Farad'n Corrino

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Farad'n Corrino is a fictional character in the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert, featured in Children of Dune.

Farad'n's mother is Princess Wensicia Corrino, the third daughter to the former Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV; his father was Count Dalak Kenola — apparently a relative of Count Hasimir Fenring — who was killed in a suspicious ornithopter accident in 10,204 when Farad'n was four years old.

Unlike his mother and the other members of the Imperial House Corrino before him, he prefers history and books to the idea of becoming an Emperor.

Farad'n is aware of his mother Wensicia's plan to assassinate Leto Atreides II and Ghanima using two trained and mechanically-controlled Laza tigers.

The tigers are later killed by Leto and Ghanima, and Leto uses the opportunity to escape from his aunt Alia Atreides (who has been co-opted by the ancestral memory-persona of her malevolent grandfather, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen) by faking his own death.


Ghanima uses self-hypnosis to actually believe Leto was killed to avoid discovery by Bene Gesserit Truthsayers. She promptly vows to kill Farad'n, believing that he had masterminded the death of her brother.

In the meantime Duncan Idaho and Jessica Atreides are delivered to Wensicia on Salusa Secundus at the request of the mysterious The Preacher, where Jessica teaches Farad'n the Bene Gesserit prana-bindu training just as she and Irulan taught her grandchildren.

In the end Jessica succeeds in making him the second male Bene Gesserit in history (after her son, Paul Atreides), which also causes a rift between Farad'n and his mother; this results in Wensicia's banishment and Farad'n assuming the powers of the Imperial House Corrino.

Alia tries to use Ghanima's vow of kanly to kill Farad'n, by arranging for a false marriage between the two when she knows that he will be killed by his would-be wife.

Farad'n is saved by the reappearance of Leto II, clad in his new sand trout skin.

On coming to power, Leto confronted and exiled his aunt into a mad suicidal condition by enslaving Farad'n and proclaims him as his scribe and historian and renames him 'Harq al'Ada', or the 'breaker of habit'.


Though Farad'n lost his chance to Leto who became the reigning Padishah God-Emperor of the Known Universe; he was the sire of future generations of Atreides through his embittered relationships with his stepcousin and his sister-wife; this bloodline is the one Leto will tend over the next three and a half millennia.


In Children of Dune, many of the chapter epigraphs are from the later writings of Farad'n (as Harq al'Ada) in his role as Royal Scribe, chronicler of the reign of Leto II (as Princess Irulan Corrino was a difficult match for Paul Atreides).