I’ve seen many many posts about Mara being evil, doesn’t care for anyone except for attaining godhood, doesn’t want to help humanity, or will turn out to be against humanity, or that she isn’t as smart as she thinks she is and will inevitably fail.

• I think there is enough evidence to the contrary that despite being a pathological liar and manipulator, and alien from our definitions of ethics and morality, Mara is playing the long, long game of ensuring humanity’s survival, with characteristics that are uncannily like the God Emperor Leto from the Dune series.
  • If you do not know God Emperor Leto - would highly recommend reading the series or background because he’s probably the best depiction of a God that is just so alien to our perceptions and understandings
    • essentially he’s the 3500 old sandworm / human hybrid ruler of humanity, who has prescience, and has meticulously curated humanity to be entirely under his command, controlled through religious awe, despotic fear, and enforced peace to ensure the Golden Path is followed - the single future timeline that ensures humanity’s long term survival
    • He is a tyrant and his actions are horrific - but in the long run it was necessary for humanity

So why is Mara Destiny’s God Emperor?

In the lore book Dust: The Kell - a recording of Skolas says: “But I do not know the Nine. You, Mara Sov… you are the only one who has foreseen their role in the game. You keep your successes secret, so the world only knows your mistakes. No wonder I underestimated you.”

In the following entry, The Leviathan - Paladin Rior says: “Everything she did seems to make sense, eventually; she was so very far-sighted. No one else ever bargained with the Nine as an equal, did they? No one will ever know what good she did for them... our Queen of secrets."

In the Ager’s Scepter cutscene, we see that upon transcending death during the Battle of Saturn, and after her journey the Ascendant Plane, she travelled far, ”gathered her feathers into an Aegis” to protect the world below

• We still don’t know what exactly she has protected us from, but we can assume her 2 years dealing with a threat she perceived more important than the threats to the Awoken’s most sacred city, and considered the most valuable stronghold in the Sol System by numerous characters (Toland, Quria, the entire Hive pantheon and race) - yeah she has been doing something incredibly important

She rejected godhood initially after being reborn in the Distributary, out of knowing embracing the Awoken’s refuge would mean the death of their origin universe - and every single action she has taken since escaping the Distributary has been in humanity’s interest. She broke the House of Wolves preventing certain destruction of the Last City, crafted the plan that took down Oryx, who was only a part of her plan that was devised to take down her nemesis, Savathun:

• “Secrets are her virtue and the virtue of her nemesis. The being whose existence she deduced from the analogy-of-family the Oracle Engine showed her.”

Eris has learnt some of this plan by necessity, and is conspicuously absent from this season, as is Elsie, who Mara knows is an asset. Every action has been furthered by Mara as a counter to sword logic through bomb logic, and to ensure the survival of humanity. Therefore, we will only know her mistakes, will hate her for it, as always, we will never know her true successes until we ‘win’. And then we’ll realise it should come as no sureprise we underestimated her.

tl;dr: Mara is our God Emperor Leto of the Destiny universe - with a plan that no one will ever understand now, and only after seeing her mistakes, and hating her for it, when we win we will realise just how much we underestimated her, and just how much she sacrificed and gave to ensure humanity’s long-term survival.

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Final thought provoking ideas for Dune readers - if a dependance on the melange spice stagnated humanity, then is the our dependence on the Traveler and its Guardians stagnating humanity from ever growing and rebuilding beyond?