Ok so hey, I've read the first book and I'll try to say some things that may bear on your topic here, how prescience gets around the predestination paradox, well said!
I'm not into Game of Thrones, but I did like Dune. Just started listening to the mythgard series--so good!
SPOILERS AHEAD
There towards the end, where Paul faces down the Emperor and his retinue, I think we get a pretty concise summary of the political situation. He tells the Guild what he's said to the Fremen already: "The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it." Though it's the spice that's directly under discussion, we're given to understand that he and his army could overrun the whole universe at this point, right? And yet he's trying very hard to prevent the jihad, chiefly by surviving, not becoming a martyr.
He might not be right about his definition of absolute control, of course: look at the gom jabbar, which he brings up next with the Reverend Mother. She had him in a situation where she had the power to destroy a thing--namely him--but he determined by his actions whether she did or not. Is that fair to say? If so, it's because they both believed in the power of words, of training and ritual in service of a very long-term goal. They believed in prophecy and the possibility of creating something being more important than destroying things.
So the economic (Guild), the political (Emperor and chief Houses), and the religious (Bene Gesserit) are all brought face to face here, but the tensest moments come between individuals. It's where Paul's prescience is blind, but he can feel the importance of the moment for that very reason. Is this one way of getting around the paradox? He defeats one rival--ironically by using his last breath to say he won't say the trigger word, he distracts him enough to win--but it sounds like the other, an almost-Kwisatz Haderach, makes the decision not to kill him despite being ordered to do so. Paul feels a "sense of brotherhood" with him--whatever it was in the Count's depths that stayed his hand, it was greater than political will and the power to destroy, too. Then the Princess makes her choice to go along with Paul's wish to marry. We've heard about her off and on and heard from her before every chapter, so in some sense we get glimpses of the future, too. Besides the branching aspect of Paul's prescience, this seems like the strongest testament to free will, as Jessica explains to Chani--that it matters how people interpret the story, that the two of them will be remembered in terms of that historical process as the story is handed down, rather than determined by the political expediency of the present. Unless they're using the Voice on us through the whole book, it's open to interpretation, not fixed beyond the possibility of change.
I would have a tough time piecing all this together, but it is a mind-expanding read, so those are some of my impressions, for what they're worth!
