Author's Note: This is the result of me partaking in the Obscure Fandom Challenge with my opponent Lapsed judgement (a great writer and equally great idea bouncer). The fandom I was given was Dune, a series I knew nothing about and continue to know nothing about. My apologies if the characterization isn't very good, but I did my best with the time I had. Turned out more introspective from an outsider's point of view than I thought it would. I hope you enjoy the story!
Arnami Chal hadn't even known that the Emperor had been overthrown and that leadership had changed until nearly a week after the fact.
The eldest daughter of the Chal family and a single maid amongst thousands of staff, it wasn't surprising that it took time for the news to reach the workers' ears, and to be honest she didn't spare much thought to the change. She still had her job since the coup had gone amazingly smoothly, and the politics of the aristocrats had never garnered much interest from her. For all that her fellow palace servants enjoyed learning of the scandals and latest treacheries of the nobility, Arnami had never seen much point in the rampant gossip.
But whether she wanted to hear it or not, the story of the coup and the events leading up to still reached her ears, trickling down piece by piece until the knowledge pooled together. Of course the Chal family didn't raise no fools, and Arnami was well aware that gossip tended to grow more and more outlandish the further it traveled, so she took each tale with a pound of salt as the saying went.
She had been patiently dusting the last of the statues in the main gallery when the first rumor reached her courtesy of a pair of chatting sweepers as they walked by.
The Emperor was dead, one of them had claimed, and the other had said no, he was exiled and his daughter wed to the usurper. The two cleaners had quite the spirited argument over which one was right as they drifted from earshot, and Arnami hadn't really given much thought to it afterwards. The same for the next half a dozen tales she heard in pretty much the same manner; she simply let the words flow in one ear and out the other. Or at least she had until a week later when she heard the full story, as it was, from a far more reputable source.
Arnami had known Brisen the cook since she had been a young girl of only five years, the kindly older man being a long-time friend of her father. He was an honest, soft-spoken person, and certainly not the kind to make up stories or spread lies. When he told her something, she was assured that it was the truth as he knew it, and since he was meticulous in just about every aspect the cook had doubtlessly double and triple-checked anything he was told before believing it, let alone passing it on.
It had started with Duke Leto Atreides being put in charge of the spice-mining operations on Arrakis many years ago, the cook murmured to her as she helped him wash the dinner dishes. The animosity between the Atreides and the Harkonnen was well-known even to the serving classes, and many thought that to serve the Harkonnen family was a fate worse than death. There had been many 'disappearances' and 'reassignments' among the servants of that particular house, in sharp contrast to the Atreides family. It was hard to separate rumor from truth, Brisen confided, but from what he gathered the Emperor had aided the Harkonnen house in finally crushing the Atreides.
As a result, nearly all of the Atreides house were killed in the attack, save for the young son Paul Atreides and his Bene Gesserit mother Lady Jessica, though that was not known at the time. They had joined the Fremen people in order to survive on the desert planet, or so many claimed, and after the destruction of House Harkonnen by the very much alive Paul Atreides and his Fremen army with the aid of his young sister Alia, that claim is proven true.
His voice was scarcely heard over the soft sloshing of the water and the clink of dishes as Brisen spoke of the Bene Gesserit's rumored male messiah, of how Paul Atreides was supposedly that all-powerful figure who now controlled the universe. Arnami's expression grew more and more shuttered as Brisen spoke, though she said nothing as she quietly worked and listened, lips thin in disapproval.
The cook's voice faded to silence once the story was over, and for the remainder of the time it took to wash the dishes they both kept silent. Arnami may have kept her voice quiet, but her thoughts were far from it. Indeed, they spun and chased each other around her mind like children given too many sweets.
It was true that the blame for such outrageous events could be blamed on a number of people, but the root of it wasn't the fall of the Atreides family, for all that it was the catalyst. The root of it was the Bene Gesserit, who had manipulated the legends and superstitions of the universe, and the person who thought that just because he had succeeded where others had failed that he had the right to rule over them, the people who had had nothing to do with the events that had shaped him: Paul Atreides. The sheer arrogance!
She could understand protecting your family, the Chals had always been close, but manipulating a planet's worth of people to depose the emperor to take the throne? Unnecessary, she thought. The new emperor could have simply restored his family name and executed the ones responsible for their fall, but no, that wasn't enough. Instead he seized power, hoarding it like a mythical dragon hoarded treasure by threatening to cripple all the peoples of the universe by destroying the only source of melange unless the emperor acceded to his demands. The Atreides' pride and contempt for the previous emperor greater than his compassion and common sense, in her opinion.
Paul Atreides paid no mind to the upheaval that his accession to the throne caused, she thought, the consequences it had for the common people who had nothing to do with him. While the staff of the palace might not have noticed anything different for a span of time, she admitted, the same could not be said for others of the same station, the workers and haulers and plain people. A change of leadership always brought turmoil, but what Atreides had done had doubtlessly thrown a great many businesses and governments into chaos. Threatening the spice trade alone-! Transporters and merchants and noble houses alike were all directly affected, and the ripples from that would spread far and wide, growing bigger before they could even begin to die down. And that was if Atreides would even let them die down.
It was unforgivable, and the sheer audacity of it set Arnami's teeth on edge.
She was a simple girl, really, and not so much politically savvy as possessed with a great deal of sense and a dislike of making things more complicated than they had to be. What Emperor Atreides was doing was doomed to failure and ruin, that much was clear as day, in her opinion. She could only hope that when he was toppled from his throne and cast down that he would not drag the rest of civilization down with him. She would hope, but she rather doubted he would let things get better without a fight. He had grasped power with deceit and blood and hubris, and those kinds were always loathe to give it up.
There was a reason no one should have that much power, she found herself thinking as she went about her duties the next day, and really, no one would be able to tell her that she was wrong if she ever chose to voice it.
Not that she would. Arnami Chal had no need for gossip, after all.