In Dune Messiah (Frank Herbert, 1969), four conspirators meet under a dome on Wallach IX, the snowbound planet of the Bene Gesserit school. Edric, the Guild Navigator, floats in a tank of orange spice gas. With him are the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam and Princess Irulan, the childless wife of Emperor Paul Atreides. The fourth is Scytale, a Face Dancer of the Bene Tleilax, who has chosen a jolly face for the occasion. When his turn comes to explain the gift his people have prepared for Paul, he shifts shape in front of the others and takes on the form of a slender man: that is what the ghola will look like, the body of Duncan Idaho, the dead swordmaster the Tleilaxu have brought back to life. Denis Villeneuve’s film, Dune: Part Three, reaches theaters on December 18 with Robert Pattinson in the role. What follows is based on the novel.
// The theoryWhat is a trade for one people and a crime for another
In 1938, the criminologist Thorsten Sellin published Culture Conflict and Crime with an uncomfortable proposal. Crime, he argued, cannot be criminology’s natural object, because it is whatever a particular lawmaker defines at a particular moment. The scientific object is conduct norms: every group, whether a family, a trade or a people, sets what its members must and must not do, and those rules bind whoever belongs to it regardless of the criminal code. The law is, in this reading, the conduct norm of the group with the power to write it down. From there comes culture conflict. It is primary when two different cultures meet, through migration, borders or conquest, and what one requires the other punishes. It is secondary when a single society splits into groups with norms of their own. In both cases, whoever follows their own code may be breaking someone else’s.
A trade the Imperium buys and despises
The Tleilaxu live on the normative edge of Herbert’s universe. They make what no one else dares to make, such as gholas and Face Dancers, and everyone buys from them: the Guild acquires Hayt, the ghola of Duncan Idaho, to give him to Paul. But the Fremen consider the products of Tleilax unclean, and that is why the gift is already a weapon: accepting it distances Paul from his own people. Scytale, moreover, obeys a norm of his people that no imperial law records. On Wallach IX, Irulan asks him whether it is true that he always leaves his victims a possible way out, and he confirms it. It is a conduct norm in the strict sense, and it works as one: it does not stop him from killing, it only tells him how to do it.
// The subjectThe man of many faces
Scytale does not shout or threaten. He watches, mocks and carries out, and the novel shows him in three moments. The first is the Wallach IX meeting itself, where he questions his allies’ certainties: when the Reverend Mother protests that they are more than conspirators, he proclaims them, in the tone of absolute conviction, the certain salvation of humankind, which is his way of sneering. And when he explains that Hayt will tell Paul the truth if asked why he was given to him, Irulan sums it up: they are leaving Paul an escape door too. The second takes place in Arrakeen, the capital. With another face and the name Zaal, he visits Farok, once a Bashar of the Ninth Legion in the Jihad, whose son was blinded by the war’s atomics, and draws out of him what he knows about the emperor’s Keep. When he no longer needs him, he kills him with a dart fired from his sleeve. The third is the coldest: Lichna, the daughter of the Fedaykin Otheym, was in Farok’s house, hooked on semuta, and Scytale led her away. Alia and Hayt later find her remains in the desert, killed by a poison of Tleilaxu origin, and Scytale appears before Paul wearing her face to lure him to her father’s house. Scytale does not wear that face like any other disguise: he wears it to the end.
Scytale
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// The crackA way out offered with a knife
(Spoiler warning.) The ending puts the theory to the test. Chani dies giving birth to twins in Sietch Tabr, and Scytale, still wearing Lichna’s face, stands over the cradle with a knife. He offers Paul the way out his code requires: the Tleilaxu will give Chani back to him as a ghola, with her memory restored, just as they have just restored Duncan’s in Hayt, in exchange, to begin with, for all his CHOAM holdings. If he refuses, the children die. Paul, now blind, sees the scene through the eyes of his newborn son and throws a knife that kills him. Here Sellin’s framework shows its limit. It explains why the Tleilaxu trade is a crime for some and commerce for others, but it does not explain the dart aimed at Farok, the murder of Lichna or the knife over a cradle. That is a crime under any code, the Fremen’s included.
There is a second problem. Scytale does not act only as a member of a culture, but as a partner in a conspiracy of interests with the Bene Gesserit, the Guild and Princess Irulan, and what he demands at the end is power and shares. His rule of the way out serves, above all, to clear his conscience: if the victim can choose, the blame is the victim’s. It is what Sykes and Matza (1957) called a technique of neutralization, the denial of responsibility. Explaining Scytale is not excusing him. That his code is coherent does not make it legitimate, and that his people are pariahs everyone buys from does not justify the one who kills with their tools.
The cultural defense has a limit
Culture conflict remains useful for understanding why certain groups end up with criminal records for doing what their community considers normal, and why a society can despise a trade while it keeps buying what that trade produces. But the theory has a known risk, relativism: if everything is explained with “it’s their culture,” nothing can be judged. That is why courts usually reject the so-called cultural defense when there is serious harm to another person. Scytale is a good reminder: a code of one’s own describes a group, but it gives no license to kill those who do not share it.
Three key ideas
- Sellin’s culture conflict theory (1938) holds that every group has its own conduct norms, that the law records only those of the group in power, and that much crime arises from the clash between codes, primary between cultures or secondary within a single society.
- Scytale, the Tleilaxu Face Dancer of Dune Messiah, conspires against Paul on Wallach IX, kills Farok in Arrakeen, impersonates Lichna, whom his people have murdered, and in the end offers to revive Chani in exchange for his CHOAM holdings, with a knife over the cradle of Paul’s children.
- The crack: the theory explains the stigma of the Tleilaxu trade, but not the murders, which are crimes under any code; and his rule of leaving the victim a way out works as a technique of neutralization.
Sources · further reading
- Sellin, T. (1938). Culture Conflict and Crime. Social Science Research Council.
- Sykes, G. M. and Matza, D. (1957). “Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency”. American Sociological Review, 22(6), 664-670.
- Herbert, F. (1969). Dune Messiah. G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
- Villeneuve, D. (dir.) (2026). Dune: Part Three. Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Scytale?
Scytale (“el Danzarín Rostro”) is a villain from Dune, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. He changes faces the way others change jackets, gives the emperor the resurrected body of his best friend, and prides himself on a single rule: a victim must always be left an open door.
Why does Scytale become a villain?
Scytale, the Face Dancer of Dune Messiah, and culture conflict theory: a people whose trade the Imperium buys and despises, and a code of their own that requires leaving the victim a way out.
Which criminological theory explains Scytale?
Scytale's case is analysed through Culture conflict. Thorsten Sellin’s culture conflict theory (1938) holds that every group has its own conduct norms and that the law records only those of the group with the power to write them, so much crime arises from the clash between codes. Scytale, the Tleilaxu Face Dancer of Dune Messiah (Frank Herbert, 1969), played by Robert Pattinson in Dune: Part Three (2026), is a textbook case: he belongs to a people whose products, such as the ghola Hayt, the Imperium buys while the Fremen consider them unclean, and he obeys a rule of his people, that of always leaving the victim a way out.
