genuinely believed that their lord would not treat them unfairly or arbitrarily. Laws would be followed, rights would be upheld, deals would be upheld. No one would be asked to die for the Duke unless it was necessary and there was a justified reason. And that bought him the fanatical loyalty of his household, his troops, and his people. In a galaxy where most Great Houses ruled by fear this made the Atreides particularly hard to deal with by normal means. It was hard to find anyone to bribe in the Atreides household. The personal, sincere loyalty of the rank and file towards Leto and his family meant that putting together any kind of betrayal was far more difficult and perilous than it would be against most Great Houses. This gave the Atreides considerable advantages in the constant cold-war of espionage and counter-espionage that was a key part of LAANSRAD politics.

One of the things that keeps Dune relevant even now, however, is that Duke Leto's "Philosopher King" approach to rulership did not change the material conditions of the world in which he lived. His role on Arrakis was to ensure continuous, uninterrupted access to the Spice. The Fremen understood this. Thus while they might admire the loyalty and capability of his soldiers and consider him an ally against the hated Harkonnen, they still recognized him as a foreign oppressor come to exploit their land with little concern for their autonomy and rights.

An important theme of the story is that the Fremen were far, far more capable than anyone, even Duke Leto, suspected. Their population was much greater than anyone except Keynes knew. Their local manufacturing abilities were much more sophisticated. They had a cohesive religious and political culture under which they were able to set aside inter-community rivalries to act together against their foreign oppressors. And they were incredibly skilled fighters, maintaining ancient martial traditions of close-in knife fighting and martial arts that relied entirely on speed, agility, and reaction in a galaxy where most soldiers were accustomed to shield-fighting. There were no shields in the deserts of Arrakis - The worms could detect the vibrations created by the shields from great distances and would always come to an active shield, making their use suicidal. The Fremen, alone in the universe, fought without the protection of the shields and became commensurately more skilled as a result, exceeding all martial arts except the secret transhuman martial arts of the Bene Gesserit and a few others. The nature of combat in the Dune setting - Shields rendered artillery and most projectile weapons worthless, while lasers had a suicidally deadly interaction with shields, meant that hand-to-hand combat personal combat between relatively small, elite armies was the norm. And as the Fremen said "God created Arrakis to train the faithful".

As such the Fremen had far more agency than anyone suspected. The check on this ultimately turned out to be imperialist religion - Missionaries from the Bene Gesserit had long ago manipulated their religion to include the story of a prophesized savior in order that if a Bene Gesserit ever had to shelter among them, or any other similarly manipulated culture, she could rely on her training, education, and transhuman powers to assume an important role in the prophesies of their religion. Even then, as Paul and Jessica take advantage of this to position Paul as the prophesied Mahdi, the Fremen again show that the Galaxy has underestimated them. Rather than Paul taking control of the Fremen the culture and religion of the Fremen bind Paul's actions - In order to retain the political powers the Fremen give him he must fulfill the role the Fremen expect of him in the way that they expect it. His power and authority relies entirely on this indigenous culture, so to maintain that power he has to fulfill the role they expect him to fulfill. I don't think you could call it an anti-imperialist or anti-colonial narrative, but the germ of one is definitely there. Paul and Leto are both ultimately puppets on the strings of history, unable to change their fate as they become the focus of powerful material realities and cultural histories. Paul's burgeoning trans-human powers of pattern-recognition and prediction become literal precognition, allowing him to see and understand the future by extrapolating from current events, realizing at once all the choices he will ever make and their consequences, and also realizing that no other choices will be possible. He is essentially trapped in his knowledge of the future, the great white savior made powerless by the history happening around him. The real victors of the story are ultimately the Fremen, whose every prophecy is made true and who conquer the universe in a bloody religious campaign that results in nearly all of humanity adhering to their religion and culture. Paul is ultimately so horrified by what has transpired under his leadership that he blinds himself and, as is tradition for the blind in Fremen culture, wanders out in to the desert to live alone and presumably die.

Now, take this all with a grain of salt. It's been years and years since I've read Dune and I'm certainly reading a lot in to the narrative. It's still at it's heart a book written in the 60s by a white guy based on his perception of the politics of the Arabian Penninsula, with the Spice standing in for both access to potable water sources, and the vital importance of oil tot he world at large. I expect for a lot of young science fiction readers of that age it might have been Baby's First Imperialism is Bad, Actually, Even When It's Done By A Well-Meaning Paternalistic White Man. It had a massive historical impact on Science Fiction - Star Wars owes a great deal to it, while WH40k basically just ripped off the whole setting and shook it up in a bottle with 2000AD and some Tolkien. Every giant desert worm with no obvious ecological niche owes it's existence to Dune (Notably the entire life cycle of Shai'Hulud is explained in detail in the appendices and is quite interesting. No one since has seemed to care). A whole slew of mystical psychic psuedo-cults are just the Bene Gesserit with different outfits. It's hard to overstate it's effect on later science fiction, and that alone makes it of historical value to the science-fiction enjoyer if nothing else about it appeals.