House Harkonnen

House Harkonnen (/ˈhɑːrkoʊnən/ or /hɑːrˈkoʊnən/) is a powerful noble family in Frank Herbert's fictional Dune universe. The Harkonnens are featured prominently in the original 1965 novel Dune, and are also a major presence in both the Prelude to Dune (1999-2001) and Legends of Dune (2002-2004) prequel trilogies by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. The Harkonnen bloodline itself extends throughout all of the original Dune novels.

History

Original series

As the novel Dune begins, House Harkonnen is headed by the cruel yet cunning Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Human life is of little consequence to the Baron or his nephews, the brutish Glossu Rabban and Harkonnen's heir Feyd-Rautha; both are the legal sons of the Baron's youngest demibrother, Abulurd Rabban, who had "renounced the Harkonnen name and all rights to the title when given the subdistrict governorship of Rabban-Lankiveil." The Harkonnen homeworld Giedi Prime itself is an industrial wasteland with a low photosynthetic potential, its once-rich natural resources exhausted and the environment fouled with industrial pollution. The Baron himself is "the direct-line male descendant of the Bashar Abulurd Harkonnen who was banished for cowardice after the Battle of Corrin", and House Harkonnen's return to power "generally is ascribed to adroit manipulation of the whale fur market and later consolidation with melange wealth from Arrakis." A millennia-long rivalry exists between the decadent Harkonnens and House Atreides of Caladan; the Harkonnens have essentially bought their status while the Atreides are related to the Emperor by blood, and the fact that an Atreides once had a Harkonnen banished for cowardice in ancient times is still bitterly remembered some 10,000 years later.