Irulan Corrino
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Princess Irulan Corrino is a character in Frank Herbert's fictional Dune universe.
She is the eldest daughter of the 81st Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV and the Padishah Empress Lady Anirul Sadow-Tonkin Corrino, the most famous Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Proctor Superior of the Hidden Noble Rank.
She only had four younger sisters named Chalice, Wensicia, Josifa, and Rugi.
Later, she becomes the consort-in-name-only of Emperor Paul Atreides and foster stepmother to his children Leto II and Ghanima by his beloved concubine, Chani.
In the 1984 Dune movie, she was played by Virginia Madsen, and in the 2000 Dune Miniseries, she is portrayed by Julie Cox.
Upbringing
Irulan was born in 10,166 A.G. (19 years before her eventual husband Paul Atreides) and raised among the intrigues and politics of her father's Imperial Court upon Kaitain, where she received the finest of education and conditioning to make her a young lady of refinement and elegence suitable to be the eldest daughter of an Padishah Emperor and Empress of the Known Universe.
She grew up to be just such, described as willowy of appearance with fair skin, platinum-blonde hair and bright jade-green eyes.
She was also the youngest member of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood just like her mother before her, and she received training from them and instruction to follow their ways.
However, as her father would never sire a legal son with her mother, her life's fate met auspicious circumstances from an early age. Irulan's father, Shaddam Corrino IV, expected the girl to participate in his schemes to keep House Corrino's power concentrated by either making her succeed him as Empress or at the very least marrying her to a husband that would allow at the very least some retention of House Corrino's influence over the Imperium.
Her Bene Gesserit teachers too saw potential in the girl and her important position, and her training was sufficient enough (through her mother and the Imperial Truthsayer Gaius Helen Mohiam) to hopefully make her coercible at some point in the future when she would find herself in a position of power. But despite all the manipulations and expectations of others, Irulan retained a strong sense of personal identity and ambition, qualities that would cause tensions especially with her strong-willed father and Bene Gesserit would-be masters.
The Plot against House Atreides
As Duke Leto Atreides' power and influence grew in the Landsraad there was wide speculation that she could be married to either him or his son Paul to symbolize Shaddam IV's selection of House Atreides to peacefully assume the Imperial throne after his death, but the Emperor's jealousy of the "Red Duke" would lead him to orchestrate a plot to destroy him.
To get House Harkonnen to assist with this scheme, the Emperor offered to potentially to give Irulan in marriage to the heir apparent of House Harkonnen, na-Baron Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, along with the riches of the fief of Arrakis.
It was believed by Baron Vladimir Harkonnen that this union and plan would greatly assist in the establishment of a Harkonnen Empire, and this favored this arrangement. Irulan was so ensnared, and would oppose being used as such a pawn.
When the Arrakis crisis began following the execution of said plan and the mysterious Muad'Dib emerged as an effective leader of the Fremen tribes against the rule of House Harkonnen, she was further entrapped through Bene Gesserit efforts to use her as a spy against her father and by her own speculations that the desert captain was none other than a surviving Paul Atreides.
The Downfall of the Corrino Empire
When the situation finally broke on Arrakis and her father was forced to personally intervene, Irulan went with Shaddam IV and the Imperial army of Sardaukar shock troops to the desert planet to restore order and the distruped production of the spice. After her father's armies were smashingly defeated by the Fremen assault and the revealed alive Paul Atreides defeated Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in single combat, she was married to the victor and the so-called Umma Regency was set up where Paul and House Atreides would now assume power in her name.
An Unhappy Marriage to Paul Atreides
Irulan, as Princess Consort, was not originally disquieted with this new arrangement, desiring to be the mother of a new Areides-Corrino royal line with Paul and hopefully retain House Corrino's influence in some form. However, she would quickly discover that she was to be Paul's wife in name and title only, as he intended his beloved concubine Chani to bear his children and heir, essentially writing Irulan out of her desired place in history.
This resentment coupled with Bene Gesserit intervention drove her to secretly drug Chani with dangerous contraceptives that would leave the new Emperor and his love without children for twelve years.
She was productive during this time as well though, becoming a very notable historian, writing at least twenty works on Muad'Dib and recent event; and, too, keeping personal discipline in never taking up Paul's offer to discreetly cuckold him for her own pleasures.
She too would join the conspiracy against the Emperor with the Bene Gesserit, Bene Tleilaxu, and Spacing Guild as the representative of House Corrino, but her skills as a court player would never match her scholarship and her double-crossing and drugging of Chani were both found out.
Paul would threaten her banishment to the hellworld of Salusa Secundus with her family to her, but she was never so directly punished.
The Later Years
The Imperial Concubine Chani (Atreides) died of vitilgo nine hours later after giving birth to Paul's twin children, Crown Prince Leto Atreides II and Princess Ghanima Atreides, and Paul--now blind--soon thereafter wandered alone into the desert to die.
Irulan was intensely grieved by these deaths (Chani's death being caused by her druggings, and Paul's being a subsequent result); at this time first feeling a deep love for her husband that she had never realized she had.
She devoted herself to House Atreides and Paul and Chani's two orphaned children by deserting the Bene Gesserit to raise and train them personally as their foster mother.
Later, after the rise of Leto Atreides II as the Padishah God-Emperor of the Known Universe, Irulan spent her remaining years contuining her study and documentation of historical and contemporary events and would have eventually died in 20,000 A.G.
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