House Corrino

House Corrino
House	Major
Symbol	Lion
Ruling Title	Emperor
Colours	Gold
Homeworld	Kaitan

This article is about the House. For the book of the same name, see Dune: House Corrino

The Imperial House Corrino was once the most deadliest and grandest Major House found within the Dune universe, and for many thousands of years the official seat of the Imperium. The official residence of the Corrino family was the luxurious tropical garden planet, Kaitain and the exiled ancestral planet, Salusa Secundus.

It was the one and only Imperial House that ruled the Known Universe from the end of the Butlerian Jihad to the rise of Paul Atreides over 10,000 years later.

The Origins of House Corrino according to the Dune Encyclopedia

The Imperial House Corrino are thought to have originated from the descendants of Octa Butler and Xavier Harkonnen.

Their descendants initially continued the heritage of the Butler name. After the negative reputation bestowed on Xavier Harkonnen following his involvement in the death of Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo, most of their descendants abandoned the Harkonnen name and took the name Butler.

The notable exception to this trend was Abulurd Harkonnen, whose actions at the Battle of Corrin further exacerbated the Harkonnen name.

Following the Battle of Corrin and the destruction of Omnius Prime, Faykan Butler and his family adopted the name Corrino as a blatant reminder of their involvement in the war against and defeat of the Thinking Machines. The events after the Battle of Corrin also saw the newly formed House Corrino capture rulership of the new Imperium.

The members of this Imperial House ruled as the Padishah Emperors of the Known Universe from the time of the Butlerian Jihad until the defeat of the 81st ruler, Shaddam Corrino IV, by "Muad'dib" (Paul Atreides) and the Fremen approximately 10,000 years later in the past or the near-future.

House Corrino's former ancestral planet is Salusa Secundus, the seat of Imperial power since the Butlerian Jihad.

Due to an atomic aggression by a renegade House, House Corrino and the Golden Lion Throne moved to the planet Kaitain.

The harsh conditions of their homeworld encouraged the survival of the strong, and allowed the Corrinos to develop the rest of the Known Universe's most-feared military units, the warrior-fanatic Sardaukar, the means by which House Corrino controlled the corruptive Galactic Padishah Empire.

Over the subsequent millenia, the Imperial House Corrino maintained a firm grip on the Empire.

House Corrino's rule was defined as absolute while one of its members sat on the Golden Lion Throne. Moreover, House Corrino maintained a large vote in the Landsraad Council, larger than any other Great House.

During their Imperial rule, House Corrino maintained arguably the most powerful army in the known universe - the Sardaukar. Through their superior abilities the Corrinos were capable of crushing any military opposition. It was said that the only way the Corrino Sardaukar could be defeated would be through the combined forces of all the Great Houses of the Landsraad.

Complacency and corruption eventually weakening the Sardaukar. That, combined with ill-judged decisions by Shaddam Corrino IV and the scheming of the Bene Gesserit, eventually saw other Great Houses, particularly House Atreides, acquire significant respect and credibility in the Imperium.

In an attempt to discredit House Atreides and retain their hegemony, the Imperial House Corrino under the leadership of Shaddam IV, devised a plan to dispose of their potential rival by ordering them to take over the planetary fief of Arrakis, and then disposing of them through their hated rival House Harkonnen, via an audacious invasion of the planet.

Initially the plan looked to have succeeded. Duke Leto Atreides I was killed, and his family abandonned in the deep desert. However, a gradual uprising by the native Fremen, led by the mysterious Muad'Dib caught both House Corrino and House Harkonnen off-guard.

After the Arrakis Revolt, House Corrino was forced to relinquish the Golden Lion Throne, after thousands of years of rule, to the Atreides family.

The Corrinos witnessed the legitimization of the Atreides rule through Paul Atreides' second marriage to Shaddam's eldest daughter, Princess Irulan Corrino.

Then the Emperor and the remainder of his family were sent into effective exile on the harsh planet Salusa Secundus, where one of his five daughters, Princess Wensicia Corrino plotted the Great House's re-emergence.

However, her plans were also foiled by the Atreides family, and her son, Prince Farad'n Corrino became the official concubine of his step-cousin, the Crown Princess Ghanima Atreides. In addition to providing the Atreides offspring that were needed for Leto Atreides II's Golden Path, he also acted as his official scribe.

This spelled the effective end of House Corrino. Although their bloodline survived, inextricably mixed with the descendants of Paul Atreides, as a Great House the Corrinos ceased to be.

House Corrino in the Prequels

In the Dune: House Atreides novel, the Crown Prince Shaddam Corrino IV and his close friend, Count Hasimir Fenring, the Imperial Eunuch, grew up on the Imperial Capital planet Kaitain, where they were plotting a conspiracy against his corruptive father, the 80th Padishah Emperor, Elrood Corrino IX because he's not getting any younger at all, and it seems that the already 157-year-old aging tyrant could rule for another 50 years.

Everybody knew that Hasimir was the diificult person whose mother, Lady Chaola Fenring was a Bene Gesserit and a personal lady-in-waiting to Elrood's fourth wife, Habla.

She only served as wet nurse to both her son, Hasimir and Shaddam; according to one source, Fenring's mother may also have been a sister to Elrood.

He did agreed to the Count's scheme to poisoning his father by using chaumurky the same way they did it to his older half-brother, the Imperial Crown Prince Fafnir Corrino I, in order to speed up his succession to the throne while the young planetologist Pardot Kynes has just arrived from his homeworld of Salusa Secundus for an audience with Elrood himself.

The old Emperor gave him the mission of going to the only known source of melange, Arrakis, in order to find out how the precious substance is produced.

It was also revealed that not only had Shaddam been complicit in his half-brother's murder but he had slipped in some contraceptives into the food of his own stepmother, Habla, so she couldn't conceive another son and rival to him.

On the other side of the galaxy, Elrood has died of being poisoned to death by slow acting chaumurky administered to him by Fenring (at Shaddam's bidding).

Shaddam has finally reached the Golden Lion Throne and is soon to be crowned Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV of the Known Universe.

He throws a grand coronation ceremony at Kaitain where he married a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother named Anirul Corrino, and invites nobles from across the Imperium, among them the new Duke Leto Atreides I and his guests, the Vernius heirs, but also the uninvited Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

Upon landing on Kaitain, Leto is taken to prison for the attack on the Tleilaxu ship.

The Crown Prince is sure that the Atreides are responsible for the attack, but thinks that it was probably aimed at House Corrino.

If anyone inspected the motivation for the attack they would discover the help the Tleilaxu got from Elrood IX, which would mean a political scandal throughout the Landsraad.

So Shaddam didn't want to tarnish his popularity, a bad start for his political career. Therefore, he freed the young Duke, allowing the Vernius heirs to remain his guests.

Shaddam is finally crowned Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe by the High Priest of Dur; for the first time in 138 years, the Imperium has a new ruler.

At the beginning of the Dune: House Harkonnen novel, Shaddam finally sits upon the Golden Lion Throne, enjoying his position as the ruler of the Known Universe.

However, his rule as Emperor is precarious at best, as his wife, the Padishah Empress Anirul Corrino, has been instructed by her Bene Gesserit sisterhood to bear him only daughters.

While he and his wife didn't have any legitimate sons at all, they ended up having only five young daughters named Irulan, Chalice, Wensicia, Josifa, and Rugi.

Shaddam was very amazed and disgreeted when Anirul had their eldest daughter, Princess Irulan trained by her noble tutors in the Bene Gesserit Weirding Way and the Prana Bindu methods.

His authority is also challenged by the powerful House Harkonnen, whose illegal stock-piling of the spice melange is of great concern to the Emperor.

In order to monopolize the spice, Shaddam and his trusted advisor and friend, Hasimir Fenring, plan to synthesize the substance with the help of Hidar Fen Ajidica, a Tleilaxu Master Researcher.

He set up laboratories to accomplish this purpose on the newly conquered planet Ix, formerly the home of House Vernius.

By the end of the novel, Ajidica told Fenring that the manufacture of synthetic spice has been a success, although the validity of his claim is highly dubious.

During the events of the Dune: House Corrino novel, the Emperor commences his Great Spice War to create a dependency on his soon-to-be-released synthetic melange, amal.

Haderach The Bene Gesserit eargerly await the birth of the Kwisatz Haderach's mother by the Duke's pregnant concubine, Lady Jessica Atreides; little do they know that things aren't going to turn out exactly how they want while Leto himself was sponsoring sponsors an assault on Ix to reclaim the planet for the renegede House Vernius.

She only gave birth to her newborn son, the young na-Duke Paul Atreides who is also a Kwisatz Haderach.

His meddling wife, Anirul has been murdered by the Harkonnen Mentat named Piter De Vries while trying to save him from being kidnapped.

This was quite a mystery for the other Bene Gesserit, who regarded Paul as a failure in the scheme to create the Kwisatz Haderach.

They could not understand why the Kwisatz Mother herself would do that, althrough the reader gets to know that the Empress's Other Memory had been deeply concerned lately when they had realised that the Kwisatz Haderach would be born a generation earlier.

House Corrino in the Dune Games

Part of the series on the Dune games
Strategy games Dune II Dune 2000 Emperor: Battle for Dune
Adventure games Dune I Frank Herbert's Dune
Cancelled video games Emperor Alliances Dune Generations Frank Herbert's Dune: Ornithopter Assault
Board game Dune (board game)
Factions House Atreides House Ordos House Harkonnen House Corrino Minor factions

Behind the Scenes

Frank Herbert did not provide detail on the origins of the Imperial House Corrino in his original Dune novels. Specific details are given in the Legends of Dune prequel novels written by his son, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson. These stories provide a comprehensive narration of the rise of the House Corrino, although they are not considered canon by some of these Dune fans.