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The Emperor doesn't want to be associated with being a deity, yet he expects his subjects to call him the Emperor of Mankind. Being a king, emperor, czar, pharaoh or whatever you want to call it, is associated with the premise that they are chosen by the gods or God via the heavenly mandate, which bring me to my next point: isn't it just the same as calling him a god as calling him the Emperor of Mankind? It seems that the Emperor has dug himself into a hole with semantics. Regardless of whether they call him a god or not, he is worshipped for his extraordinary abilities.

On another note, if the Emperor has lived since 8000 BCE, he has seen a lot of empires rise and fall. He has also seen religions thrive and wither away. He has taken on many appearances, some noteworthy, some behind-the-scenes. That being said, if he never wanted religion to flourish, why didn't he just stamp it out immediately? Why did he wait until 28,000 CE to unify Terra? Again, he could have stamped out any opponent that he wanted to, but for some reason waited until the last minute to do so? Could he have been better prepared for his Great Crusade had he done things earlier?

I know that this is a fictional universe and that hindsight is 20/20. "He could have done this at such-and-such a time or he could have done this, that, and the other", but we must suspend our beliefs/reason to get a story. Thoughts?

The traditional answer to "why hasn't [insert figure] fixed this sooner?" is that they were waiting for some condition first.

Maybe Emps wanted mankind to reach some level of social/technological development (hard to control the world with spears), or for the planet to become so bad off he'd be accepted as ruler, or whatever.

Maybe he did intervene to the extent he felt he could without being too obvious, and things would have been a lot worse without him. There's a pretty broad range of reasons the 40k timeline worked the way it did, though like you said it ultimately is about justifying suspension of disbelief.

I think his conclusion about religion being something that needed to be quashed is a relatively (to him) new concept. I don't think that was a conclusion he came to initially, it took him a while to get there.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I think his conclusion about religion being something that needed to be quashed is a relatively (to him) new concept. I don't think that was a conclusion he came to initially, it took him a while to get there.

I think it's also a relatively new concept in the lore, reflecting the dramatic rise of atheism in the UK and attempts by BL writers to make him actually seem like "a good guy"

The whole thing is a messy series of retcons.

In the original fluff, the Emperor wasn't trying to turn humanity into atheists. It was strongly hinted that he was Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses and so on, or at least advised/manipulated those figures. His plan was to defeat Chaos by gradually building a guiding and unifying philosophy for humanity that would turn them away from the extremes of emotion and selfishness that fed the Chaos Gods. It would then be safe for humanity to ascend to being a fully psychic species like the Eldar without Falling.

When the Emperor revealed himself at the start of the wars of Unity, he openly presented himself as the culmination of every faith's prophecies. He never rejected worship.

Lorgar wasn't originally punished for worshipping the Emperor or calling him a god, but for wasting time building cathedrals rather than conquering new worlds quickly and efficiently.

Space Marines weren't atheists. They worshipped the Emperor as a god just like everyone else in the Imperium.

3rd edition (IIRC, or it might have happened near the end of 2nd) introduced the idea of Space Marines not merely worshipping the Emperor differently from the Ecclesiarchy as had been the case in 2nd edition, but actually not seeing him as a god at all.

Then, much later, the HH books introduced the idea that the Emperor himself had never wanted to be a god and was actively against religion. And his plan for defeating Chaos was changed to the current nonsense with the Webway.

Cutting humanity off from the Warp was originally the C'tan plan for enslaving them as a food source, before the whole C'tan/Necron retcon in (IIRC) 5th edition. Now, it seems to have been made part of the Emperor's plan. Which makes no damn sense at all, especially as the whole "shepherding humanity into becoming a fully psychic species" thing is still in there.

This all seems to go hand in hand with GW's recent attempts to make the Emperor look like some sort of misguided fool who could never have succeeded, rather than the way he used to be presented as someone who genuinely had a good plan but just got outplayed by the Chaos Gods.

GW/BL have some awesome writers, but whoever is coordinating the setting's metaplot these days is an idiot.

Because there is no "Heavenly mandate" being claimed. the title of emperor/king/duke/president etc doesn't inheriantly claim anything. (you're more likely to find an American who belives President trump is the chosen of god then you are to find a Brit who thinks that about the Queen)

one can crown oneself without claiming a divine right.

That's the whole point of the Heresy, particularly for the traitors who became aware of chaos but weren't really interested in it.. angron, morty, curze, perty etc. They realised they had been lied to and were mad about the blatant hypocrisy of the emperor.

If I remember correctly the Emperor waited until humanity was a bunch of techno barbarians and massive city-states, with a polluted, ravaged and cruel world left in the aftermath of all the fighting. He waited until humanity was near rock bottom, and then told them that he was the one to fix everything. Not a new tactic at all to gain power, very human IMO ironically haha.

I wonder if he was just waiting for the right conditions in the world or was he actively influencing the events of humanity to get to that point? If he was capable of playing chess like that, being able to understand how humanity would act/react, then why did he always seem to mess up later in the Crusade and with the Primarchs? Angron, Lorgar, and even Magnus come to mind.

Maybe the writers were trying to make more like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, aloof, self-centered and ambivalent to humanity.

Um, Napoleon Bonaparte? Guy made a point of crowning himself emperor without any sort of divine mandate.

As far as titles of supreme leadership in human history go, you really cannot go higher than emperor. Why settle for something lower?

 Jimsolo wrote:
I think his conclusion about religion being something that needed to be quashed is a relatively (to him) new concept. I don't think that was a conclusion he came to initially, it took him a while to get there.

The Fall of the Eldar/Rise of Slaanesh probably played quite a big part here that put a big 'back the drawing board' sticker on the millennia old plan to become the Chaos God of humanity. At which point everything else has kind of fallen apart so there's not much other option than to actively take control of the mess and try to steer it towards something salvageable.


Up til then, the Eldar model was probably what he was looking at, nascent psychic race on the cusp of coming into it's power - using the warp as a tool etc until your final apotheosis into an enlightened master race. The fact that the whole thing kind of imploded when it turns out the whole plan leads to you accidentally sacrificing your whole species to create an enemy you've always been aware of changes things a little. Particularly when there's at least three others waiting in the wings for their out-temporary origin (Slaanesh was born during the Fall, but Slaanesh is also eternal and always has been. Time is nothing in the Warp.).

Musselman wrote:
If he was capable of playing chess like that, being able to understand how humanity would act/react, then why did he always seem to mess up later in the Crusade and with the Primarchs? Angron, Lorgar, and even Magnus come to mind.

Master of Mankind answers that to some extent (or at least tries to make the excuse). He didn't act earlier because he needed to wait for the Fall of the Eldar. If mankind had gotten too uppity while the Eldar were still ruling the galaxy, the would have received a visit from "pest control". When the Eldar fell, humanity only had an extremely narrow window in which to reunite and conquer the galaxy before some other race (most likely the Orks) moved into the power vacuum and became too powerful for humanity to deal with.

He knew that several Primarchs were badly flawed but he needed them to complete the Crusade anyway. He comments about Angron that a damaged Primarch is better than no Primarch. He probably figured that completely the Crusade on schedule and establishing control of the webway was a priority that superseded everything else. He could clean up the mess left by some of the more unstable Primarchs later if necessary. But if he didn't get the Imperium established on schedule, there wouldn't be a "later" for humanity.

His mistakes were made out of necessity and expediency. The scattering of the Primarchs was a major spanner in the works of his plans and one that came back to bite him on the backside despite his best efforts.

BrianDavion wrote:
Because there is no "Heavenly mandate" being claimed. the title of emperor/king/duke/president etc doesn't inheriantly claim anything. (you're more likely to find an American who belives President trump is the chosen of god then you are to find a Brit who thinks that about the Queen)

one can crown oneself without claiming a divine right.

While the Emperor isn't making a claim via "heavenly mandate", kings, emperors, pharaohs, czars, etc. have used it in the past to justify their claim as such. Emperor Naruhito's right is derived from his lineage, which is supposedly linked to Amaterasu, the sun goddess. Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Leo III, the head of a religious institution. These titles used are tainted with religious connotations.

 Esmer wrote:
Um, Napoleon Bonaparte? Guy made a point of crowning himself emperor without any sort of divine mandate.

As far as titles of supreme leadership in human history go, you really cannot go higher than emperor. Why settle for something lower?

His title was "His Imperial and Royal Majesty Napoleon I, By the Grace of God and the Constitution of the Republic, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation and Co-Prince of Andorra". Perhaps he should go with a more secularized term like minister, president, chancellor, premier, etc. Though you do have a point, Emperor of Mankind/Master of Mankind is catchy and smoother.

things like "by the grace of god" exist because the RCC inserted itself strongly into monarchies and crowning of kings etc during the middle ages. it is NOT however, required for a king,emperor etc to have a religious component. especially as the emperor was "crowned by conquest"

And don't forget that at the point the Emperor is calling himself that, most (if not all) of the documentation about human history has been destroyed. To the common techno-barbarian when the Unification Wars took place, the term Emperor would probably mean no more than "Faction Leader".

BrianDavion wrote:
things like "by the grace of god" exist because the RCC inserted itself strongly into monarchies and crowning of kings etc during the middle ages. it is NOT however, required for a king,emperor etc to have a religious component. especially as the emperor was "crowned by conquest"

Conquest itself had a religious component. Clearly Heaven/God/the gods approved of the conquest else it would never have happened in the first place. But it did happen so therefore it must have had divine approval.

Iracundus wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
things like "by the grace of god" exist because the RCC inserted itself strongly into monarchies and crowning of kings etc during the middle ages. it is NOT however, required for a king,emperor etc to have a religious component. especially as the emperor was "crowned by conquest"

Conquest itself had a religious component. Clearly Heaven/God/the gods approved of the conquest else it would never have happened in the first place. But it did happen so therefore it must have had divine approval.

well yeah, if you're religious everything happened because it's gods will, but obviously if you're an atheist you don't belive that and just belive william the conquerer became king of england because he beat the snot of out Harold. no "magical sky fairy" involved.

The empror was always indirectly guiding Humanity. The reason he appeared at our darkest time is because he knew that if he didnt, humanity was gonna be exctinct.

Also, his plan was not to be the sole ruler of Humans. After the Crusade he was going to create his version of the High Lords iirc. I think this is also stated somewhere, that he always intended to pass the reigns to "normal" people like Malcador. I assume the Emperor would have placed himself as a figurehead or maybe just became a member of the High Lords as a peer instead of a leader. But then again, BL did paint him as a heartless bastard in Master of Mankind so who really knows anymore? Because GW and BL dont, and havent really known anything for a few years now

That's blatantly untrue. Humanity had multiple surviving groups a lot of which had pretty bright futures until Space Marines kicked down the door. It's not about human survival or even human prosperity, it was about human domination.

He's always been a pretty heartless bastard, that's hardly a change.

in fairness without uniting those surviving groups may well have simply been run over by a WAAGH. *shrugs* One can never tell what would happen if history changed something something butterfly

I think the emperor emerged when he did because he thought he already succeeded once and his plans were ruined by the warp storms during the birth of slaneesh. It was the golden age of humanity, he had guided them to a technological superiority beyond what they could imagine now and had settled on countless worlds, without a genocidal crusade. Then it all ended and earth fell to ruin so he took a direct leadership. As someone else said his plan was to hand humanity back to its own leaders in the form of the high council. Which pissed off some of the legions, we see in the HH that some of the primarchs and their marines think they are a better version of humanity

I think it’s worth recalling this introductory passage:

“For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium, for whom a thousand souls die every day, for whom blood is drunk and flesh eaten. “

pm713 wrote:
That's blatantly untrue. Humanity had multiple surviving groups a lot of which had pretty bright futures until Space Marines kicked down the door. It's not about human survival or even human prosperity, it was about human domination.

He's always been a pretty heartless bastard, that's hardly a change.

That's not true at all.Ignorance of chaos and worship of deamons would have turned whole civilisations into charnel pits. Xenos loving pre-crusade societies were just lucky they hadn't fallen afoul of the less reasonable xenos races-YET. When the Dark Eldar eventually rocked up to fill their slave ships or the Craftworlders come knocking to reclaim a maiden world, all of the reasoned diplomacy in the galaxy couldn't have saved them. The only thing that allowed humanity to survive for 10k years was mutual commitment to martial support, and rigid adherence to xenophobia/religious intolerance enforced hierarchically. That, or not being found by anyone, in some corner somewhere.

Human domination was required for human survival, let alone prosperity.

 Psionara wrote:
The Emperor doesn't want to be associated with being a deity, yet he expects his subjects to call him the Emperor of Mankind. Being a king, emperor, czar, pharaoh or whatever you want to call it, is associated with the premise that they are chosen by the gods or God via the heavenly mandate, which bring me to my next point: isn't it just the same as calling him a god as calling him the Emperor of Mankind? It seems that the Emperor has dug himself into a hole with semantics. Regardless of whether they call him a god or not, he is worshipped for his extraordinary abilities.

He got his statue of Emperor by beating the crap out of every warlord. He's not saying he's Emperor because he's god. He's saying he's Emperor because he conquered the whole damn planet and then other planets leading tons of genetically enchanced superwarriors.

He says "I have got biggest gun. Obey me or perish". And since he had the biggest guns...

 =Angel= wrote:

pm713 wrote:
That's blatantly untrue. Humanity had multiple surviving groups a lot of which had pretty bright futures until Space Marines kicked down the door. It's not about human survival or even human prosperity, it was about human domination.

He's always been a pretty heartless bastard, that's hardly a change.

That's not true at all.Ignorance of chaos and worship of deamons would have turned whole civilisations into charnel pits. Xenos loving pre-crusade societies were just lucky they hadn't fallen afoul of the less reasonable xenos races-YET. When the Dark Eldar eventually rocked up to fill their slave ships or the Craftworlders come knocking to reclaim a maiden world, all of the reasoned diplomacy in the galaxy couldn't have saved them. The only thing that allowed humanity to survive for 10k years was mutual commitment to martial support, and rigid adherence to xenophobia/religious intolerance enforced hierarchically. That, or not being found by anyone, in some corner somewhere.

Human domination was required for human survival, let alone prosperity.

Chaos was actively opposed by at least one society in the Interex and others could easily have found a way around it as they did.
Craftworlders were much less of an issue and at least two human societies were essentially founded by them liberating one from Dark Eldar and subsequently letting them live with Exodites and another being directly ruled by them. An important thing about the Craftworlders is that for the most part they don't seek domination or war, they just want to survive. The reason they're so hostile is because the Imperium demands they die so they have no choice other than to fight to solve all problems. For example in the Path of the Warrior novel we see Eldar attack an Imperial fort to take a Chaos artifact to prevent a demonic invasion of the sector. If the Imperium didn't want to kill them on sight they could just use diplomacy.

Dark Eldar aren't invaders and wouldn't seek to destroy an entire society like the Imperium does and what's more the Imperium doesn't even stop them and can't actually do so. Again the Craftworlders can stop at least some of them but the Imperium only gives them a motive to let the raids continue.

At the end of the day the Imperium damns humanity much more than it saves anything because with the Imperium literally every single Xenos race that can is required to fight the Imperium so it can exist.

 Esmer wrote:
Um, Napoleon Bonaparte? Guy made a point of crowning himself emperor without any sort of divine mandate.

Napoleon had to work hard to be crowned by the pope to give a sense of divine mandate and legitimacy to his rule.

As far as titles of supreme leadership in human history go, you really cannot go higher than emperor. Why settle for something lower?

As to not look like an unhinge megalomaniac with a god complex. Today even unhinged megalomaniacs with god complex don't call themselves king or emperor preferring more tame titles like President.

pm713 wrote:

 =Angel= wrote:

pm713 wrote:
That's blatantly untrue. Humanity had multiple surviving groups a lot of which had pretty bright futures until Space Marines kicked down the door. It's not about human survival or even human prosperity, it was about human domination.

He's always been a pretty heartless bastard, that's hardly a change.

That's not true at all.Ignorance of chaos and worship of deamons would have turned whole civilisations into charnel pits. Xenos loving pre-crusade societies were just lucky they hadn't fallen afoul of the less reasonable xenos races-YET. When the Dark Eldar eventually rocked up to fill their slave ships or the Craftworlders come knocking to reclaim a maiden world, all of the reasoned diplomacy in the galaxy couldn't have saved them. The only thing that allowed humanity to survive for 10k years was mutual commitment to martial support, and rigid adherence to xenophobia/religious intolerance enforced hierarchically. That, or not being found by anyone, in some corner somewhere.

Human domination was required for human survival, let alone prosperity.

Chaos was actively opposed by at least one society in the Interex and others could easily have found a way around it as they did.
Craftworlders were much less of an issue and at least two human societies were essentially founded by them liberating one from Dark Eldar and subsequently letting them live with Exodites and another being directly ruled by them. An important thing about the Craftworlders is that for the most part they don't seek domination or war, they just want to survive. The reason they're so hostile is because the Imperium demands they die so they have no choice other than to fight to solve all problems. For example in the Path of the Warrior novel we see Eldar attack an Imperial fort to take a Chaos artifact to prevent a demonic invasion of the sector. If the Imperium didn't want to kill them on sight they could just use diplomacy.

Dark Eldar aren't invaders and wouldn't seek to destroy an entire society like the Imperium does and what's more the Imperium doesn't even stop them and can't actually do so. Again the Craftworlders can stop at least some of them but the Imperium only gives them a motive to let the raids continue.

At the end of the day the Imperium damns humanity much more than it saves anything because with the Imperium literally every single Xenos race that can is required to fight the Imperium so it can exist.

Pretty much this. Emps, while inspired by, is not Leto II of Dune, and his vision made humanity the most debased it's ever been in the 41st millenium. He is not, and never was supposed to be the Good Guy in 40k setting.

 =Angel= wrote:

pm713 wrote:
That's blatantly untrue. Humanity had multiple surviving groups a lot of which had pretty bright futures until Space Marines kicked down the door. It's not about human survival or even human prosperity, it was about human domination.

He's always been a pretty heartless bastard, that's hardly a change.

That's not true at all.Ignorance of chaos and worship of deamons would have turned whole civilisations into charnel pits. Xenos loving pre-crusade societies were just lucky they hadn't fallen afoul of the less reasonable xenos races-YET. When the Dark Eldar eventually rocked up to fill their slave ships or the Craftworlders come knocking to reclaim a maiden world, all of the reasoned diplomacy in the galaxy couldn't have saved them. The only thing that allowed humanity to survive for 10k years was mutual commitment to martial support, and rigid adherence to xenophobia/religious intolerance enforced hierarchically. That, or not being found by anyone, in some corner somewhere.

Human domination was required for human survival, let alone prosperity.

This argument goes beyond racial profiling or even species profiling - it's other profiling.

It's ignorant to say 'because that white person did X, all white people do x', it's more ignorant to say 'because one human did X, all humans do x' but it's ridiculous to say 'because that one non human did X, ALL non humans do x'.

It's clearly an ideological issue not a factual one. Orks are not the poster child for aliens.

Hellebore wrote:

 =Angel= wrote:

pm713 wrote:
That's blatantly untrue. Humanity had multiple surviving groups a lot of which had pretty bright futures until Space Marines kicked down the door. It's not about human survival or even human prosperity, it was about human domination.

He's always been a pretty heartless bastard, that's hardly a change.

That's not true at all.Ignorance of chaos and worship of deamons would have turned whole civilisations into charnel pits. Xenos loving pre-crusade societies were just lucky they hadn't fallen afoul of the less reasonable xenos races-YET. When the Dark Eldar eventually rocked up to fill their slave ships or the Craftworlders come knocking to reclaim a maiden world, all of the reasoned diplomacy in the galaxy couldn't have saved them. The only thing that allowed humanity to survive for 10k years was mutual commitment to martial support, and rigid adherence to xenophobia/religious intolerance enforced hierarchically. That, or not being found by anyone, in some corner somewhere.

Human domination was required for human survival, let alone prosperity.

This argument goes beyond racial profiling or even species profiling - it's other profiling.

It's ignorant to say 'because that white person did X, all white people do x', it's more ignorant to say 'because one human did X, all humans do x' but it's ridiculous to say 'because that one non human did X, ALL non humans do x'.

It's clearly an ideological issue not a factual one. Orks are not the poster child for aliens.

#yesallorks

The Emperor was aware of the trend of the galaxy to date and had prophetic knowledge of the future of the galaxy, as far as those things go. The general policy of killing all the aliens protects humanity from the aliens that are more subtle than Orks- Genestealers, Eldar, Tau etc that threaten human unity. Unity is required to survive against the blatant threats- Orks, Knib, Demos, Yuvath, Carnoplasm, Hellgrammites etc.

The Virtuans, Altruons and the Friendmigos of the Hug nebula are unfortunate casualties of this policy, if they ever existed.

In other words, Local Man convinced everyone is like him sets out to kill them all before they get him.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
I think it’s worth recalling this introductory passage:

“For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium, for whom a thousand souls die every day, for whom blood is drunk and flesh eaten. “

*frantic searching through old codexes, rulebooks, and bl novels *

Where the feth do you get "for whom blood is drunk and flesh eaten "?