Galef wrote:
Guilliman for 2 reasons:

A) He is currently the only eligible candidate b/c all other Loyal Primarchs are dead or lost
B) In order to keep the Imperium together, he may support the Imperial Truth just to pacify the masses and prevent another civil war. But he probably won't really believe it, just won't deny it.

However, if we assume all the Loyal Bois come back, I could see Sanguinius being a believer. Likely because he may see the psychic entity that Emps has become on the throne

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BrianDavion wrote:
Gulliman has actively discussed the emperor's divinity and, it's possiable he may come to belive, dark imperium shows him having some private doubts of his convictions

 Karhedron wrote:
Guilliman surveyed it all disapprovingly. Worship of his creator had become the bedrock of the Imperium. It was as pernicious as the efforts of Chaos, in its way. He did not understand it, but as he looked around this cathedral, one like many hundreds he had seen all across the Imperium, he doubted his own convictions regarding the Emperor’s divinity.

Theoretical, he thought. The Emperor is a god and denied His own divinity to protect humanity. Practical, He is a god.

Or, he continued to himself, Theoretical, the Emperor was not a god, but became one. Practical, He is a god.

He dismissed the idea angrily. These theoreticals had trooped through his thoughts so many times before he had grown weary of them, but his mind would not stop generating counter-arguments to his beliefs.

Theoretical, the Emperor was always a god, but was unaware of it. Practical, He is a god.

No, he thought.

Theoretical, the Emperor became a god to protect humanity. Practical, He is a god.

He is not a god, he thought.

Theoretical, Guilliman thought savagely now, turning his anger against his traitorous mind. The Emperor was never a god, denied He was a god and has been wrongly elevated by men who see power and mistake it for divinity. Practical, the Emperor is not a god.

‘He is not a god,’ said Guilliman out loud. He could not countenance the thought. A being that cold and callous was not worthy of worship.

 Karhedron wrote:
Guilliman surveyed it all disapprovingly. Worship of his creator had become the bedrock of the Imperium. It was as pernicious as the efforts of Chaos, in its way. He did not understand it, but as he looked around this cathedral, one like many hundreds he had seen all across the Imperium, he doubted his own convictions regarding the Emperor’s divinity.

‘He is not a god,’ said Guilliman out loud. He could not countenance the thought. A being that cold and callous was not worthy of worship.

pm713 wrote:

 Karhedron wrote:
Guilliman surveyed it all disapprovingly. Worship of his creator had become the bedrock of the Imperium. It was as pernicious as the efforts of Chaos, in its way. He did not understand it, but as he looked around this cathedral, one like many hundreds he had seen all across the Imperium, he doubted his own convictions regarding the Emperor’s divinity.

‘He is not a god,’ said Guilliman out loud. He could not countenance the thought. A being that cold and callous was not worthy of worship.

That bit makes me like Guilliman so much more. It's nice seeing a Primarch criticise him.

 Darth Bob wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Karhedron wrote:
Guilliman surveyed it all disapprovingly. Worship of his creator had become the bedrock of the Imperium. It was as pernicious as the efforts of Chaos, in its way. He did not understand it, but as he looked around this cathedral, one like many hundreds he had seen all across the Imperium, he doubted his own convictions regarding the Emperor’s divinity.

‘He is not a god,’ said Guilliman out loud. He could not countenance the thought. A being that cold and callous was not worthy of worship.

That bit makes me like Guilliman so much more. It's nice seeing a Primarch criticise him.

I feel that's mostly what all of them did. If the Primarchs are known for any one collective trait, it's daddy issues.

Coldness. That was the defining sensation of his meeting with the Emperor. Infinite, terrible coldness.

He had approached the meeting with dread, fearing what he would find. Would his father be dead? Would He be insane? Would they even be able to talk? When he had been admitted to the throne room and approached the Golden Throne, he had done so as he had approached his foster father Konor’s funeral, willing it all to be right, drowning in certain grief. Between the time of the Emperor’s ascension to the throne and Guilliman’s own death, the Emperor had spoken to no one. How could anything have persisted for ten thousand years, he had thought. There was the wizened corpse surrounded by banks of groaning machinery, His sword upon His knee. Sorrow suffused everything. The sacrifice required to keep the Emperor alive sickened the primarch. If He were alive. He appeared dead. Guilliman had expected nothing.

But He spoke.

With words of light and fire, the Emperor had conferred with His returned primarch, the last of His finest creations.

A creation. Not a son.

The living Emperor had been an artful being, as skilled at hiding His thoughts as He was at reading those of others. What remained of Him was powerful beyond comprehension, but it lacked the subtlety He had had whilst He walked among men. Speaking with the Emperor had been like conversing with a star. The Emperor’s words burned him.

What hurt most deeply was what went unsaid.

The Emperor greeted Guilliman not as a father receives a son, but as a craftsmen who rediscovers a favourite tool that he thought lost. He behaved like a prisoner locked in an iron cage who is passed a rasp.

Guilliman had no illusions. He was not the man who brought the rasp; he was the rasp.

While the Emperor had walked abroad, He had cloaked His manipulations in love. He had let His primarchs call Him father; He had let them call themselves His sons. He had rarely spoken those words Himself, Guilliman now realised, and when He had He had done so without sincerity. Buffeted by the full might of the Emperor’s will unclothed in flesh, a cloak had been ripped from Guilliman’s eyes.

The Emperor had allowed them to love Him, and to believe He loved them in return. He had not. His primarchs were weapons, that was all.

Though His power was immense, perhaps greater than it had been before He ascended, the Emperor’s humanity was all but gone. He could no longer mask His thoughts with a human face. The Emperor’s light was blinding, all encompassing, but finally – finally – Guilliman had seen it as a whole. The being he had thought of as a father could hide nothing from him.

The Emperor did not love His sons. They were things. Guilliman, all his brothers, were nothing but a means to an end.

 Mothman wrote:
Well its likely the end of the horus heresy will change, the old story we know is likely what the internal imperium might think, that the emperor loved his sons and had to force himself to end his favoured son. The Horus heresy novels are likely a closer to the truth (while keeping BL usual "its all canon not all true mantra). How the emperor treats his sons and the thunder warrior stuff gives horus and the traitors some justification in their actions, though clearly they got far too deep into chaos.

Im interested to see the new ending for HH,I am kind of expecting the new ending to be emps starts giving up on his job of saving humanity, after seeing what horus has become and decides maybe humanity wasnt worth it all along, only for pious to jump in the way and that reignites his feelings.

On topic though I could imagine Russ believing in emps as a god, it took a bit for him to adjust to him not being one when he first met him, and after so long in the warp he might have adjusted to the idea that emps is same level as chaos gods so basically is one. If the Lion comes back I could see him just siding with the ecclisiarchy in insisting emps is one to try and one up guillaman.

 FrothingMuppet wrote:
If I recall the end of the DI Plague Wars novel correctly, Bg G is left opening a lost copy of the Book of Lorgar and ponderng what if... What f Lorgar as right and the Big E was in fact a god.

This occurs after the final battle in the book where Big G witnesses the act of a Saint which he and the Custodians present interpret as the Big E taking the field through one of his Saints.

 Karhedron wrote:
I like the doubt and uncertainty. Guilliman is the POV character closest in mindset to most readers. His questions mirror the readers' questions. After all, don't we wantto know if the Emperor has become a god after all those millennia of worship and sacrifice?

Guilliman's growth as a character is much more interesting than "4 THE EMPRAH!".

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
I don't think any of the loyal Primarchs would ever see the Emperor as a god but if one did start believing that, which would become a Primarch zealot?