hope of transforming the desert planet into a garden world, a dream that Paul promises to fulfill while also acknowledging that there will always be desert on Arrakis to train the faithful. The city's fate is thus intertwined with the fate of the entire universe, as the spice that flows from Arrakis, controlled from Arrakeen, becomes the lever by which Paul forces the Spacing Guild and the Emperor to submit. Arrakeen stands as the enduring monument to the rise of Muad'Dib, the place where the old Imperium was broken and the new one forged.
