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Russ had more background written about him than most primarchs before the Heresy novels started being produced. He had more before the index astartes was written.

He was depicted as a great general, securing more victories than any other primarch except horus, and equal to Lion (they would keep one upping each other which was the start of their rivalry).

The fight between him and Lion was also concluded in a white dwarf story where it showed him in a much better light, offering his breast to Lion to vent his rage after failing to save the emperor. They left Terra as friends after that.



But it seems for some reason the writers of BL decided that the space wolves were the popular kids and Russ Jocklord had to be taken down a peg or two by the nerds that took over the school... And given the broad strokes of the heresy were already in place and Russ' part in it, it seems the easiest way for them to insert their pet primarch with no background into the story was to just make Russ their punching bag, and undo all the story he already had.

It just baffles me how much they seemed to relish putting gak on Russ, like they went out of their way to set up stories that we know Russ can't win because we already know Horus gets to terra, or angron can't die, but they needed to put the primarchs in stories doing stuff. It doesn't look accidental, it looks like they deliberately decided that space wolves were lame and Russ the lamest so they needed to ensure that everytime he did something he failed or did it stupidly.

It comes across that the writers took 40k far too seriously, the HH as some kind of deep Shakespearean tragedy and that Russ was not serious enough to fit their opus so made him the stooge.


Had there not already been plenty about Russ already I wouldn't really care. Pretty much the first background we got for over half the primarchs were the indicies, so that set up expectations. If that was the first time we met russ and it said 'russ was a stooge jock that did dumb gak and always failed to defeat his enemies' then it set the expectation. No one complains that Ferus is killed by Fulgrim because the first we learn of Ferus it's right there.

It stands out the most to me because of how liberal they are with 'how many times can we make russ do something dumb, boast about doing something only to fail, or generally make him look like a douche' which is totally at odds with his depiction before the BL brigade got control of it.

There are a lot of issues with the stories of the HH, but the systematic dismembering of Russ stands out the most to me.

 Hellebore wrote:
Russ had more background written about him than most primarchs before the Heresy novels started being produced

Curious as to where? I didn't have the 2e wolves codex and he was largely absent from the latter oldhammer books - Ragnar was always the wolf of note in the old days.

Historically Russ was the ass who decided to kill rather than capture Magnus, was strongly against everyone having psykers (except the wolves) supported enforcing the codex (except on the wolves), was MIA for the entire siege of Terra, and then noped out pretty much immediately into the eye of terror.

----

It should be noted that Russ was even worse in the original Index Astartes accounts as rather than being tricked it was Russ himself who, after Magnus tried to send warning, convinced the Emperor that Horus was loyal and Magnus was the traitor and leader of the heresy.

That's right - original Russ personally set up the genocide of the Thousand Sons without Horus so much as lifting a finger and further set back the response to the real threat. Because 'the wolf king feared the taint of chaos was ingrained within the giant's soul'.
His great company of bloodthirsty shape changing mutants were totally fine though.


Index Astartes II, p6. All things considered more modern lore has been kind to the guy.

Yeah, Russ's character doesn't seem to have been assassinated with the Heresy. He was always kind of a massive donkey-cave and self-assured blowhard. Also a hypocrite.

Some stuff, such as Angron on Gehenna, is new. But frankly that checks out. Angron's whole thing is that he's TECHNICALLY right about a lot of stuff and has perfectly valid grievances with the emperor / imperium / life in general. He's just too brain-damaged by being mutilated with the nails to be anything but a frothing donkey-cave / do anything good.

 Hellebore wrote:
He was depicted as a great general, securing more victories than any other primarch except horus, and equal to Lion (they would keep one upping each other which was the start of their rivalry).

Where is that from? I ask because the 2nd ed Ultramarine book says that Guilliman "succeed in liberating more worlds during the Great Crusade than any other Primarch". (pg.12)

The 2nd. ed Space Wolf book doesn't seem to say much about Russ's character, although I only did a quick scan. I figure there's got to be a bunch of SW stuff prior to 2nd ed though. I can think of the story about Russ meeting the Emperor, and the Rogue Trader "Imperial Commander Leman Russ" picture, but that's all I'm familiar with, I think.

When they released the Dark Angel index astartes, they also released the attached piece of text, which does a great job of showing that neither Russ nor the Lion were perfect, that Russ wasn't always at fault for everything and that he was actually a great general (I partially misremembered that lion and horus were ahead of him, rather than tied with lion). That Lion set on him out of grief, blaming him for being late to earth despite it being warp shenanigans that caused them to be late. Also they had the Lion beg Russ for forgiveness, rather than try to make him right all the way through.

Rather than flanderising their relationship to hatred forever, it actually showed that they were brothers to the end, reconciling despite all the fights they had.


The raising of prospero was retconned by the indexes, see the 2nd ed chaos codex below. The chaos codex itself says the wolves were ordered by the emperor because Magnus seemed chaos corrupted and were declared heretics by the emperor.


Like I said, virtually any writing that makes Russ look bad after this is usually so they can make another primarch look better. It's the curse he bad for having more involvement in the story than most by this point, so they just started moving things which resulted in him looking bad.

They actually tonally shifted the heresy beyond this, so that the chaos primarchs were more tragic to the point where we see far too much 'magnus did nothing wrong' memes. For some reason people love to push the imperium kills innocents because it's a risk to keep them around, but bend over backwards when the same logic was applied to the traitor primarchs - the emperor declared Magnus a heretic, it shouldn't matter whether it was 'right' or not. That's what the imperium does. Why is it tragic when it's magnus, and not planetary governor Fred?

Because GW gave the primarchs protagonist shields that absolve them in the eyes of the reader. It's really crazy how they managed this.

** besides anything else, I am just proud of the title of the thread...

 Hellebore wrote:
The raising of prospero was retconned by the indexes, see the 2nd ed chaos codex below. The chaos codex itself says the wolves were ordered by the emperor because Magnus seemed chaos corrupted and were declared heretics by the emperor.

2nd edition chaos codex, 1997, "The Emperor declared the Thousand Sons heretics and sent Leman Russ and the Space Wolves to devastate the Thousand Son's homeworld..."

Index Astartes: Wolves, 2001, "At Russ' insistence the Emperor was persuaded that Magnus was the traitor, not Horus. Horrified, the Emperor commanded Russ to leave immediately for the Thousand Sons' home world..."


So the same sequence of events, just expanded beyond the original paragraph. I am not sure when it was later changed to Russ being sent to fetch Magnus and being suggested to do otherwise by Horus.

If by expanded you mean completely changed then sure.

You're trying to say that sentence where the emperor's agency declares them heretics is the same as Russ declaring them traitors and the Emperor agreeing.

They are clearly different. There is no ambiguity in the original quote. the emperor declared them heretics and sent Russ. There is no agency for Russ in that at all. It's all on the emperor.

The retcon switches it to be from the perspective of russ trying to convince the emperor that magnus is a traitor. It takes the responsibility from the emperor and puts it on russ instead.



By your argument anything can be expanded by adding text that changes who's responsable for what.


general Jeff declared mike a traitor and ordered his captain fred to kill mike.


Is not the same as:

captain fred convinced general jeff that mike was a traitor so he could go kill him.



Your argument is because the outcome is the same, the initiation is the same. Which is not true.

 Hellebore wrote:
You're trying to say that sentence where the emperor's agency declares them heretics is the same as Russ declaring them traitors and the Emperor agreeing.

I assumed you had the index as you mentioned it in your post.
The fuller text indicates that the Emperor was enraged at the depths of Magnus' heretical acts in using sorcery and not pacified by his explanations.

The Emperor did declare them heretics and he did ultimately send Russ in both versions.

The index doesn't deviate from the overall sequence of actions but does expand on how Russ was involved from his motivations to his actions on Prospero itself - unless you feel it's a retcon that he did anything other than scratch his ass for the entire heresy in keeping with the original single paragraph version of the event.

A.T. wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Russ had more background written about him than most primarchs before the Heresy novels started being produced

Curious as to where? I didn't have the 2e wolves codex and he was largely absent from the latter oldhammer books - Ragnar was always the wolf of note in the old days.

Historically Russ was the ass who decided to kill rather than capture Magnus, was strongly against everyone having psykers (except the wolves) supported enforcing the codex (except on the wolves), was MIA for the entire siege of Terra, and then noped out pretty much immediately into the eye of terror.

----

It should be noted that Russ was even worse in the original Index Astartes accounts as rather than being tricked it was Russ himself who, after Magnus tried to send warning, convinced the Emperor that Horus was loyal and Magnus was the traitor and leader of the heresy.

That's right - original Russ personally set up the genocide of the Thousand Sons without Horus so much as lifting a finger and further set back the response to the real threat. Because 'the wolf king feared the taint of chaos was ingrained within the giant's soul'.
His great company of bloodthirsty shape changing mutants were totally fine though.


Index Astartes II, p6. All things considered more modern lore has been kind to the guy.

A.T. wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
The raising of prospero was retconned by the indexes, see the 2nd ed chaos codex below. The chaos codex itself says the wolves were ordered by the emperor because Magnus seemed chaos corrupted and were declared heretics by the emperor.

2nd edition chaos codex, 1997, "The Emperor declared the Thousand Sons heretics and sent Leman Russ and the Space Wolves to devastate the Thousand Son's homeworld..."

Index Astartes: Wolves, 2001, "At Russ' insistence the Emperor was persuaded that Magnus was the traitor, not Horus. Horrified, the Emperor commanded Russ to leave immediately for the Thousand Sons' home world..."


So the same sequence of events, just expanded beyond the original paragraph. I am not sure when it was later changed to Russ being sent to fetch Magnus and being suggested to do otherwise by Horus.

A.T. wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
You're trying to say that sentence where the emperor's agency declares them heretics is the same as Russ declaring them traitors and the Emperor agreeing.

I assumed you had the index as you mentioned it in your post.
The fuller text indicates that the Emperor was enraged at the depths of Magnus' heretical acts in using sorcery and not pacified by his explanations.

The Emperor did declare them heretics and he did ultimately send Russ in both versions.

The index doesn't deviate from the overall sequence of actions but does expand on how Russ was involved from his motivations to his actions on Prospero itself - unless you feel it's a retcon that he did anything other than scratch his ass for the entire heresy in keeping with the original single paragraph version of the event.

Your commentary is pretty clear that you view Russ as looking terrible because he wanted Magnus dead and you pushed that perspective by quoting text that made the devastation of prospero his instigation.


My point is that the references to this before the index clearly show that Russ was not instigating anything, that he was directed to destroy the Thousands Sons by the emperor. No 'Magus sux' or personal vendetta existed.

Which speaks to my point that they went out of their way to make Russ look bad, when he originally didn't.

So I'm not sure what you're saying now? My argument was his character was deliberately screwed with when he was not depicted this way previously. What about any of this challenges that perspective?

 Hellebore wrote:
Your commentary is pretty clear that you view Russ as looking terrible because he wanted Magnus dead and you pushed that perspective by quoting text that made the devastation of prospero his instigation.

You picked the sources.

 Hellebore wrote:
My point is that the references to this before the index clearly show that Russ was not instigating anything

"Leman Russ of the Space Wolves" - chaos codex, 2nd edition, 'the thousand sons'.
What a stand up guy. What a psychopath. Man that Leman Russ was certainly... of the Space Wolves? What a champ.


Besides your core argument is flawed - Russ is portrayed more kindly now than 20 years ago as per the sources you picked.


1997 Russ/Magnus
Magnus - "WaRp MaGiC!"
Emperor - "Kill 'im"
Russ - "I am Leman Russ of the Space Wolves"

2001 Russ/Magnus
Magnus - "WaRp MaGiC!"
Emperor - "Maybe I should kill 'im"
Russ - "Definitely kill 'im"
Emperor - "Bet"
Russ - "Sick"

2024 Russ/Magnus
Magnus - "WaRp MaGiC!"
Emperor - "Stop it"
Magnus - "WaRp MaGiC!"
Emperor - "Stop it"
Magnus - "WaRp MaGiC!"
Emperor - "STOP IT"
Magnus - "WaRp MaGiC!"
Emperor - "I'm a kill you"
Magnus - "WaRp MaGiC!"
Emperor - "I mean it"
Magnus - "WaRp MaGiC! WaRp MaGiC! WaRp MaGiC! WaRp MaGiC! WaRp MaGiC!" (sounds of exploding Imperial Palace)
Emperor - "Doggie fetch"
Russ - "Arf"
Magnus - "Noooo betrayal! Why father? WHY!"

I literally said he had more background before the indexes were written in the first line of the first post...

You're the one riding the index as proof he was bad due to treatment of magnus.

Before that, he was following his emperor's orders (the guy everyone is happy to believe knows what he's doing until Russ does what he asks and then somehow it's russ' fault).


Your position is facetious. All 40k background was written 'x did y' in the codexes until they started publishing novels and doing background articles like the indexes. Yet people still got story out of it for all the characters. They didn't need 50 novels to understand dante, Eldrad, fabius et al.

And you contradict yourself.

You said in the first post:

It should be noted that Russ was even worse in the original Index Astartes accounts as rather than being tricked it was Russ himself who, after Magnus tried to send warning, convinced the Emperor that Horus was loyal and Magnus was the traitor and leader of the heresy.

So you need to decide what you're actually arguing.



Until the IA article describes Russ as being an donkey-cave, his actions were depicted as a loyal primarch obeying his emperor.


...which is exactly the point of my thread. GW started assholifying Leman Russ.

Sanguinius is really the only other primarch with as much background before IA/HH and yet he managed to come through virtually unscathed. In fact they amped him up massively.

 Hellebore wrote:
So you need to decide what you're actually arguing.

Repeating myself a fifth time seems redundant.

 Hellebore wrote:
Until the IA article describes Russ as being an donkey-cave

Take it up with Andy Chambers and Phil Kelly, i'm sure they'll be interested to hear how they were taking their Shakespearean opus too seriously back in 2001 at the cost of cutting into Russ' deep and storied background.

A.T. wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
So you need to decide what you're actually arguing.

Repeating myself a fifth time seems redundant.

 Hellebore wrote:
Until the IA article describes Russ as being an donkey-cave

Take it up with Andy Chambers and Phil Kelly, i'm sure they'll be interested to hear how they were taking their Shakespearean opus too seriously back in 2001 at the cost of cutting into Russ' deep and storied background.

i never claimed it was deep and storied, only that they deliberately changed him to look bad. you're changing the argument rather than talking to the claim. you should go back and read my first post where i laid out the issues I have with it.

your position is it wasn't a change because adding more words to a sentence that shifted responsibility from the emperor to russ is somehow not changing things.

Your argument that the IA made him look worse only supports my position. They systematically kept adding negatives to him over time starting with the wolves IA and then adding more events in the HH where he is set up to fail because the narrative was already written and they kept adding him in.


p

and then noped out pretty much immediately into the eye of terror

"noped out immediately..."?

Russ left a little over two centuries after the Heresy. By the time Russ had his vision and disappeared with his Wolf Guard, he was one of only three primarchs remaining - himself, Dorn, and Vulkan. The Imperium was seemingly stable after the long Heresy, and had recovered likely about as much as it ever would. The traitors mostly confined themselves to the Eye of Terror, seemingly restricted to sporadic raids. The First Black Crusade, the event that would make it clear that the traitors might still be a serious threat, was still five hundred years away. This Crusade was when Dorn was seemingly killed. As for the last loyalist primarch, Vulkan, the only information available indicates that he was around longer than the others. Given that he's apparently a perpetual, he's presumably still around, albeit in hiding for some reason.

Ferus and Sanguinus died in the Heresy. Johnson disappeared during the Dark Angel civil war shortly after the end of the Siege of Terra. Corax left almost immediately after the Second Founding. Khan disappeared into a webway portal less than a century after the Heresy. And Guilliman suffered his not quite mortal wound less than two centuries after the Heresy.

We don't know why Russ left, but what little we do know suggests it was seen by Russ as important and likely not his idea (someone or something presumably sent him the vision). Further, it appears that the Imperium was relatively peaceful and stable (as much as it ever was post-Heresy) when he left, with the immediate threats from the Heresy having been dealt with.

He was depicted as a great general, securing more victories than any other primarch except horus, and equal to Lion (they would keep one upping each other which was the start of their rivalry).

Where is that from? I ask because the 2nd ed Ultramarine book says that Guilliman "succeed in liberating more worlds during the Great Crusade than any other Primarch". (pg.12)

I'll note that these two bits of information are not necessarily at odds with each other. Both can be correct. It is entirely possible that Guilliman liberated more worlds while also not winning as many battles as Russ (or Horus, or Johnson). It depends on the kinds of battles that each man fought.

 Hellebore wrote:
your position is it wasn't a change because adding more words to a sentence that shifted responsibility from the emperor to russ is somehow not changing things.

Almost as if they were still writing the character...

And since you provided two background references there are some interesting parallels between them :

1996 - Chaos Codex - Emperor orders Russ to attack the thousand sons
2001 - White Dwarf - Emperor orders Russ to attack the thousand sons, Russ' expanded story.

1996 - Angels of Death - Russ declares a feud against the Lion after a duel.
1999 - White Dwarf - Russ declares a feud against the Lion after a duel. Russ' expanded story.

Eumerin wrote:
"noped out immediately..."?
Russ left a little over two centuries after the Heresy.

Original Russ went straight for the eye of Terror, when and why he went came later.

GW were back-filling their story for years. Sometimes more extreme than others - For example Van Dire from the age of apostasy was originally shot in the face by a space marine landspeeder IIRC.

While I'm very much on team "Magnus only tried to help (doing some wrong in the process)" it does seem like Hellebore is correct here - the initial story in Codex: Chaos 2E just had Leman Russ doing what the Emperor told him, and the IA article makes it so that Emperor is convinced by Leman to let him go beat up Magnus.

You can call it a change or an expansion, but clearly the emotional content of the latter story is different. I'm not sure it's actually different, in that in the former tale we don't actually get any evidence about what Leman is thinking, so saying that he MUST not have had an irrational distrust of Mags is a stretch.

What, if anything, did the 2E books say about what the Space Wolves thought of psychics? To me that's the crux of the issue - as of the contemporary telling, the Space Wolves are hypocrites (which makes them unlikable, but not uninteresting). Just not liking each other is mundane and doesn't really warrant anything; plenty of the primarchs didn't like each other.

The Wolf and the Lion thing is just a bit of a mess; the lore (and the game mechanics) have done 180s over the years, on whether it's an honour duel or a deep dislike or a friendly rivalry, etc. I don't think that's super relevant to Leman's character either; if anything the Lion has come off WAY worse in the heresy novels in terms of likability.

General question, from someone who has avoided most of the HH books - do any of the Primarchs come out looking better after the HH material that's been released compared to how they did before?

Sanguinius.

 Dysartes wrote:
General question, from someone who has avoided most of the HH books - do any of the Primarchs come out looking better after the HH material that's been released compared to how they did before?

Well, the Khan goes from being honestly overlooked to being *really* cool in the HH, and Angron goes from "he's the angry one" to "oh, he's had a really awful life, and that's informed what he becomes".

 Dysartes wrote:
General question, from someone who has avoided most of the HH books - do any of the Primarchs come out looking better after the HH material that's been released compared to how they did before?

Hmm...

...maaaaybe Angron?

The World-Spirit is real, though. That puts paid to the 'hypocrisy' allegations, in my opinion.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
The World-Spirit is real, though. That puts paid to the 'hypocrisy' allegations, in my opinion.

I've not read many of the Horus Heresy books. Older books have referenced spirits in the sense of 'grandfather blizzard', 'Russ' wolves', and the concept of all worlds having a spirit (jaws of the world wolf) rather than anything particularly unique about Fenris.

Was it something they have branched out from the Thousand Sons plotline or is it something they have been building up for a while in HH?

A.T. wrote:

 RaptorusRex wrote:
The World-Spirit is real, though. That puts paid to the 'hypocrisy' allegations, in my opinion.

I've not read many of the Horus Heresy books. Older books have referenced spirits in the sense of 'grandfather blizzard', 'Russ' wolves', and the concept of all worlds having a spirit (jaws of the world wolf) rather than anything particularly unique about Fenris.

Was it something they have branched out from the Thousand Sons plotline or is it something they have been building up for a while in HH?

It literally shows up in 40k's War Zone Fenris: Wrath of Magnus to fight the TS's sorcery, and it makes an appearance in the similarly named Fury of Magnus to fight him alongside Nocturne's world-spirit. It's real.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
It literally shows up in 40k's War Zone Fenris: Wrath of Magnus to fight the TS's sorcery, and it makes an appearance in the similarly named Fury of Magnus to fight him alongside Nocturne's world-spirit. It's real.

I am sure it is now. I was just wondering when it was first a thing and whether it is portrayed as particularly unique to Fenris or more that worlds have a world spirit in the same way that machines have a machine spirit.

 Dysartes wrote:
General question, from someone who has avoided most of the HH books - do any of the Primarchs come out looking better after the HH material that's been released compared to how they did before?

Sanguinius largely remains unblemished. The Khan got something of a glow-up. Other than that, the loyalist primarchs were largely portrayed as arrogant and unlikeable, while the renegades were mostly fleshed out into tragic characters let down by the Imperium and the Emperor.

Not sure if it makes him better as such?

But The Lion, instead of simply being too far out of position to reach Terra, instead knacking a third of the Traitor homeworlds (Chemos, Barbarus, and Nuceria) is shown to have still played an important role.

Not necessarily decisive to the outcome of Heresy itself, but denying three traitor Legions safe-ish harbour afterwards seems very worthwhile, as well as it bleeding at least some of the Traitor forces off.

Yeah, the series did give the Lion some victories... But also portrayed him as a massive donkey-cave.

Still better than “meanwhile, The Lion was way over there. Like, way, way over there”.

Entirely fair IMO. You don't get the quote "Loyalty is its own reward" attributed to you without being a bit of a prick.

I also think the characterisation of the Primarchs is entirely deliberate. We're not supposed to sympathise with the Imperium... it's awful. The Primarchs are supremely powerful... but deeply flawed, because the Emperor's plan is monstrous, and not as flawless as he would have everyone believe.