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I hope I am wording this clearly.

What two Legions were the closest allies (in terms of relationships, fighting alongside each other, shared tactics/style, however you would define it) that ended up on opposite sides of the Horus Heresy? In other words, what was the most emotionally bitter rift that formed (besides the splits within individual legions of course)?

I am no expert on the background, but I always felt like White Scars and Sons of Horus were very close allies with similar styles that got along very well and made a great team and then found themselves fighting each other. I just love the thought of those two legions fighting side by side in a campaign during the Great Crusade; it seems like a fantastic partnership.

So what is your vote?

Iron Hands and the Emperor's children. Like their primarchs, they were United in brotherhood by their differences and the betrayal much deeper.

From the sounds of it, the White Scars and Thousand Sons were close. Isn’t there a book which describes how the WS almost went traitor over the events of the Buring of Prospero?

agurus1 wrote:
From the sounds of it, the White Scars and Thousand Sons were close. Isn’t there a book which describes how the WS almost went traitor over the events of the Buring of Prospero?

That was Scars (one of the 'best' HH books IMO), but it was their closeness to the Sons of Horus that nearly drove them to Horus' side, not so much their relationship with the Thousand Sons (which was really just a personal friendship between Jaghatai and Magnus).

The more interesting inter-legion relationship in that book, for me, was that the Wolves and the Scars disliked each other so much. To the galaxy at large, the Wolves and the Scars seemed quite similar (the wild barbarian reaver aesthetic), but actually they could hardly have been more different. Russ would have done whatever the Emperor ordered, no matter how personally distasteful, because of his oaths of loyalty to the Big E (hence what he did to Prospero). Jaghatai sort of followed the Emperor because he sort of bought into some of his ideals, but his loyalty was always to what he, Jaghatai, thought was morally correct, not to the Emperor as a person or as the 'Master of Mankind'. The Emperor and Malcador never trusted Jaghatai and seemed to be actively expecting him to join Horus. IIRC, Malcador at one point says essentially that the White Scars should be assumed to have gone traitor.

But then Jaghatai's 'hat' seems to be that everybody is always wrong about him all the time.

To the OP's question: it's a toss up between White Scars vs. Sons of Horus and Iron Hands vs. Emperor's Children. Nobody else comes close, IMO.

The Iron Hands and Emperors Children. The despare from the betrayal is what drove Ferrus to be more reckless then normal.

His personal mission to make Fulgrim answerd for it was one of the main reasons the Iron Hands suffered such heavy casualties. The relationship between the two legions is fun to read about.

I would say the Sons of Horus and Blood Angels. Fear to Tread shows a good degree of how close Horus and Sanguinius were, and it's even stated in one of the novels how Sanguinius was expected to be Warmaster, or would at least have been tough competition with Horus. The fact that Horus was the only non-Blood Angel who knew of the Flaw shows how much Sanguinius trusted him.

I'm gonna go ahead and cast my vote for the Emperor's Children/Iron Hands as well - as far as I've gotten in the HH novels, it's the book that's taken the most pains to describe a pair of Primarch's friendship - and more than that, how much the legions enjoyed seeing and interacting with each other before the Heresy.

DA/DA?

After just finishing reading primarchs Ferrus Manus I have to say iron hands and emperors children, they seemed to genuinely like each other and even mixed legions during combat to learn from each other, something o have not seen any other legion do.

I have to say the primarchs series has been pretty decent so far, from optimistic iron warriors to the moral quandaries of roboute guilliman on destroyers it has all been fairly solid and has a very different tone to the heresy series, it has a lot of foreshadowing as you would expect but anyone new to the series I would suggest reading these first to get a handle on some of the odd choices the traitors made.

I’m pretty sure IH/EC wins by a landslide.

EC and IH are the big ones here. Their combat styles weren't similar, but their relationship as separate Legions couldn't have been stronger.

It stands to reason that each Primarch went out of their way to deal with the other (Fulgrim trying to sway Ferrus, so much so that he clones Ferrus to see if he could have done it), and Ferrus single-mindedly focusing on bringing Fulgrim down.

IH/EH and Sons of Horus+BA would be my choices.

IH vs EC for sure. Maybe BA v SOH could be close but I don't think the writers have put as much effort into it as IH vs EC. So that really only leaves one choice.

IH/EC is a good one, but how about the 19th and the Luna Wolves ..... I mean for about 100 years the 19th was practically a chapter in the Luna Wolves.... I guess that would of went out the window when Corvus discovered his legion was a bunch of nomadic slavers....

9th and 16th is a good one also