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There is no denying he made many mistakes but most of the really bad failures are a result of the Chaos gods interfering. Especially the flaws in the Primarchs' characters, they were meant to be raised by Big E not a bunch of mortal yokels.
So he was foolish to think he could beat the combined power of the gods but that doesn't necessarily make him an idiot.
Tzeentch is the wisest and most cunning entity in all (im)possibility but even he can't defeat the combined power of the other gods.

Tzeentch's cunning and wisdom led to him concluding that he didn't need to :p

Yeah, that's the thing. The Emperor nearly conquered the Galaxy. He was thwarted by traitors. His own genetically engineered sons. Who may have had some sort of Chaos taint, themselves. Was he an idiot for not being paranoid, and distrustful? Did he fail by not spending more time coddling his widdle Primarchs? Should he have expected a mild rebuke of Lorgar, and a lack of attention to Horus would lead to the Horus Heresy? Or, was the infiltration of the Space Marine Legions by Chaos the real problem? And, at the end of the day, the Emperor still wins. Still keeps his Imperium alive and kicking for 10K more years.

 Gobbla wrote:
Yeah, that's the thing. The Emperor nearly conquered the Galaxy. He was thwarted by traitors. His own genetically engineered sons. Who may have had some sort of Chaos taint, themselves. Was he an idiot for not being paranoid, and distrustful? Did he fail by not spending more time coddling his widdle Primarchs? Should he have expected a mild rebuke of Lorgar, and a lack of attention to Horus would lead to the Horus Heresy? Or, was the infiltration of the Space Marine Legions by Chaos the real problem? And, at the end of the day, the Emperor still wins. Still keeps his Imperium alive and kicking for 10K more years.

No, buy he could have made an effort toward vetting the Primarchs, weeding out the potential troublemakers a little better. Sure, all of the Primarchs had some sort of issue(s). But putting raging psychos, bi-polar depressants, and narcissistic fops in charge of large scale formations, in the largest mobilization of Human forces since the Age of Technology? That was pretty much a "WTF?!?" move if there ever was one.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:
But putting raging psychos, bi-polar depressants, and narcissistic fops in charge of large scale formations....

Are we still talking about the Great Crusade here?? I think you could easily apply this to much of human history no?

TheWanderer wrote:

 oldravenman3025 wrote:
But putting raging psychos, bi-polar depressants, and narcissistic fops in charge of large scale formations....

Are we still talking about the Great Crusade here?? I think you could easily apply this to much of human history no?

Yes, indeed it could.


But as far as the Primarchs go, some of them wore their "issues" on their sleeves. Others, like Angron and Fulgrim, might as well been wearing big flashing neon signs that says "I'm a loon!".

The Horus Heresy has not been kind to his characterization. Even putting aside the influence of Chaos, certain Primarchs were always going to be a problem down the road. Angron and Curze where deeply flawed individuals who had severe mental illness. They would have had to been dealt with at some point.

The Emperor is the most succesful warlord humanity ever had, but I must admit that him putting the Primarchs in charge of anything instead of killing them after they vanished in mysterious and magical circomstances was really an incomprehensibly stupid move. The narrative of 40K doesn't help on that point. They over-stressed the Primarchs weaknesses and the Emperor powers which makes all the Horus Heresy looks immensly stupid from an external point of view. The only real interesting point is that of regular «little» space marines or soldiers to whom the Emperor and Primarchs are like gods. To them, their weakness were not so apparent.

Taking for true the reconstruction of his last duel with Horus, he should have slain him before being wounded to become a vegetable.

That's the only serious error I can ascribe to him. Other than that the Heresy was pretty difficult to stop or to foresee. I keep on reading that he left the Primarchs alone in The Great Crusade.. like, hello? They were demi gods, not insecure adolescents.. it was an error, but you can only say it a posteriori. Nothing "idiotic" in leaving individuals with the qualities of the Primarchs on their own.

Except that the Primarchs were insecure adolescents. Every part of their characterisation in the books has confirmed that the primarchs may have had the power and intellect of demigods, but emotionally they were incredibly juvenile.

 NoPoet wrote:

Another example: Lorgar was created as a divine being whose nature was to worship and adore, in a supposedly cold and sterile universe where these traits are considered worse than worthless.

Yet another example: He denied gods and daemons exist when any psyker, and anyone who's ever had trouble with their Gellar field, knows this is BS.

I think that originally the problem here is that the Emperor originally wasn't an atheist in the earlier lore. Most of that stuff got added later in the HH book series. The fluff back in Second Edition had the Great Crusade combating Chaos threats as well. Originally in Index Astartes Word Bearers, the Emperor's chief problem with Lorgar was that he was too slow and not that the Emperor worshiped as a god. Alot of the stuff you are complaining about was added later and then tried to reconcile with older fluff.

 NoPoet wrote:
The Emperor used to be portrayed as an infallible hero, a desperate god battling valiantly to save humanity. These days, he's being painted as a despotic tyrant who fancies himself and is blinded by arrogance. (I bet the Chaos Gods and the Hive Mind are trembling.)

He seems to make decisions that border on slowed. Many of his decisions crossed that border.

(EDIT: "Slowed" is not the word I used. Deploying the PC Police!)

For example: he lost Angron's loyalty on day one by beaming him up and leaving all his mates to die. Then he shoved the mighty Primarch in a dark room. Then, he basically said to the Warhounds or whatever they were called: "There's an insane, raging demi-god who wants to make mincemeat of half his own Legion. Good luck!" and promptly flew away.

Another example: Lorgar was created as a divine being whose nature was to worship and adore, in a supposedly cold and sterile universe where these traits are considered worse than worthless.

Another example: With the above in mind, Sanguinius was created to represent an angel. And he was called a Blood Angel.

Another example: He created the Night Haunter. Enough said.

Yet another example: He denied gods and daemons exist when any psyker, and anyone who's ever had trouble with their Gellar field, knows this is BS.

Nice mixed messages, Emp. No wonder half the Astartes rebelled.

Angron was necessary. Couldn't be left behind but he couldn't allow rebellious elements into his army, nor could he afford Angron charging off with the inferior human force instead of his Legion on suicide mission after suicide mission. If Angron didn't have the nails it would be fine.

Lorgar developed his religious obsession on Colchis, which was heavily Chaos in the pre-Emperor era, as seen by the Colchisian runes and stuff.

Sanguinius was affected by Baal's radiation, the Emperor did not create a Seraph-like Primarch on purpose

Night Haunter was the result of Kurze's experience, not his nature.

Daemons were just another Xenos, and Warpstorms were relatively calm before the Heresy, it only got really bad because of the Ruinstorm following Calth

Your argument about Angron falls a little flat when you realise that all the other primarchs got to keep their pre-finding minions.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Except that the Primarchs were insecure adolescents. Every part of their characterisation in the books has confirmed that the primarchs may have had the power and intellect of demigods, but emotionally they were incredibly juvenile.

Given how Horus and Lorgar fell, I feel that is an insult to adolescent children. Even at age 13 I wouldn't have fallen for something as crude as Erebus' deceit to Horus or Lorgar's pathetic groveling for something to worship, and I think a great deal of other children at the same age would be capable of the same. Thanks to the shoddy writing of the Horus Heresy, some Primarchs come off as downright children-children, ages 8 or younger.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Your argument about Angron falls a little flat when you realise that all the other primarchs got to keep their pre-finding minions.

They're pre-finding minions weren't rebellious, free thinking, anti-government rebels. The Calibanites, for example, were noble knights who followed Lion El'Johnson unto death even if they disagreed, and kept their opinions to themselves. They were civilised. Most other Primarchs were the same, and also rose to be ruler of their worlds. Angron and his followers were the doggak on your shoe in society. As soon as the Emperor asks those humans to go into the meatgrinder, they'll act out, because they care more about their own survival than the bigger picture, and then Angron will side with him and then you have a bigger problem.

Plus, he was a damn sight more loyal to them than he ever was to the Emperor.

 Deadshot wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Your argument about Angron falls a little flat when you realise that all the other primarchs got to keep their pre-finding minions.

They're pre-finding minions weren't rebellious, free thinking, anti-government rebels.

I don't know if he had a great many of them, but that's literally Corax's entire support base. Like Angron he led a slave rebellion.

Few things.

One, he's partially based on Paul Atreides from Dune. At a certain point, the future is cloudy to him because there's just too much going on- this was referenced in, I think, Outcast Dead? He was hedging bets to get through the Heresy by that interpretation, which one rather likes. EDIT: Evidence, summoning the Fists to fortify Terra as early as he did.

Two, it's strongly implied to stated he made some sort of bargain with the Chaos gods for either power or the ability to raise the Primarchs. It's also implied he pulled a fast one on even Tzeentch. Possibilities include:

1) He agreed not to attack them directly- and worked on making the Imperium secular, to "starve" them
2) They agreed half the Primarchs would belong to the Chaos gods- and he deliberately messed some of them up or encouraged the "lesser brothers" toward Chaos, as he saw it. Or maybe that's why the Gellar fields on their storage capsules- to create them under his own Aegis and/or make them Warp-resistant. Or maybe creating the Legions from the Primarch template was seen as "extra-legal" by the Chaos gods. "Sure, take the Primarch, I'll take his million sons."

There's also the implication from Deliverance Lost that the Primarchs were the original project, and the Marines are a salvage operation. Means the Primarchs were each engineered "for" something, which puts a different spin on their design features. For instance, Curze as the pre-ordained Master of Assassins? He'd excel in that position. It's putting him in a position to enforce Compliance that went all sideways.

Lorgar's punishment works if he jumped the gun, so to speak- if he was creating an Emperor warp-entity distinct from the actual Emperor, because the Emperor wasn't ready to declare himself a godhead.

Heck, maybe he decreed he wouldn't declare himself a god- but then allowed people to do it for him, and that's what the Chaos gods are about.

I also agree that he forgot the humanity of his sons. They were, compared to himself, infants. Super intelligent infants, but infants.

Gree wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Your argument about Angron falls a little flat when you realise that all the other primarchs got to keep their pre-finding minions.

They're pre-finding minions weren't rebellious, free thinking, anti-government rebels.

I don't know if he had a great many of them, but that's literally Corax's entire support base. Like Angron he led a slave rebellion.

Who were liberated by the Imperium and Corax and actually won their battle. Angron's minions were gladiator warriors bred to fight, who would rather go charging off into a glorious last battle for their freedom or die trying, and Angron was willing to go with them. Corax's warriors wanted freedom from prison, and Angron's wanted freedom from their lives, by any means necessary.

Forget the whole primarg thing, the civil war and the military losses.

The reason why he is an idiot is much simpler. Society went from the left picture to the right picture during his reign and in the end he ended as a corpse in a chair. The guy has a unhealthy grimdark fetish,is horrible bad at his job or is an complete idiot.

 Deadshot wrote:

Who were liberated by the Imperium and Corax and actually won their battle. Angron's minions were gladiator warriors bred to fight, who would rather go charging off into a glorious last battle for their freedom or die trying, and Angron was willing to go with them. Corax's warriors wanted freedom from prison, and Angron's wanted freedom from their lives, by any means necessary.

No, I don't believe that Angron's men where necessarily suicidal. If they where then they would have just died in the arena or killed themselves. We don't really get a good look at them personally. The Emperor didn't even try to intervene, despite the fact that he could have easily done so. The whole bit with Angron is one of the bits of fluff I find to be most irritatingly poorly written, as if doing it's best to make the Emperor seem pointlessly antagonistic to Angron and give Angron a reason to hate them.

The only difference is that Corax actually had the skill and luck to suceed in his rebellion. One wonders what the outcome would have been like if the Emperor arrived in the middle of Corax's rebellion rather than the aftermath.

Gree wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:

Who were liberated by the Imperium and Corax and actually won their battle. Angron's minions were gladiator warriors bred to fight, who would rather go charging off into a glorious last battle for their freedom or die trying, and Angron was willing to go with them. Corax's warriors wanted freedom from prison, and Angron's wanted freedom from their lives, by any means necessary.

No, I don't believe that Angron's men where necessarily suicidal. If they where then they would have just died in the arena or killed themselves. We don't really get a good look at them personally. The Emperor didn't even try to intervene, despite the fact that he could have easily done so. The whole bit with Angron is one of the bits of fluff I find to be most irritatingly poorly written, as if doing it's best to make the Emperor seem pointlessly antagonistic to Angron and give Angron a reason to hate them.

The only difference is that Corax actually had the skill and luck to suceed in his rebellion. One wonders what the outcome would have been like if the Emperor arrived in the middle of Corax's rebellion rather than the aftermath.

And that's the crux of it. Angron would have died, Corax didn't. End of story. The Emperor couldn't allow that.
When I say suicidal, I mean collectively. They didn't want to die, but they would rather go out and take as many with them as they could that serve anyone but themselves.

Exactly. The Sons of Deliverance won, and had done so - by the time the Emperor arrived.

The Eaters Of Cities lost - and the writing was on the wall that they were going to lose at the point the Emperor arrived. Angron was the only thing salvageable - and clearly leaving him with any link to his 'home' would just result in....well.....exactly what happens when he goes back there in Betrayer.

locarno24 wrote:
Exactly. The Sons of Deliverance won, and had done so - by the time the Emperor arrived.

The Eaters Of Cities lost - and the writing was on the wall that they were going to lose at the point the Emperor arrived. Angron was the only thing salvageable - and clearly leaving him with any link to his 'home' would just result in....well.....exactly what happens when he goes back there in Betrayer.

That's exactly what I said.

 Deadshot wrote:

And that's the crux of it. Angron would have died, Corax didn't. End of story. The Emperor couldn't allow that.
When I say suicidal, I mean collectively. They didn't want to die, but they would rather go out and take as many with them as they could that serve anyone but themselves.

Again, we don't really know if Angron's followers wouldn't have gladly joined the Emperor is he liberated them or offered them a chance to become superhuman warriors.

And the Emperor could have intervened. He had a ship in orbit didn't he? He could have easily annihilated the local armies from orbit and forced the rest to join the Imperium. I doubt that was the only ship he had.

locarno24 wrote:

The Eaters Of Cities lost - and the writing was on the wall that they were going to lose at the point the Emperor arrived. Angron was the only thing salvageable - and clearly leaving him with any link to his 'home' would just result in....well.....exactly what happens when he goes back there in Betrayer.

Why would it? Angron reacts badly when he returns home because the Emperor left his firends to die and both he and his fellow slaves where remembered and cowards and failures. That's what set him off. Obviously if Angron was grateful to the Emperor he probably would have quite the opposite reaction.

Gree wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:

And that's the crux of it. Angron would have died, Corax didn't. End of story. The Emperor couldn't allow that.
When I say suicidal, I mean collectively. They didn't want to die, but they would rather go out and take as many with them as they could that serve anyone but themselves.

Again, we don't really know if Angron's followers wouldn't have gladly joined the Emperor is he liberated them or offered them a chance to become superhuman warriors.

And the Emperor could have intervened. He had a ship in orbit didn't he? He could have easily annihilated the local armies from orbit and forced the rest to join the Imperium. I doubt that was the only ship he had.

locarno24 wrote:

The Eaters Of Cities lost - and the writing was on the wall that they were going to lose at the point the Emperor arrived. Angron was the only thing salvageable - and clearly leaving him with any link to his 'home' would just result in....well.....exactly what happens when he goes back there in Betrayer.

Why would it? Angron reacts badly when he returns home because the Emperor left his firends to die and both he and his fellow slaves where remembered and cowards and failures. That's what set him off. Obviously if Angron was grateful to the Emperor he probably would have quite the opposite reaction.

Given that most of them were already grown men, battle hardened and cynical, had just come out from under a tyrannical slavery, I doubt they'd be willing to serve the Emperor because he says so, nor could they become Marines.
Second point; the Emperor would rather destroy a human population with infrastructure and society, however barbaric, ones thatbhe can reform and conquer, instead of allowing them to kill a few thousand rebel slaves who have no transferable skills or governing ability?

 Deadshot wrote:

Given that most of them were already grown men, battle hardened and cynical, had just come out from under a tyrannical slavery, I doubt they'd be willing to serve the Emperor because he says so, nor could they become Marines.

Why wouldn't they? I'm sure saving the lives of both themselves and their leader would probably be good reason enough to be grateful. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if the Emperor's words alone could have convinced them. After all, the Horus Heresy series is rife with mentions on the Emperor's charisma and oratory abilities. He's so charismatic that people worship him as a god despite him telling them not to.

I haven't seen any proof or logic that they would refuse to join the Emperor. Especially if he came down with all his legions and fought along their side like a warrior. From what we've seen of Angron and the Nuncerian gladiator culture, they respect actions and deeds of warriors more than anything. If the people of Deliverance were willing to serve under him after leaving a long and horrible slavery, then I don't see why Angron's slaves wouldn't. (And the people of Deliverance where an entire society, not a group of slaves)

And they could probably become Marines or at least pseudo-marines like we've seen with other Legions, like Russ's huscarls or Kor Phaeron or the Lion's knights. That's a well-established piece of lore. If Angron accepted command of the War Hounds, then I can definitely see those willing to undergo the surgeries and drug treatments in order to become pseudo-marines. After all it's established repeatedly in the lore that Angron and his fellow slaves shared a close bond.

 Deadshot wrote:

Second point; the Emperor would rather destroy a human population with infrastructure and society, however barbaric, ones thatbhe can reform and conquer, instead of allowing them to kill a few thousand rebel slaves who have no transferable skills or governing ability?

They could become pseudo-marines. One can win the loyalty of his son in the process, thus cementing bonds. One can clearly show the society the power and ability of the Emperor and question. This is all just off the top of my head.

And you don't need to destroy the whole infrastructure and society, just the armies in the field, which should suffice for the Emperor's purposes quite well in removing the most immediate threat to Angron.In fact he doesn't even need to completely annihilate the local armies, just cause a rout. If they still continue to resist after that, then they can get to destroying said infrastructure and society, but in that case, the Nucerian people would have shown themselves to be resistant to the Emperor's message regardless if he helped the gladiator slaves or not.

 Draco wrote:
The Emperor is a god

He himself said he is not a god.

 Rune Stonegrinder wrote:

 Draco wrote:
The Emperor is a god

He himself said he is not a god.

Considering there is no cogent definition of a god, both were right.

 Rune Stonegrinder wrote:

 Draco wrote:
The Emperor is a god

He himself said he is not a god.

He isn't a god in the sense of modern religions in that he is this omnipresent creator that created everything, will punish or reward you in afterlife, etc. He is a god in power levels, in that he has virtually limitless power.