Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two emphasizes a canon detail drawn out in Frank Herbert’s Dune novel, making Duke Leto’s death feel more tragic on the big screen. Regardless of playing out on screens or in Herbert’s novel, Duke Leto’s death will always be devastating, as it marks the fall of House Atreides and their comparatively benign stewardship over the planet Arrakis. Up against the rival dynasty, House Harkonnen, and the contempt of the Padishah Emperor, not Leto, his upstanding reputation, nor the vast majority of his faction ever stood a chance amid the harsh universal politics of Dune.
In Herbert’s novel and Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One, Leto is ambushed by the House Harkonnen plot to win control over Arrakis, which has the full support of the Emperor and his military forces. Leto tries to assassinate the Harkonnen figurehead, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, in a last-ditch effort to level his adversaries, but the attempt fails and leads to the duke’s death. Leto’s death is heroic and heartbreaking but made subtly more tragic by the events of Dune: Part Two, in which Villeneuve accentuates a canon detail that makes the Emperor’s role in the plot considerably more terrible.
Herbert’s novel expands on the Duke much more than the confines of Dune: Part One allows Villeneuve to, which means some things about Leto in Dune are left underdeveloped by the film franchise. In Herbert’s canon, Leto and the Emperor have enough of a friendly acquaintance for the latter to admit to some admiration of the Atreides’ patriarch. Villeneuve’s movies don’t reproduce this part of the canon exactly, though Dune: Part Two insinuates that Leto and the Emperor have a previous history – even taking their relationship further – by suggesting the Emperor loved Leto like a son.
Princess Irulan reveals the Emperor’s love for Leto in her opening Dune: Part Two monologue and asserts that he hasn’t recovered from the House Atreides ambush. The admission doesn’t come straight from the source, but the sentiment within it is repeated by the Emperor when confronted by Paul in Dune: Part Two’s ending. When explaining why he spearheaded the plot, the Emperor clarifies that, irrespective of the fondness he may have felt, he had to get rid of Leto for leading with the heart over the mind; consequently, it is the Emperor’s duplicity that makes Leto’s death feel more tragic.
The two-faced Emperor is not left unpunished in Dune: Part Two. When Paul establishes his pathway to replacing the Emperor at the sequel’s conclusion, it becomes clear that the young Atreides has become the type of ruler the Emperor wished his father Leto would be. The Emperor condemned and ultimately set Leto up for death because he had been an upstanding ruler that could not be pressured or swayed toward ill-intent like the Baron of House Harkonnen could.
Thus, the Emperor denounced Leto as one who leads with emotion rather than the logic of authority. The Emperor’s perspective eventually blows up in his face, as once Paul’s powers in Dune become prescient, Paul has no choice but to lead with his mind despite what his heart tells him. Ironically, one of the first plans of action Paul carries out as a ruler who leads with his mind is in taking the throne, which is a clever and apt punishment for Dune: Part Two to bear upon the Emperor.