why does everyone hate the emperor?

[garth]

Well, obviously I don't hate the Emperor, in fact he's probably my second favorite character of all the Dune novels, behind Farad'n Corrino.

Ignoring the prequels for now, because they are nothing more than glorified fan fiction, a lot of what we know about Shaddam comes from what others say about him or from shreds of historical information.  For instance we know that Crown Prince Fafnir (Shaddam's elder brother) died under, shall we say, mysterious circumstances from reading the first book.  We also know that Elrood IX was disposed of by chaumurky and that there was a *rumor* Fenring was behind it.  We also know that Arrakis was being used as a testing ground for Imperial policies of repression (this is discussed in Children of Dune), and no doubt these policies were being developed so that they could be imposed elsewhere in the universe.

It's clear to me Shaddam would be the one to benefit most from the murder of his brother and father.  And, if we couple the knowledge of the imperial policies with the swelling of the ranks of the officer corp in the Sardaukar, we can deduce that Shaddam was probably planning a crackdown on a universal scale if that upstart desert mongrel Paul hadn't gotten in the way  >:(

Perhaps more interesting would be an analysis of Fenring's motivation to assist Shaddam in his climb to power.  I agree with the prequels in that the Bene Gesserit deliberately kept Shaddam from having male children, so that Irulan would have been married off to the Kwisatz Haderach (the son of the union between the daughter Jessica was supposed to bear and Feyd-Rautha).  Fenring was probably in on the whole Bene Gesserit plot from the get-go (he was prescient, after all, thats why Paul couldn't see him in the future).  He merely played the part of ensuring Shaddam would be the last Corrino emperor.