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This article refers to elements from The Dune Encyclopedia Pages for this subject as it appears in other canons:
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The Stolen Journals are two volumes of the Journals of God Emperor Leto II, stolen from the Citadel in 13712 by Siona Atreides. For nearly two millennia, these volumes provided the only autobiographical data available on Leto II, the God Emperor.
Their theft by Siona, daughter of Moneo Atreides, was a daring exploit; no others had ever breached the Citadel defenses and escaped alive. But the price she and her companions paid for the Stolen Journals and the Citadel plans was high. Of ten rebels, only Siona survived. The others were brought down by Leto's patrolling D-wolves before they could reach safety across the Idaho River. Only one bitter satisfaction was given each of them as he or she was dragged down: each had been injected with Nyilatin, a drug harmless to humans but thought to be poisonous to the highly inbred D-wolves. If one of them fell to the animals, it might at least decrease the pack pursuing the rest. Only Siona was able to discover that it worked, and only by deduction rather than direct observation.
The rebels believed they found the books by chance. But knowing now that Nayla, one of Siona's most intimate confidantes, was actually an agent of Leto, this seems unlikely. Nayla undoubtedly informed her master that the rebels intended to infiltrate the Citadel and steal a copy of its plans for later use. But Leto, with his ridulian crystals, had no need of the less permanent plastivellum copies. The plastivellum, lighter than conventional paper copies, was several times heavier than the crystal originals, and the factor of weight suggests another theory.
Did Leto plant the volumes near the Citadel plans, knowing that Siona and her group were planning to steal them? Many of his references to Siona in other volumes indicate that he constantly tested her, usually without her knowledge. Since he knew the mid was coming, he may have seen the venture as a test of another sort: its execution would show him what kind of leader Siona might be expected to become. Could she inspire companions to follow her in what was almost certainly a suicide mission, could she get the group through the defenses and back again, could she recognize the coded Journals as items equally as important as the plans she had come to steal? (It mattered little whether Siona herself realized initially what the volumes were or not; what would matter would be her willingness to chance carrying off the extra weight).
Besides testing Siona, did Leto in fact desire the Journals to be taken and decoded? He is known to have feared that his actions would be misunderstood in times to come unless he arranged for revelations to be made. His speech with Holy Sister Quintinius Violet Chenoeh, recorded in the Bene Gesserit's papers and made public after her death, was one attempt to reveal his intentions to his subjects. This convenient placement of two of his Journals may well have been a second.
Within a few weeks of the Citadel raid, Siona had arranged for copies of the stolen books to be sent to the Bene Gesserit school on Wallach IX, to the Spacing Guild High Command (via its representative on Arrakis), and to the Inquisitors of Ix. Each group was to attempt a translation, with all results to be reported in full to Siona; their cooperation shows how seriously they regarded the effort.
The rebels assumed that the Ixians would find the cipher's key first. After all, they had provided not only the paper but the dictatel that Leto had written them with — that might seem a head start of sorts. But the Guild, approaching the problem from a direction the mechanically minded Ixians did not consider, succeeded in breaking the God Emperor's code.
Siona originally received only the Guild Key and a translated copy. After careful study of the key and the translation, she became curious enough to ask how the intricate cipher had been solved. The answer — given only after clearance from the Guild High Command — impressed even the zealous Siona with the importance the Guild had placed on solving the problem first. To achieve their primacy, they had spent much of their most precious coin: melange. The most sensitive Steersman available had been given a dose of spice equivalent to that needed to pilot a dozen heighliners. He was then told what was required of him and left alone with the Stolen Journals.
The Key was completed within the day. The Steersman, accustomed to using melange-induced prescience to pick out the optimum course for a ship, focused that same power on finding the one true solution to the cipher. The two activities were more similar than might have been expected, because Leto had used a code with several solutions, but only one — that recorded in the Key — deciphered both volumes completely and consistently.
In 13730, six years after Leto's assassination, Siona arranged for the publication of an abridgement of the Stolen Journals. That version, standard for centuries, lacked all but the most savage introspective passages and focused on the violence that often served as the foundation for Leto's Peace. A history of subjugation, it produced its desired effect by creating in its readers an overpowering anger against the inhuman monster so long dominant. One of Leto's most frequent prophecies — that he would be remembered for many generations as Shaitan — was fulfilled, as the Stolen Journals combined with the Oral History to give liberated humanity a portrait of the God Emperor as a heartless manipulator.
See also[]
Further references[]
- Radi Kharlan-Atreides, The Holy Books of the Divided God, ed. Kwin Shendal (Diana: Synonym).