Interesting! I think you may be reading Dune backwards. I always thought of it as book strictly against the concept of heroes, rather than as a power fantasy.
No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero. (Pardot Kynes)
Make no heroes, my father said. (The voice of Ghanima)
Consider it a steelman for the pro-hero position. Paul (& others) have all the attributes you describe, and even so, even with the benefit of prescience(!) they still make their lives miserable and the lives of everyone around them. Whether you find this a convincing argument against heroes is one thing, but I think that was the tack he was taking.
Herbert’s original publisher refused to publish Dune Messiah because he found that message so personally disturbing:
Campbell turned down the sequel. Now his argument was that I had created an anti-hero in Paul in the sequel. … the thing that got to Campbell was not that I had an anti-hero in this sense, but that I had destroyed one of his gods. (FH)
Interesting! I think you may be reading Dune backwards. I always thought of it as book strictly against the concept of heroes, rather than as a power fantasy.
Consider it a steelman for the pro-hero position. Paul (& others) have all the attributes you describe, and even so, even with the benefit of prescience(!) they still make their lives miserable and the lives of everyone around them. Whether you find this a convincing argument against heroes is one thing, but I think that was the tack he was taking.
Herbert’s original publisher refused to publish Dune Messiah because he found that message so personally disturbing: