puts Mohiam to death, despite previous orders from Paul to spare her life. Prelude to Dune The Prelude to Dune prequel novels reveal that Mohiam is secretly the mother of Jessica and grandmother of Paul. According to the authors, this fact was pulled directly from Frank Herbert's working notes for the original Dune series. Mohiam is instructed by the Bene Gesserit to collect the genetic material of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (through conception) for their breeding program. She blackmails the homosexual Baron into fathering a child with her. When that daughter proves genetically undesirable, Mohiam kills it and then returns to Harkonnen for a second try, at which point he drugs and viciously rapes her. She exacts her retribution by infecting him with a disease that later causes his obesity. Though Mohiam kills her first child with Harkonnen, their second child is Jessica, Harkonnen's paternity having been previously established in Dune. It is also revealed in the prequels that the name given for Jessica's mother in the original novels, Tanidia Nerus, is an alias used by Mohiam, a common practice among the Bene Gesserit to conceal true parental identity. In adaptations Mohiam is portrayed by Siân Phillips in David Lynch's 1984 film Dune, and by Zuzana Geislerová in the 2000 miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune and its 2003 sequel Frank Herbert's Children of Dune. The character is played by Charlotte Rampling in the 2021 Denis Villeneuve film Dune and its 2023 sequel Dune: Part Two. Variety wrote of the 1984 film that "Siân Phillips has some mesmerizing moments as a powerful witch". Phillips said that she and Lynch both independently came up with the idea for her character's distinctive bald appearance. Emmet Asher-Perrin of Tor.com noted of Children of Dune, "There are other moments of perfect execution ... The dual conversations between Irulan and Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam—and later Jessica—are gorgeous, offering subtitles to their sign language while an entirely different conversation plays out in words." Thomas West of Screen Rant called Rampling's Mohiam in the 2021 film Dune "one of the movie's more intimidating characters". Family tree References Dune (franchise) characters Female literary villains Fictional murderers Fictional psychics Fictional torturers Literary characters introduced in 1965