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While living in the wild by yourself for 10 years with monsters surrounding you would make you cynical and bitter for a while, why is he so reserved, seemingly arrogant, never fitting in with the rest of the Dark Angels/Knights of Caliban? Isn't he supposed to mirror King Arthur?

It's not just 'for a while', but his formative years. Feral children rarely adapt back to society well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

Given the speed primarchs think and develop their cognitive capability, that's far longer than it would 'feel' for an equivalent normal human, too.

Curze had a similar situation of no-one to talk and relate to, but at least he watched humanity from the shadows and knew they existed, until Luthor saw him Johnson didn't even have that!

Other influencing factors:

"The Order" - the knightly order which raised him - was set up in a similar fashion to the Dark Angels chapter (as opposed to the heresy-era legion), with a convoluted series of ranks basically designed to stop the new kids learning anything their betters hadn't deemed them ready for. Said model probably contributed to his need-to-know mindset.

Plus, even once surrounded by humans, the fundamental problem comes into play that he's not human. Everyone around him is by comparison slow and stupid, not 'getting' the details of concepts and plans that are so obvious to him. Interacting with normal people is a rather tiring experience for a genius polymath who never had social reflexes embedded as a child (think Sheldon Cooper magnified many times).

He's not a direct mirror for Arthur, the Dark Angels just have Arthurian themes.

locarno24 wrote:
It's not just 'for a while', but his formative years. Feral children rarely adapt back to society well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

Given the speed primarchs think and develop their cognitive capability, that's far longer than it would 'feel' for an equivalent normal human, too.

Curze had a similar situation of no-one to talk and relate to, but at least he watched humanity from the shadows and knew they existed, until Luthor saw him Johnson didn't even have that!

Other influencing factors:

"The Order" - the knightly order which raised him - was set up in a similar fashion to the Dark Angels chapter (as opposed to the heresy-era legion), with a convoluted series of ranks basically designed to stop the new kids learning anything their betters hadn't deemed them ready for. Said model probably contributed to his need-to-know mindset.

Plus, even once surrounded by humans, the fundamental problem comes into play that he's not human. Everyone around him is by comparison slow and stupid, not 'getting' the details of concepts and plans that are so obvious to him. Interacting with normal people is a rather tiring experience for a genius polymath who never had social reflexes embedded as a child (think Sheldon Cooper magnified many times).

Ah, that makes sense. Thank you for the insight!

locarno24 wrote:
He's not a direct mirror for Arthur, the Dark Angels just have Arthurian themes.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden wrote:In all seriousness, what we "know" about the primarchs has quite literally always been half-myth. We "know" the Lion is asleep in the Rock. Except do we, really? Is that actually true? We "know" the Khan went to X, and that Corax left to do Y, and Russ did A, and so on. But almost every primarch's fate was left intentionally mythical with no definitive answer, pretty much like how King Arthur is supposed to return to Britain at its hour of need (where were you in WWII, chief?).

El Johnson has always been portrayed as a little off. Even in the old fluff he was stiff and aloof to the point of punching his brother in the face.

Speaking of Curze...does anyone else think he ate people? I haven't read the HH books in a long while but he really seems like the kind of psycho that has a human foot in his freezer.

The ADB quote is silly. We do (or rather did) KNOW the Lion was in the Rock. When things are told directly to the reader then there's no reason to disbelieve it beyond bad writing. Not everything can be handwaved by unreliable narrators.

Largely ADB is right about those mythic endings, but you are right to pick out the Lion one. However I will try to defend ADB's mistake: We are told only Big E knows Lion is in The Rock, so maybe Emps is just wrong about what he 'knows'?

nareik wrote:
Largely ADB is right about those mythic endings, but you are right to pick out the Lion one. However I will try to defend ADB's mistake: We are told only Big E knows Lion is in The Rock, so maybe Emps is just wrong about what he 'knows'?

Not really. IIRC it's clearly phrased as something we know that the Big E also knows. If it were written as the Emperor looking at the Lion in the Rock I might agree.

What if Lion is a Schrodinger's cat, both inside and outside the Rock's box?

I always liked the idea Cypher was Lion's astral projection. Probably been invalidated as a theory by the new fluff though?

nareik wrote:
What if Lion is a Schrodinger's cat, both inside and outside the Rock's box?

I always liked the idea Cypher was Lion's astral projection. Probably been invalidated as a theory by the new fluff though?

That would be an ironic twist given that lions = cat. Schrodinger's Lion?

That said, I'm not sure how that makes a big difference given the theoretical probability aspect of Schrodingers. Its great to say "He is both inside and outside the Rock until one can see and prove otherwise." But at the end of the day, he is going to be one or the other and either, the "Asleep under the Rock" line is going to be proven true or false.


As for Cypher, I kind of like that idea but then again, we also have the Lord Cypher within the HH dark angel novels such as in Fallen Angels and the short stories in Legacy of Betrayal, so I'm not sure how that works out with modern 40k Cypher,