Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV

Shaddam Corrino is the eighty-first Padishah Emperor of House Corrino. Born to Elrood IX and Lady Fasrille Corrino, he enjoyed and endured his place in Elrood’s court, a place which provided possible Corrino heirs with both the greatest luxuries available in the Imperium together with the most rigorous training and testing imaginable.

From his earliest childhood, Shaddam was befriended by Hasimir Fenring, a distaff cousin whose shrewd and agile mind almost certainly kept the na-Emperor alive during the years of intrigue and violence which preceded his reign. Fenring possessed the ability to manipulate, without antagonizing those in power; by helping his companion to cultivate similar skills, and by giving him the benefit of his own advice, the na-Count performed a function for which Shaddam was permanently grateful.

Shortly after his friend’s assumption of the Fenring title, Shaddam was removed from court, in the company of three other aspirants, to the Corrino’s private testing grounds. The young Count’s advice is believed to be one of the factors responsible for Shaddam’s surviving the training-and-intrigue ritual administered to him there and returning to Kaitain, the sole survivor of his group, after only nine months.

The na-Emperor, as was the custom, was immediately installed as leader of the Sardaukar. His travels and duties often kept him far from court, though official reports to his father and unofficial communiques to his mother and Count Fenring regularly appeared there. Records kept by the Hegemon of the Sardaukar, as well as those of various officers set to observing the royal heir, indicate that Shaddam was an acceptable, if not a brilliant leader, and that ‘the Sardaukar’ approved of serving under him.

In 10155, during a leave on Kaitain, Shaddam was told of an assassination plot against him. The details were provided by Count Fenring, who also-provided his friend with a suitable counter-plan. Acting on Fenring’s counsel, Shaddam took action against the plotters before the entire court, thus making it impossible for any secondary intrigue to be set into motion against him without its source Geroming immediately obvious.

In addition to providing a degree of safety for the na-Emperor, this exposé served two other purposes: it made public the existence of the hunter-seeker, until then known only to members of House Corrino; it also gave subtle notice to Etrood IX that his son was aware of his own involvement in the scheme.

Following the execution of an unimportant member of the royal House, who was elected as scapegoat for the crime, Shaddam returned to his troops. In his absence from Kaitain, his father was killed, a victim of chaumurky (poison), and Shaddam IV became the new Corrino Emperor.

Like all rulers, Shaddam IV found after assuming power that many of his actions were influenced, if not dictated, by those of his line whom he had succeeded. The triangular balance of power, for example, which distributed control of the Imperium among the royal House, the Landsraad, and CHOAM, set limits on the legal power which could be exercised by an emperor. Certain writings which have survived from the period of Shaddam’s reign indicate that this restraint occasionally angered him; he preferred that greater control be available to him.

Particularly chafing, however, was a far more personal restriction, this one resulting from negotiations between the late Elrood IX and the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. In a rare dovetailing of interests, House Corrino, as represented by the emperor, and the Bene Gesserit had mingled their breeding plans. The inducements offered by the Sisterhood must have been impressive, even by Imperial standards, for the result of their bartering with House Corrino left Shaddam in the position of accepting an arranged marriage to one Lady Anuril, a Bene Gesserit of Hidden Rank. The ceremony was carried out three months after the new Emperor’s coronation.

The terms of the marriage gave Shaddam additional reason to resent its having been arranged. Only those children born by Anuril could be considered to succeed the emperor; none of those mothered by the Imperial concubines could be placed in the succession. To one accustomed to the usual wide range of choice given in selecting an heir to House Corrino, such a restriction seemed intolerable.

That the emperor chose to lose himself in the intricacies of court functions and in the pleasures of his harem may be seen as directly inspired by his matrimonial situation. The number of Bursegs, Sardaukar officers of command rank, was doubled in the first sixteen years of Shaddam’s reign, while the population of the royal harem underwent a similar explosion. Earlier rulers had insisted on detailed reports concerning every action of the Imperial troops, as well as those of the soldiers of each of the Great Houses; Shaddam IV, on the other hand, preferred to busy himself with Landsraad intrigues, leaving much of the actual 8xrunning of his empire to his advisors and to the higher-ranking Sardaukar officers. That the Imperium ran as smoothly as it did in the years preceding the Arrakis Revolt is due almost entirely to the efforts of these two groups.

Shaddam’s melancholia and withdrawal became even more pronounced over the two decades of his marriage. Anuril bore five daughters — Irulan, Chalice, Wensicia, Josifa and Rugi; by permitting him only female children, the Bene Gesserit had wrested control of his House from him. The man who married the Princess chosen to receive her father’s throne would be the next Corrino emperor.