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The title pretty much says it all, and the Emperor is notorious for turning his own sons against him and then wondering why they would rebel.

Some really bad examples involve his not believing Magnus, his overt favoritism for Horus, Sanguinius, & Your Spiritual Liege, Dealing really poorly with Angron not wanting to leave ( Seriously, the Emperor is slowed why not just take all of Angron's followers with him in that continent sized pimp ship. Angron would have no reason to say no then)

In your opinions why is the Emperor such a despicable father?

The swear filter is there for a reason. Thanks
Reds8n

Being shoehorned into being one by pre existing background material. Basically, all of the key moments were already written about, and the only consistent thing to write in as a reason was 'terrible at being a dad'.

I don't think he was. Terrible, or a father.

For the most part, his "children" were raised by other people. By the time the Big E got to them, they had already been molded into the people they were going to be, and the Emperor had very little influence on their development as people. The ones who were bastards were already bastards, and the ones who were righteous dudes were already righteous dudes. The whole point of Chaos scattering his children to the four winds was so that they would grow up outside his sphere of control, so that they wouldn't fit in with his plan. (And, hopefully, die.)

I think that when people talk about the Emperor turning his children against himself, they're summarizing, perhaps at the expense of accuracy a little bit. The whole story is a tragedy because there are things that the Emperor could have done differently, had he known what was going to happen. His actions, ostensibly taken for the good of humanity, were the best decisions he felt he could make with the information that he had.

This is just my take on it, of course. I hope it helps!

He had 18 boys. 1 boy is enough to make most men turn to the bottle what would 18 do?

I would not agree with all of Jimsolo's account, but that does play a big part in it. Him not having control of their lives until they were already men was a substantial factor.

It also helps that the Emperor was far-removed and detached from humanity, even his transhuman sons, on a mental level.

I used to think that it was because he was excepting 20 identical copies of himself raised on Terra, and what he got was a bunch of misfits from all around the galaxy. He wasn't really prepared for it.

It's like if a white women and a white man, who have been told by the doctor to expect a little white boy, have black, girl triplets with psychic powers. And then the parents send their children off to rid the galaxy of all xenos, essentially using them as slaves, and punishing those who doesn't conquer and pillage enough.

But then in Deliverance Lost its revealed he intentionally made them mutated and bizarre, despite his hatred of mutations.

You also got to remember he was just a man after all, with flaws and mistakes made in his life. And of course, there were other equally powerful influences outside of his control dealing with his sons at the time and even before he met them.

I think he had a hard time being a fatherly figure, but cut the guy some slack, mates. Remember, mom was never around *sad face*

 LoneLictor wrote:
I used to think that it was because he was excepting 20 identical copies of himself raised on Terra, and what he got was a bunch of misfits from all around the galaxy. He wasn't really prepared for it.

It's like if a white women and a white man, who have been told by the doctor to expect a little white boy, have black, girl triplets with psychic powers. And then the parents send their children off to rid the galaxy of all xenos, essentially using them as slaves, and punishing those who doesn't conquer and pillage enough.

wat

 BattleCapIronblood wrote:
You also got to remember he was just a man after all

He was not, not based on the current fluff.

He is human in name alone.

The problem partly comes from how he treated the primarchs to begin with. He tried to walk a line between training them as obedient soldiers while being their 'father'.

He should have picked on role and stuck with it. Raise them as sons and let them help him how they wished, supporting their individual talents; like not forcing them all to be warriors.

Or train and command them as his military subordinates.

 SickSix wrote:
The problem partly comes from how he treated the primarchs to begin with. He tried to walk a line between training them as obedient soldiers while being their 'father'.

He should have picked on role and stuck with it. Raise them as sons and let them help him how they wished, supporting their individual talents; like not forcing them all to be warriors.

Or train and command them as his military subordinates.

He didn't really get much chance to raise them though, one minute they were in their goldfish bowls happily floating away, next minute they are all grown up on some, in most cases, god forsaken armpit of a world where their lives have been hard and they have their own personalities.

If the Emperor had the chance to teach them and bring them up how he had wanted to I am sure that the family would not be as dysfunctional as it is or was.

From Deliverance Lost and the scene where Corax gets back to the Palace we can see that the Emperor had intended to bring all 20 Primarchs up on Terra.

 Pilau Rice wrote:

 SickSix wrote:
The problem partly comes from how he treated the primarchs to begin with. He tried to walk a line between training them as obedient soldiers while being their 'father'.

He should have picked on role and stuck with it. Raise them as sons and let them help him how they wished, supporting their individual talents; like not forcing them all to be warriors.

Or train and command them as his military subordinates.

He didn't really get much chance to raise them though, one minute they were in their goldfish bowls happily floating away, next minute they are all grown up on some, in most cases, god forsaken armpit of a world where their lives have been hard and they have their own personalities.

If the Emperor had the chance to teach them and bring them up how he had wanted to I am sure that the family would not be as dysfunctional as it is or was.

From Deliverance Lost and the scene where Corax gets back to the Palace we can see that the Emperor had intended to bring all 20 Primarchs up on Terra.

The problem also is that despite that, he doesn't seem to care how to treat them otherwise. Angron is a very good example considering the Emporer basically stated "Suck it up, they died" when Angrons honor was broken.

He certainly could have handled individuals better, but perhaps there were other motives behind the way he acted and honestly we do not know much about how the Emperor actually interacted with his Sons when they were with him. We can say he didn't care for Lorgar or for Magnus, for example, but still they held him in such high regards. We don't get to see the good father or the compassionate side of the Emperor, just what others tell us about him. He's also trying to keep 18 Sons happy at one time, all who have their own personalities, and many that clash with each other.

The Emperor was happy enough for Magnus to do what he was doing for some time, until Mortarion and Russ broach the subject of his use of the Arcane, maybe forcing his hand to act. Same with Lorgar and Guilliman, Lorgar has the second largest Legion, why is he not using it like Guilliman, another source for contention.

Angron is a good example agreed, why didn't he help him like he did the others. Perhaps this is one of the times we see an actual personality flaw in the Emperor, maybe he was angry. He had explained Angrons nature to him on the planets surface, had two of his personal guard killed and had been told to gtfo by Angron. What other choice did he have other than to effectively abduct him? I agree that the outcome could have been better if he had just helped, but Betrayer gives other considerations and ramifications into why the Emperor chose that course of action.

A thought I had on this as well, In Butchers Nails


But I do agree with you, Angron is a good example of a failing and it caused Angron to resent his father and his every action to be two fingers up to him.

He was an idiot.

I rule that a Legion all about psychic powers can't use them or research them anymore. What do think is going to happen? I will also send the legion that hates them the most to bring them back to earth. Send the Ultra Marines/Imperial Fists they obey orders. Don't send the Space Wolves. Magnus loved the emperor and was willing to let his planet die as to not prove everyone was right. The emperor caused the Thousand Sons to go to Chaos by the Edict of Nikaea and sending the wolves.
.
I will also not tell any of my Primarchs about Chaos and they won't be unkwowing influenced by them. Nawww won't happen the Chaos powers I betrayed wouldn't use that ignorance against me. Dumb dumd dumb stupid. One of the Chaos Gods helped Magnus break the wards to the place to destroy the emperors web way. Magnus wouldn't have taken the help had he been told. Horus might not have fallen had he been warned of Chaos.

The Emp tried to stop psychic powers from being used when he knew it was the future and evolution of humanity. Look how that turned out. The powers are in common 40k use in the current date.

The Emp tried to stop the worship of him and turned Lorgar agaisnt him when he was the most devoted and loyal Primarch there was. Now all the Imperium is is the worship of the Emp. Exactly the opposite of what he wanted. I wonder what would happen to an Imperial Guardsman or Space Marine now if they declared, "The Emp is not a God -- he even said so himself and he didn't want to be worshiped. I am an atheist." He would be killed.

Preaching hate for all aliens was dumb when there are aliens that would be our allies vs Choas <----- (he great enemy I might add) is pure stupidity. A lot of times in the fluff they fight the Tau or Eldar when they are both trying to something Chaos that needs to be stopped. He was supposed to be trying to bring an age of reason not an age of unreasoning hate.

The Emp made extremely poor decisions.

Massive amounts of responsibility I guess, building a galaxy wide Imperium which caused him to turn a lot of attention away from any issues his Sons were going through. < That's the most simple answer I can give.

 Pilau Rice wrote:
We can say he didn't care for Lorgar or for Magnus, for example

In the case of Magnus, I don't think we can.

Magnus was closer to the Emperor than most of his brothers, in some ways, closer than even Horus. Magnus took after him in the way that truly made the Emperor what he was: His raw psychic potential.

Well, Kor Phaeron was a better dad to Lorgar then the Emperor.


That explains something

 -Loki- wrote:
Being shoehorned into being one by pre existing background material. Basically, all of the key moments were already written about, and the only consistent thing to write in as a reason was 'terrible at being a dad'.

Pretty much.

People forget that the background to the Imperium was written when all it was was a loose framework to describe the history of a universe where Space Knights fought against Space Elves and Space Orks and Chaos Space people, and monsters. A time when it was okay to be named Angron because you were the patron saint of the Chaos God of Being Really Angry, or Moratrion if you were the patron saint of the Chaos God of Decay, and you looked like Death and carried a scythe. A time when it was okay to be called Lionel Johnson, because you were the primarch of the Dark Angels.

The Horus Heresy has to be one of the absolute worst possible licenses to have to try to write with a straight face, and the only reason they do it is because you people won't stop shelling out cash for the books.

The simplicity of it is that they were already built and raised in certain ways when he got there. Arguably Angron is the only one he really drove away but the arguement would be thin at best.

With Fulgrim, it was granting the Aquila to him and starting his pursuit of perfection. The Laer Blade's Daemon however, did most of the work.

Perturabo was probably the one he could be considered a bad dad. He forced Perturabo to do things he didn't want to and caused him pain and made him take the dirty jobs, and expected him to simply understand. You don't hand a 5 year old a tool kit and expect him to build a house from scratch.

With Kurze, he had no say in the matter. Kurze was the wyay he was from the outset and the Emperor could've tried to bond, but like the moody, emo teen, Kurze would've just pushed away.

In The case of Angron, he had two options. Let him die or take him away. He chose the option most useful to the Crusade, although taking the slaves with him too could'e sorted it out.

Mortarion did it out of nessecity, and love for his sons. NmNothing to be done.

Magnus' case was the mistrust E put in him, and the favouritism for Horus. Nevertheless, Horus still changed the orders and caused the T-sons defection.

Alpharius was an insecure little runt and nothing can be done. Small man syndrome and all that.

Horus was the most unavoidable. Like the Crusades of the middle ages, a clash of beliefs. Like when a teen tells his die-hard Catholic dad that his son is Atheist. No matter how well you raise him the child and father wll never see eye to eye. Now add a tonne or so of muscle, incredible IQ, indestructable armour, give the dad magic powers and feed the kid steroids from Hell and arm them each with tens of thousands of Space Marines, billions of soldiers and Titans and put them on a galactic scale and we get the HH.



so in most cases it wasn't being a bad dad, just one who didn't raise them. He did what he had to do to protect the wider Imperium from Chaos and Xenos.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, Lorgar was plain and simlle child abuse.

"Daddy I love you!"
"Get the feth away and eat your vegetables!"

The guy is not going to win any father of the year awards.

First he spent more than 30,000 years wandering the earth trying to figure out what to do with his life. During this time he whored around and left a trail of perpetuals in his wake.

"Common baby, I'm the gestalt of all humanity and I like it raw"

Then when he finally settled on a career he got stuck with 20 kids. He couldn't pay attention to all of them, he had to spend time on his career development. So half his kids turned out alright and the others turned to drugs and crime. Not counting the ones he killed, he batted .500. If he was a baseball player, that would be a fantastic percentage.

So cut the guy some slack, he did the best he could as a single father.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
People forget

No one forgets, how could they? You bring it up every other week.

Question : :What made the Emperor such a terrible father?

Answer : Cause he did not have the love of a good woman.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
He had 18 boys. 1 boy is enough to make most men turn to the bottle what would 18 do?

Gotta agree here, and then add, with different material test tubes.

ThePrimordial wrote:
The title pretty much says it all, and the Emperor is notorious for turning his own sons against him and then wondering why they would rebel.

Some really bad examples involve his not believing Magnus, his overt favoritism for Horus, Sanguinius, & Your Spiritual Liege, Dealing really poorly with Angron not wanting to leave ( Seriously, the Emperor is slowed why not just take all of Angron's followers with him in that continent sized pimp ship. Angron would have no reason to say no then)

In your opinions why is the Emperor such a despicable father?
(Apparently DakkaDakka replaces usage of the word reta**ed with slowed which in the English language is no where near similar in meaning, might want to work on that guys)

Like Angron himself, the slaves would probably see the Emperor as yet another tyrant, and now Angron has back-up if he decides to continue his rabble-rousing. Also, since the ruling family of the planet submitted to the Imperial Rule, they became Imperial subjects, while the escaped rebel slaves remained rebels. And we all know how gently the Imperium handles rebellion.

Finally, they are genetically engineered trans/super/mega/ultra/demi-god humans. Wah wah, mah daddey didn't love me! Get the feth over it.

Why would the Emperor value random nobles on some random planet over the soldiers of one of his sons, beings whom have the protection and good word of one of 20 god generals designed to lead men? The notion that the Emperor would value random mortals on some random planet over the wishes of a Primarch in of itself speaks to monumental stupidity on the part of the Emperor.

That said, the smartest option would have probably been to just let the berserker primarch and his army die. That he chose to antagonize Angron and expect him to follow like an obedient pup is where the stupidity comes in.

As mentioned his track record is not that great when it comes to the finer things in life.

He creates an army of super soldiers to conquer the planet to bring everyone together under one rule (his).
At the moment of victory he unveils his new super soldiers while the surviving old ones are left to rot.
He uses the new ones to destroy every last religion on earth declaring that every human must be an atheist or die.
His greatest ally however gets to keep their wacky machine religion which may or may not be based on an alien god.

He creates 20 (21) generals to lead his armies of super soldiers and cannon fodder but then loses them somehow.
He creates/reworks a psychically attuned chair but fails to tell his most psychically gifted son about it let alone how sensitive it is.

Now it could be possible that the initial powering up of the chair/gate is what allowed chaos to gain access to his labs and steal the infant primarchs - nothing else much makes sense - certainly not bizzare time travel adventures.
It's also possible that the Emperor had a vision of Magnus damaging his chair so banned him from that sort of communication without an explanation - the Emperor is a control freak afterall.

He has a habit of creating things for a task without thought to what happens with those things when he's finished with them. Yes he had the Happy Homes Retirement Village built for his sons - his genetically engineered vat grown super warrior sons whose main purpose is to lead armies of super soldiers and kill anyone who resists him - yeah those guys. I'm sure they would have settled in nicely after a lifetime of violence and being in charge of men. I'm sure they would have released all their armies and positions of authority to raise turnips and play bowls.

It also bears thinking that most of his sons who betrayed him are still alive and in charge of their legions, debased maybe, but still in charge. Compare that to his loyal sons where two are in stasis, three are known to be dead, and the rest are missing, presumably in chaos space.

Who knows, maybe he engineered the whole thing from the start to get rid of his sons from the Imperium when he realised that they'd never accept his retirement plans for them. So he engineered the rebellion but didn't foresee how involved chaos would be and how much of his empire would be undone in the process.

Surely the early exposure Chaos had quite a lot to do with it? If anything it's surprising they all didn't turn out frothing loonies.

Az

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Pilau Rice wrote:
We can say he didn't care for Lorgar or for Magnus, for example

In the case of Magnus, I don't think we can.

Magnus was closer to the Emperor than most of his brothers, in some ways, closer than even Horus. Magnus took after him in the way that truly made the Emperor what he was: His raw psychic potential.

But he still put him on trial and dispatched a legion to bring him to account for his actions.

I'm saying that in despite of the tough love he did care for his sons, in his own way and them holding him on a pedestal could be a reflection of this.

 Deadshot wrote:

Perturabo was probably the one he could be considered a bad dad. He forced Perturabo to do things he didn't want to and caused him pain and made him take the dirty jobs, and expected him to simply understand. You don't hand a 5 year old a tool kit and expect him to build a house from scratch."

True, but Horus, as Warmaster, also put Perturabo into these situations.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Why would the Emperor value random nobles on some random planet over the soldiers of one of his sons, beings whom have the protection and good word of one of 20 god generals designed to lead men? The notion that the Emperor would value random mortals on some random planet over the wishes of a Primarch in of itself speaks to monumental stupidity on the part of the Emperor.

That said, the smartest option would have probably been to just let the berserker primarch and his army die. That he chose to antagonize Angron and expect him to follow like an obedient pup is where the stupidity comes in.

I haven't read Betrayer yet but from what I have heard



And the Emperors chief concern has always been for humankind, would that mean at the sacrifice of one of his own sons, I think quite possibly.

Maybe the Emperor didn't know how damaged Angron was at this time, or what effect the Butchers Nails had on his psyche. But I think you would be right, maybe he should have left Angron to his fate, it would have saved him a lot of hassle. But then maybe the Emperor wasn't willing to lose another Son.

Uh, I'm pretty sure that it should have been obvious how damaged Angron was after he fething ripped ten Custodians and the majority of the World Eater's commanding officers to pieces with his bare hands, lol.

I could get the Emperor not wanting to lose his son, but he tried to have his cake and eat it too. He decided to both antagonize Angron, while also trying to make him his obedient little pup, and then had the audacity to be shocked when Angron wasn't.

Had the Emperor tried to save Angron's mortal family along with him, then I could see the logic behind his actions, even if it was riskier than just letting Angron be put down.

The problem isn't that he is a bad father. The problem is that he's an idiot, lol. Or at least, comes off like one, because there are so many foregone conclusions in the series that trying to justify them all is going to cause a few snarls, as VetSarge pointed out.

It's like how Kor Phaeron has miraculously survived long enough to tempt Lorgar to Chaos, despite the fact that, when the Imperium made first contact with Lorgar's world, both the Emperor and Magnus the Red were in the man's direct presence. A cursory psychic glance in his direction, in-character for both of them, would have revealed his intent and nature. The merest shrug of psychic power would have ended that problem on the spot. Or how a powerful Daemon somehow managed to be physically present and under the radar on Nikaea, despite the three most powerful Imperial psykers in history being in attendance.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

It's like how Kor Phaeron has miraculously survived long enough to tempt Lorgar to Chaos, despite the fact that, when the Imperium made first contact with Lorgar's world, both the Emperor and Magnus the Red were in the man's direct presence. A cursory psychic glance in his direction, in-character for both of them, would have revealed his intent and nature. The merest shrug of psychic power would have ended that problem on the spot. Or how a powerful Daemon somehow managed to be physically present and under the radar on Nikaea, despite the three most powerful Imperial psykers in history being in attendance.

And this is why a lot of the heresy doesn't make sense