Reverend Mother Ramallo

Reverend Mother Ramallo is a fictional character from the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert.

Dune

Ramallo is the spiritual leader of the tribe of Fremen that Paul Atreides and his mother Jessica meet when they escape into the desert of Arrakis in Dune (1965), the first novel in the series. Jessica soon realizes that Ramallo is a 'wild' version of a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother. When she knows her own end is near, Ramallo has Chani administer the Water of Life to Jessica so she may also become a Reverend Mother, inadvertently making Jessica's unborn daughter Alia what the Bene Gesserit call an Abomination. Ramallo shares minds with Jessica, passing on her own life experience (and presumably her collective Other Memory), and then dies.

Prelude to Dune

Ramallo first appears in the Dune chronology in Dune: House Harkonnen (2000), part of the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy (1999-2001) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. In House Harkonnen, Bene Gesserit Lady Margot Fenring seeks out the Fremen on Arrakis, looking for a group of Bene Gesserit sisters working on the Missionaria Protectiva there who had disappeared in approximately 10,070 A.G. (Reverend Mother Ramallo among them).

The following quote is attributed to Ramallo via an epigraph in Dune: House Harkonnen:

We create our own future by our own beliefs, which control our actions. A strong enough belief system, a sufficiently powerful conviction, can make anything happen. This is how we create our consensus reality, including our gods. — Reverend Mother Ramallo, Sayyadina of the Fremen

In adaptations

Ramallo was portrayed by Italian actress Silvana Mangano in David Lynch's 1984 film adaptation, and by Drahomira Fialkova in the 2000 Dune miniseries (a younger version of Ramallo was played by Petra Kulikova in this TV adaptation).