- "Think of war as a behavior."
- ―Agamemnon
- "The military commander who fails to seize an opportunity is guilty of a crime equal to outright cowardice."
- ―General Agamemnon
Agamemnon [d. 88 BG] was the ruthless leader of the Cymek Titans, the biological father of Vorian Atreides, and a key figure in history leading up to the Butlerian Jihad.
Upbringing
Born Andrew Skouros on Earth, he was the recipient of a pampered upbringing during the end of the Old Empire. Skouros in some way could trace his lineage back past the Time of the Old Empire, thousands of years to the House of Atreus and a famous ancient King Agamemmon.
As a teenager, Skouros grew unsatisfied with the apparently meaningless direction of society. He became fascinated with ancient legends and myths, and studied the military victories of eons ago. Around this time Skouros took the alias "Agamemnon", after the ancient Greek military ruler.
Skouros had blue eyes.
Rise of the Titans
During countless hours playing online computer strategy games, Agamemnon met Julianna Parhi, an equally ambitious rebel, who had named herself after Juno, the mythical wife of Jupiter. The two began a torrid physical affair which saw them experiment with numerous pleasurable psychological and technological concepts.
After hearing the reactionary Tlaloc speak, Skouros and Parhi decided to join his solitary crusade. After months of planning they welcomed the technology genius Vilhelm Jayther, along with others, into their midst, and called themselves the Titans. Using cunning and technology the group initiated a takeover of the artificial intelligence framework, on which society had become utterly dependent.
After defeating most of the Old Empire (through a chain of largely non-violent victories), the Titans declared themselves the new rulers of the various planets that had made up the Empire. Agamemnon, as their leader, took the title of General, and with the others pursued a strategy of brutal rule over all their human subjects.
During the century-long rule of the Titans, Agamemnon first applied biological treatments to prolong his life; later, after inspiration from Juno and assistance by Cogitor Eklo, robotic surgeons discarded his human body altogether by transferring his brain into mechanized physical form, turning himself into a Cymek.
Agamemnon kept his sperm and had fertilized 13 sons who were raised as trustees. The twelve were killed by him because they disappointed him. The last one was Vorian Atreides.
The Rise of Omnius
When his fellow Titan Xerxes accidentally ceded too much control to the artificial intelligence network on his planet, Omnius came into being, and Agamemnon found himself no longer a ruler. Due to the way Barbarossa had created Omnius he was unable to murder his creators, the Titans directly and so they were absorbed into the service of Omnius and became his servants, part of the Thinking Machine forces.
During the thousand-or-so years of Omnius' rule, Agamemnon remained a silent but jealous military servant. His time was spent raging against the free humans in the League of Nobles, and commissioning grandiose memorials to the Time of Titans.
His first known occurrence was when he destroyed Ulf Harkonnen's ship over Caladan, leaving later Primero Xavier Harkonnen an orphan. Few years later, he participated to the Battle of Zimia where Xavier distinguished himself.
Agamemnon had a notable relationship with Omnius; the Cymek general had some failures in his missions, like the pursuit of Piers Harkonnen, the Battle of Zimia and the Battle of Rossak, and knew that he could not lie to the ever-present evermind in his official reports. However being a human brain, he could cunningly downplay the negative elements and highlight the positive ones so that Omnius would be content with any result. During all these years and while battling the League of Nobles, Agamemnon with his fellow Titans sought an opportunity to rebel against Omnius and reclaim their rule of the Known Universe.
Agamemnon saw his last and most promising son turning against him at the beginning of the Butlerian Jihad, yet he continued to serve Omnius. During the rebellion on Earth, he saw Vorian stealing the Dream Voyager and escaping along with two other humans. Agamemnon attempted to destroy them, but Vorian managed to outrun him, cunningly using the gravity force of Jupiter. Agamemnon abandoned the pursuit and returned to Earth with his rest of his fuel.
Several years later, he would again encounter his son in space, during the Battle of IV Anbus.
Re-emergence of the Titans
Seizing on the escalation in tensions between the League of Nobles and Omnius' Synchronized Worlds, Agamemnon implemented a break away for the remaining Titans, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the Neo-cymek Beowulf. The much awaited rebellion could now begin; the group successfully disabled the Omnius incarnation on the planet Bela Tegeuse, and declared themselves the new rulers of the cowed slave population on the planet.
After indoctrinating the populace, many were willingly converted into Neo-cymek, and served as Agamemnon's new army in his conquering of the planets synchronized world Richese and Hessra, the ice world of the Cogitors. He later launched a campaign to take control of the Synchronized Worlds that had been sterilized during the Army of the Jihad's Great Purge.
Death
Agamemnon was ultimately killed by his biological son, Vorian Atreides. After Vorian had apparently abandoned the League of Nobles and infiltrated the rebellious Titans, he conspired with the captured Quentin Butler. Vorian groomed his metallic body when he planned to stab his father's brain with a dagger. However Quentin (now a cymek) stopped him, insisting for a more painful and torturous death.
Eventually, Vorian threw the jar from a window, to be crushed in a traitorous and insignificant death.
Agamemnon was the penultimate Titan to die, being briefly outlived by his compatriot Dante.
It seems that the infamous General was forgotten in the subsequent millennia, and was never referred to again by the House Atreides.
Behind the Scenes
In Children of Dune, by Frank Herbert, right before Alia began one of her internal conversations with the ego-memory of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen an ego-memory called "Agamemnon" begged for some attention.
Therefore, Agamemnon seems to exist in the universe created by Frank Herbert, but he could yet be a different character. It is very likely that the ego-memory Agamemnon is meant to be that of the historical King Agamemnon of the House of Atreus.
It is possible that Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson took the idea for the prequel novel character.
Appearances
- Hunting Harkonnens
- Dune: The Butlerian Jihad
- Dune: The Machine Crusade
- Dune: The Battle of Corrin
- The Sisterhood of Dune (Mentioned only)
- Children of Dune (Mentioned only) (possibly)