Gaius Helen Mohiam

In the novel Dune, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen has this impression of Gaius Helen Mohiam: In Dune Messiah, Herbert notes that Mohiam's eyes are "dark with the blue brilliance of her melange addiction." Novelist Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's son and biographer, describes Mohiam as "a witch mother archetype". ==Appearances==

Dune portrays Gaius Helen Mohiam in the 2021 film Dune and its 2024 sequel Dune: Part Two. As Dune begins, the "old crone" Reverend Mother Mohiam comes to Caladan to "test" young Paul Atreides before he departs for Arrakis. Having trained Paul's mother Lady Jessica at the Bene Gesserit school on Wallach IX decades before, Mohiam now holds a lethal gom jabbar to Paul's neck. If he withdraws his hand from a box that inflicts pain through direct nerve induction, the gom jabbar will kill him instantly. Mohiam explains to Paul that the purpose of the test is to discover whether Paul is "truly human", by requiring him to endure pain and still act rationally. He passes the test, and Mohiam (though still furious over Jessica's choice to disobey the Sisterhood and bear a son instead of a daughter) is somewhat intrigued by the potential she sees in 15-year-old Paul, as she notes he has withstood more pain than any other Bene Gesserit inductee. According to Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, the idea that Mohiam is Jessica's mother was pulled directly from Frank Herbert's working notes for the original Dune series. To this end, they establish that the name given for Jessica's mother in Dune, Tanidia Nerus, is an alias used by Mohiam to conceal Jessica's maternity. ==In adaptations==

Mohiam is portrayed by Siân Phillips in David Lynch's 1984 film Dune, and by Zuzana Geislerová in the 2000 miniseries ''Frank Herbert's Dune and its 2003 sequel Frank Herbert's Children of Dune. The character is played by Charlotte Rampling in the 2021 Denis Villeneuve film Dune and its 2024 sequel Dune: Part Two''. All three portrayals received positive reviews in contemporary press. Variety wrote of the 1984 film that "Siân Phillips has some mesmerizing moments as a powerful witch". Tor.com noted of Children of Dune, "There are other moments of perfect execution ... The dual conversations between Irulan and Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam—and later Jessica—are gorgeous, offering subtitles to their sign language while an entirely different conversation plays out in words." Screen Rant called Rampling's Mohiam in the 2021 film Dune "one of the movie's more intimidating characters", and The Telegraph described her as "blood-chilling". The Los Angeles Times wrote that Rampling "is the only actor living who can project both world-weary wisdom and utter ruthlessness while wearing an absurdly high hat and a nearly impenetrable black veil ... her relationship with acolyte Lady Jessica plays a bit like a perpetually skeptical head of the CIA dealing with an exasperating but productive rogue agent." ==Family tree==