Paul Atreides actions really are never acceptabl\y justified because the later books basically show them to be unjustified. Or at least contradictory. It's a bit confused, but he is shown to be a brutal genocidal dictator, and his son even more so... Paul even alludes to Hitler at one point... It's just that Herbert makes them the protagonist and makes it confusing for the reader how sympathetic they should be.
And we basically just have to take Leto II's word at face value that he was preventing humanity's extinction, but...
By the time of Heretics, Herbert was basically coming right out and saying that prescience in fact alters the timeline rather than "just" predicts it. Which is kind of crazy if you think of two things:
1) Every Guild Navigator using the spice induced prescience to plan and fold space is altering reality
2) Spice comes from an alien being. The only aliens in the Dune universe.
(disclaimer: I don't count Brian Herbert's books & and whatever might be in there... what I read of those made me not want to read more)
And we basically just have to take Leto II's word at face value that he was preventing humanity's extinction, but...
By the time of Heretics, Herbert was basically coming right out and saying that prescience in fact alters the timeline rather than "just" predicts it. Which is kind of crazy if you think of two things:
1) Every Guild Navigator using the spice induced prescience to plan and fold space is altering reality
2) Spice comes from an alien being. The only aliens in the Dune universe.
(disclaimer: I don't count Brian Herbert's books & and whatever might be in there... what I read of those made me not want to read more)