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At no point before or after prospero did the emperor even hint to Russ that his attitude to Magnus or resultant destruction of prospero was a bad thing and that he should feel bad about it.

The emperor was a regular primarch humiliator for things he disliked that they'd done. Lothar, angron, et al.

Yet Russ was never even frowned at by the emperor. So either the emperor actually wanted him to do what he did. Or didn't care that he did it.

There is far too much precedent for this to not be russ' fault and the arguments are always with hindsight. No primarch acted perfectly and it's only because people are fans of Magnus that this retcon of events is even controversial

On the broader Primarch issues, I think "daddy issues" is a little of an over-simplification. Two things, firstly I think the Primarchs - in a very Greek Gods kind of way - ended up being very much imperfect (deeply flawed) 'demi-gods', they're kind of all aspects of humanity dialled up to 11 not just the strength, intelligence, etc but also the emotional sides too. I think that explains, in part at least, how problematic their personality issues can be.

Secondly, more than it being a father-son issue, a lot of what the Emperor does (or doesn't) do is just terrible leadership irregardless of whether he's related to the Primarchs or not. He's incredibly inconsistent and arbitrary in what he does, communicates terribly and considering they are essentially the second tier of leadership in the Great Crusade, directly under the Emperor himself, the level of secrecy around things like the Webway project don't make a great deal of sense.

Indeed, I'd say the principal strategic blunder of the Heresy is the Emperors decision that best defence against corruption by Chaos was ignorance - particularly given the highly psychic nature of the Primarchs (and Magnus in particular). I guess it is almost poetic given this underlying hypocrisy of the "Imperial Truth" and the Imperium that emerges after the Heresy.


On the more tactical level, I think Istvaan V is definitely top of the list for me. Would also mention the Battle of Tallarn which is a huge resource sink for no real gain by the Traitors.

One could argue the Primarch Project may have been A Failure.

The Emperor, having lived for who knows how long, and allegedly nudged humanity along prior to the Great Crusade didn’t just need Well Hard Super Humans. He needed more of Himself. Beings kinda Over the petty fallibility of humans. He needed beings that could see beyond that and truly comprehend the scale and necessity of the task ahead.

Perhaps as a result of the abduction or perhaps not? That’s not what he got. Instead he got Actual Children. Not in outlook, I’m not saying the Primarchs were childish like. But growing up as they did with no-one really approaching an equal? That cannot be entirely healthy. Those who took them in couldn’t possibly hope to properly help them grow, mature and develop. It’s just not what Regular Smelly Hoomans do, is it?

Over millennia, our approach to childhood has been tied to largely predictable growth patterns, both physical and emotional. It’s years before a kid can easily outsmart or physically overpower a parent. The Primarchs? We’re told that in all things their development was accelerated.

We know children exposed to reasonable and measured discipline tend to make for well balanced adults. It’s important for kids to be told No from a young age, and to learn that actions come with consequences.

How does a human do that with a Primarch? When at the stage most humans are just sort of figuring out they’re a Human and what that means, a Primarch is a towering, physically perfect example of a big old beef cake? How can you manage to not only feed their rapacious ability to learn, but include all those soft lessons on responsibility too?

How do you send someone perfectly capable of kicking a wall down To Their Room Without Supper if they’ve pushed their luck?

And it’s those sorts of flaws we see in all the Primarchs. The rough edges, the bits life never quite reached during the developmental edges to round off and soften.

Horus arguably suffered the worst. He was used to command and being listened to. He was used to being a leader. But Warmaster was still too much for him. It was probably the first time in his life he’d not been able to just apply his genuine charisma and skill with people and get everyone on side.

It opened one of the most serious wounds a young person can suffer - uncertainty in themselves. The only person who could really guide him through that was….The Emperor. Yes he had his Brothers, but they deferred to the title, not wanting in those early days to be seen to challenge his new found authority.

If that was a flaw in the overall design? The whole thing might’ve been stuffed from the very beginning.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
One could argue the Primarch Project may have been A Failure.
The Emperor, having lived for who knows how long, and allegedly nudged humanity along prior to the Great Crusade didn’t just need Well Hard Super Humans. He needed more of Himself. Beings kinda Over the petty fallibility of humans. He needed beings that could see beyond that and truly comprehend the scale and necessity of the task ahead.

It's an interesting point! If that was his intention, then most definitely the Primarch Project was an abject failure (with maybe, the exception being Guilliman - maybe?). It's an interesting question, or did he just want a bunch of disposable generals for the Great Crusade? Though the Primarchs equally a mistake / overkill if that was the intent.

But agree on their upbringing, almost by definition none of them (even Guilliman - again, but easily had the "best" upbringing) had a "normal" childhood. Not that I'm sure growing up in a lab with the Emperor would have worked out any better, a la Homelander and so on...

The argument for The Emperor raising them is he, of anyone in the galaxy, would know what they are, what they’re capable of, and how quickly they’d mature.

Now, that doesn’t mean No Abduction No Problems. Especially if my hypothesis (the project was actually a failure, and he didn’t get the beings he wanted/needed), but it might prevented a wholesale treachery. Certainly he’d have had more time to get to know them as blank slates, and ideally forge stronger bonds as a result.

Certainly with even a few years before “right lads, get out there and if it moves, kick its smegging head in” he could’ve potentially coached them in their forthcoming role, educated them as he wanted them educated.

But if they’re, deep down, no more or less fallible than a human? Disaster may have always lain ahead.

Given that the "plan" was for the Primarchs to be tutored by the Emperor's "household" as it was, and that they would be present on Terra to produce the required Legiones Astartes the fact the Emperor managed to do as much with what was a massive salvage job is pretty impressive.

It does make the pick ups of the likes of Angron, Curze and to a degree Corax make a bit more sense.
You've got two bona fide maniacs and a guy who fights against everything the Imperium stands for. Ignoring the problem children and lying to the ideological one is making the best of what's left. And then there's Omegon showing up five minutes before the Heresy starts as well which must've been a shock. Suddenly Primarch 20 is two people, imagine the headache that caused.

This is why I maintain that the primarchs and whole imperium venture were actually the emperor's last ditch emergency action.

He was alive for 40,000 years by this point, he had plenty of time to guide humanity to its best end. He had plenty of time to try out different methods of accomplishing it.

You could say the golden age was where he thought humanity had reached its zenith, but then it also attracted the attention of chaos at a scale it had never done before.


To me, the reunification, primarch project, marine project and the great crusade all look like something that in the scale of his previous work was done quickly with little thought to try and reclaim the golden age that had been lost. It was his last ditch effort so he had fewer safe guards, was working under momentous time pressures and was being more directly aggressive. He was forcing humanity to fit his mould rather than guiding it.

And each of the tools he created were in that vein - quick dirty powerful violent and disposable.


The only reason there is any sense of kinship and daddy issues around the emperor is because of the HH novels making the primarchs the protagonists when they were never that. The focus on them individually means that the story has to be twisted to make them worth something to the emperor beyond tools, or you're reading books from the perspective of his dishwasher that hates it isn't getting as much attention as his microwave.

The history of humanity had any opportunity for the emperor to build primarch like creatures, or go all out omnicidially conquering, but he never did until after humanity fell from its apex and the galaxy was torn apart by the birth of Slannesh, leaving a power vacuum for him to exploit.


Everything about the Emperor's actions screams last stand, final solution, out of options and in the end he still failed. Because human nature is destructive and putting it inside super beings moreso.

I don’t agree. Well, not entirely.

He was definitely against the clock when he began the Primarch Project, and the Salvage Bodge Job Astartes Project.

He, like the more, aha, farsighted Eldar, could sense something about to break in The Warp, which alongside staggering destruction for the Eldar, would clear the Warp Storms which had for a long time made galactic travel exceptionally hazardous, and inter-system communication all but impossible.

But knowing it’s coming and exactly when it’s coming aren’t the same knowledge. And for The Emperor, knowing it was coming was enough to kick things up a gear.

And from there, reunite humanity. Under A Single Banner. His Banner. Or Else. Only That Way, With Everyone Doing As I Say. Or I’ll Annihilate You.

So….where was he the past tens of thousands of years?

Setting. It. All. Up. Giving humanity that little nudge and a prod here. Whispering secrets which would allow mankind to progress at a rate more comfortable than “Hi, I’m Pretty Much A God, Here’s A Crapload Of Tech You Don’t Understand. I’m Trusting You Not To Blow Yourselves Up”.

But…he needed a compliant, desperate mankind to fold under his wing. One tired of extreme exertion just to eke out the most meagre of livings. One which still dimly remembers and retains fragments of Much Better Times.

He let what came before fall, so he had a softer target for his hostile takeover. A desperate, grateful herd. Those crying out for a shining saviour,

And…importantly…so fragmented and normally distrusting of Others? Not a single one had any chance of successfully resisting.

Join Us. Or Die. We Are So Many, You Are So Few. Just Bend The Knee, Give Us Absolute Control Of All Your Stuff, And You Will Know Peace.

This is of course just one of many potential interpretations, but not one I think gets aired enough.

So I like it to some degree, that he was moving to this point where he could mould a completely compliant and desperate humanity with Machiavellian delight.

But it becomes a little tenuous at the end. It's hard to believe he would spend tens of thousands of years setting up the situation needed to get him to make the imperium, juggling all the moving parts etc, only to have his end point be so precariously positioned.

With that much prep time it shouldn't have been so fraught. It seems like a ridiculous amount of effort to go to, just to put yourself a in a highly unstable situation with a big degree of failure.


My contention is that the golden age was his victory and everything after was his desperate scramble to save it.


So 40k isn't just a post apocalytic decaying empire, it's a post post, post apocalytic decaying empire.

Humanity died at the end of the golden age and has been gurgling ever since.

Might depend how you look at it.

Whilst the modern Imperium is, from what we’re told by the Crusade era background/propaganda, pretty damned far from what was intended? Mankind Still Survives.

With the birth of Slaanesh, the resulting fall of the Eldar as a galactic power? Not only did man regain some semblance of safe, reliable warp travel, so did the Orks.

And for the Orks in particular? There’s some speculation/argument that pre-Fall Eldar had been keeping their numbers somewhat in check. Or at least at the height of their empire? The Eldar were the enemy of choice for Orks, and acted as a lodestone for any major Waaagh! that wanted to get into a really, really good fight.

Then that lodestone is….gone.

Yes the nascent Imperium effectively took on that role, hence Ullanor.

But let’s imagine for now that The Great Crusade never happened. That leaves Orks without a single Bragging Rights Enemy. And so they scatter into the wider galaxy, invading the remnant worlds of humanity.

All those worlds that fell before or joyfully joined the Imperium are now standing alone. Smaller, less advanced surviving worlds risk simply being steamrolled. Stuff like the Interrex and others which maintained a high level of technology? Smaller, less centralised lodestones for the Orks to fight. And the harder you fight? The more Orks want a slice of that specific cake.

Now, that may mean no Orks the size of those seen on Ullanor, as no single Waaagh! finds a foe of sufficient threat to drive them to that size.

But…no Great Crusade? It’s entirely possible No Humanity Left before long, as they fall to various Xenos (including ones the Imperium rendered entirely extinct)

So The Emperor’s plans did, at least to a partial extent, Work. Humanity may not be preserved as he wished, but preserved it is.

I quite like Hellabore's interpretation, at least if you want to assume the best of the Emperor's intentions it helps make some of his terrible decision-making with the Primarchs and the Great Crusade a little less unreasonable.

The alternative of course is the complete opposite, assuming the worst (it is 40k after all) which is that the Heresy and the Imperium that exists in 40k was the Emperors real plan all along, part of a deliberate attempt to achieve Godhood... (I should note that I think End and the Death puts the nail in the coffin of that as a a concept, but by the by)

On the Emperor and Godhood?

I’m not at all convinced that Him on Earth, and whatever it is empowering Euphrati Keeler as the First Saint, and then the Sisters of Battle are necessarily the same thing.

See, Keeler does her first miracle just as Horus is being corrupted - and it’s a daemon inadvertently summoned by reading from the Book of Lorgar. Yet we’re asked to believe The Emperor knew nothing, and wouldn’t even listen to Magnus as to why he broke the Edict of Nikiae.

But clearly? Something acted through her. And again when she stopped Maggard in his freshly enhanced tracks.

We also know there are Species Specific Gods. In the modern day you’ve got Gork & Mork. Formerly you had the Eldar Pantheon. We know they weren’t just myths, by the evidence of Ceogerach and the Avatars. And I think Isha is still prisoner in Nurgle’s Garden?

I propose there’s a nascent God of Humanity, which has become known as The Emperor - but it is not in fact The Emperor. Should The Emperor actually properly cark it he might meld with it and allow that god to fully awaken. But for now, they may be two separate entities?