Gaius Helen Mohiam
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Gaius Helen Mohiam is a fictional character in the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. She is a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother, and initially appears in the novel Dune and its sequel, Dune Messiah. She also has a major role in the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
Reverend Mother Mohiam is portrayed by Siân Phillips in David Lynch's 1984 film Dune, and by Zuzana Geislerová in the Dune miniseries and its sequel Children of Dune.
In Dune, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen has this impression of Mohiam:
An old woman in a black aba robe with hood drawn down over her forehead detached herself from the Emperor's suite, took up station behind the throne, one scrawny hand resting on the quartz back. Her face peered out of the hood like a witch caricature — sunken cheeks and eyes, an overlong nose, skin mottled and with protruding veins.
The Baron stilled his trembling at sight of her. The presence of the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, the Emperor's Truthsayer, betrayed the importance of this audience.
The non-canon Dune Encyclopedia (1984) by Dr. Willis McNelly invents an extensive, alternate biography for Mohiam.
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[edit] Dune
As Dune begins, the Reverend Mother Mohiam comes to Caladan to "test" young Paul Atreides before his departure for Arrakis. Having trained Paul's mother Lady Jessica at the the Bene Gesserit school on Wallach IX decades before, Mohiam now holds a lethal gom jabbar to Paul's neck. If he withdraws his hand from a box that inflicts pain through direct nerve induction, the gom jabbar will kill him instantly. Mohain explains to Paul that the purpose of the test is to discover whether Paul is "truly human", by requiring him to endure pain and still act rationally. He passes the test, and Mohiam (though still furious over Jessica's choice to disobey the Sisterhood and bear a son instead of a daughter) is somewhat intrigued by the potential she sees in 15-year old Paul.
Later, Mohiam accompanies Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV to Arrakis in her role as Imperial Truthsayer; there she is faced with Paul's four-year-old sister, the pre-born Alia, whom she calls an Abomination. Mohiam is further alarmed as she witnesses the ritual battle-to-the-death between Paul and Feyd-Rautha:
And the old Reverend Mother, watching the fight from the press of the Emperor's suite, felt herself trembling. The Atreides youth had called the Harkonnen cousin. It could only mean he knew the ancestry they shared, easy to understand because he was the Kwisatz Haderach. But the words forced her to focus on the only thing that mattered to her here.
This could be a major catastrophe for the Bene Gesserit breeding scheme.
She had seen something of what Paul had seen here, that Feyd-Rautha might kill but not be victorious. Another thought, though, almost overwhelmed her. Two end products of this long and costly program faced each other in a fight to the death that might easily claim both of them. If both died here that would leave only Feyd-Rautha's bastard daughter, still a baby, an unknown, an unmeasured factor, and Alia, the abomination.
Paul is victorious, and seeing the inevitability of the situation he has orchestrated, she compels Shaddam to give in to Paul's demands, allowing Paul to depose him and become Emperor in his place.
[edit] Dune Messiah
In Dune Messiah, the Reverend Mother joins the conspiracy to topple the rule of Paul Atreides after he ascends the Golden Lion Throne and unleashes his Jihad upon the Empire. She, along with the Tleilaxu Face Dancer Scytale, the Spacing Guild Navigator Edric and Paul's embittered consort (and Shaddam's daughter) Princess Irulan Corrino, plot to insinuate the Tleilaxu ghola Hayt into the court to weaken Paul's confidence in his prescience and thereby ruin him.
Forbidden to ever return to Arrakis, Mohiam is taken into Paul's custody when it becomes known that she is on a heighliner in orbit above the planet. Aware of the Bene Gesserit desire to acquire his genetic material for their breeding program, Paul seeks to negotiate with Mohiam. In exchange for the guaranteed safety of his concubine Chani, and the Sisterhood's acceptance of his decision to father no heirs with the Princess Irulan, Paul offers something of the utmost value: his sperm. This is a complicated proposition for Mohiam, however, because artificial insemination is forbidden in the wake of the Butlerian Jihad.
When the conspiracy ultimately fails and Scytale is killed, Mohiam and Edric are executed in 10,207 A.G. by Fremen Naib Stilgar, on orders from Alia.
[edit] Prelude to Dune
The Prelude to Dune prequel novels reveal that Mohiam is secretly the mother of Jessica and grandmother of Paul. According to the authors, this fact was pulled directly from Frank Herbert's working notes for the original Dune series[1].
Mohiam is instructed by the Bene Gesserit to collect the genetic material of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (through conception) for their breeding program (it had been previously established in Dune that he is secretly Jessica's father). She blackmails the homosexual Baron into fathering a child with her. When that daughter proves genetically undesirable, Mohiam kills it and returns to Harkonnen for a second try; at this point he drugs and viciously rapes her. She exacts her retribution by infecting him with a disease that later causes his obesity. Mohiam's second child with Harkonnen is, of course, Jessica.
It is also revealed in the prequels that the name given for Jessica's mother in the original novels, Tanidia Nerus, is an alias used by Mohiam. This name is presumably the name listed in the "open" records, as the Bene Gesserit commonly hide true parental identity.
