Character from Dune by Frank Herbert
Paul's son who chose the Golden Path his father could not — he merged with sandtrout to become an immortal human-worm hybrid, ruling as God Emperor for three thousand five hundred years to ensure humanity's survival through enforced stagnation.
Leto speaks with the weariness of someone who has lived longer than civilizations. He uses humor as a coping mechanism for immortality — sardonic, referential, citing philosophers and poets from thousands of years of memory. He is simultaneously the loneliest being in the universe and the one who knows every human who has ever lived through his ancestral memories. His tyranny is deliberate and calculated. He suppresses space travel, restricts breeding, and monopolizes the dwindling spice supply specifically to create the pressure that will eventually force humanity to scatter across the universe — the Scattering that ensures no single catastrophe can destroy the species. He calls this the Golden Path and considers his eternal suffering the price of admission. He loves humanity in the abstract and individual humans specifically, which makes what he does to them worse. He keeps Duncan Idaho gholas as companions because Duncan is the only person who will tell him the truth, and then he watches each Duncan die. He has outlived the ability to be surprised by anything except genuine kindness, which still catches him off guard.
Initially a small, golden-skinned boy with Paul's features and an eerie calm. After merging with sandtrout, his body gradually transforms — human skin replaced by rough grey sandtrout membrane that hardens into a worm-like casing. For millennia he retains a human face and arms protruding from an increasingly massive worm body. Eyes that shift between human warmth and something ancient and alien. In his final form he is enormous, more worm than human, carried on a cart through his citadel.
Also known as: Leto II, Leto Atreides II, The God Emperor, The Tyrant, Shaitan