One thing that really hits me every time I reread Dune or Messiah is how instantly I'm drawn back to Paul's side, how much I care about and root for him, even knowing where it all ends up. When I've gone a while without reading the text, I'm able to be extremely critical of him (sometimes perhaps too critical) but as soon as I crack open those books, the person who greets me isn't the selfish, hubristic tyrant who plunged the universe into an unprecedented cataclysm, but the sleepy teenage boy that I remember from chapter 1.
This, I think, is the genius of Herbert's characterisation. As the crowds chant his name, we recall the version of Paul that we met at the beginning of the story, confused and vulnerable after being woken up by a stranger in his bedroom. We remember him crying over Jamis' death because he knew that they could have been friends. We remember him lashing out at his mother after he failed to grieve his father the way that he thinks he should. We remember his earnest puppy love for Chani and his respect for Stilgar and his kind treatment of Harah.
Underneath all the pomp and the mythology, he's still the boy that we grew to love, the one who identified with the little desert mouse and chose it for his name. As much as I question, on a deep and profound level, his decisions throughout the story, reading passages like this....