House Harkonnen, along with House Corrino and House Atreides, was one of three major extended families of human nobles that politically dominated the Milky Way Galaxy and the Milky Way Imperium. They were bitter rivals of the Atreides and occasionally rivals of the Corrinos and Padishah Emperors.
Harkonnen noble rulers of planets and solar systems were mostly oppressive, even brutal in their regimes. Harkonnen nobles admired Palpatine and his Galactic Empire for having a similar style of governing in the neighboring galaxy of Galactic Prime.