Aspects which didn’t matter until much later if you count Paul’s resurgence, and which resurgence involved some pretty exotic factors I can’t really blame the Harkonnens for missing.
There’s a passage where the Baron has pretty clearly been handed the Idiot Ball by Herbert, because he gets direct evidence that the Fremen are superior to the Sardaukar and dismisses it for specious reasons.
There’s also some question in my mind how the Baron missed the reason the Emperor was helping him (Leto had trained a fighting force getting close in strength to the Sardaukar).
Calling it an Idiot Ball is a little harsh. If his prior was that Fremen were pretty worthless, and then a unit of supposed Fremen—who conveniently have Hawat among them—defeat Sardaukar, it’s perhaps easier to explain it by supposing Atreides soldiers wearing Fremen clothes (in fact some of them were just that, since the Atreides group under Hawat did join these Fremen) than to suddenly decide the natives were equal to the Imperium’s most elite fighters. Especially since the Baron had just done something similar, letting Sardaukar fight in Harkonnen uniforms.
Rereading that passage, I was also discounting that Vladimir was getting this info from Rabban, who he doesn’t have strong reason to believe (although he did ask some penetrating questions). So it may be a little harsh.
There’s a passage where the Baron has pretty clearly been handed the Idiot Ball by Herbert, because he gets direct evidence that the Fremen are superior to the Sardaukar and dismisses it for specious reasons.
There’s also some question in my mind how the Baron missed the reason the Emperor was helping him (Leto had trained a fighting force getting close in strength to the Sardaukar).
Calling it an Idiot Ball is a little harsh. If his prior was that Fremen were pretty worthless, and then a unit of supposed Fremen—who conveniently have Hawat among them—defeat Sardaukar, it’s perhaps easier to explain it by supposing Atreides soldiers wearing Fremen clothes (in fact some of them were just that, since the Atreides group under Hawat did join these Fremen) than to suddenly decide the natives were equal to the Imperium’s most elite fighters. Especially since the Baron had just done something similar, letting Sardaukar fight in Harkonnen uniforms.
Rereading that passage, I was also discounting that Vladimir was getting this info from Rabban, who he doesn’t have strong reason to believe (although he did ask some penetrating questions). So it may be a little harsh.