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Basically given how far gone Lorgar and his legion were even before Monarchia and the treatment Lorgar and his legion gave to planets they conquered, should the Emperor have just dialed up Russ, Guilliman and let's say Dorn and say that Lorgar's gone too far and so has his legion and his will be the third legion to be taken out.

Given hindsight obviously. I would argue at the time though the Emperor figured the sanction on Monarchia would send the right lesson. Further, though secretly studying the warp, on their face the word bearers straightened up so from the big E's perspective the issue was resolved.

Lorgar's crimes were being slow and worshipping the Emperor. He was obviously extremely loyal to his father, but wasn't otherwise unstable, rebellious or unreliable. The Emperor wanted to snuff out religious worship of course, but he was less than 1/18th of the Crusade's gains anyway and they cold retroactively deal with that. Killing Lorgar would have been an absolutely massive, massive waste if the Emperor though a harsh enough lesson could get it through to him to finally knock it off. It anybody should've been taken out back with an especially large shotgun it ought to have been Angron.

It depends on when you are. In hindsight he should have met Lorgar, killed him and then started saying "these foul traitors have killed your brother my sons!". After that it's not as easy to just kill him because people notice a Legion going missing and there'd be questions.
Personally I'd have arranged an accident on the ships.

 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:
Basically given how far gone Lorgar and his legion were even before Monarchia and the treatment Lorgar and his legion gave to planets they conquered, should the Emperor have just dialed up Russ, Guilliman and let's say Dorn and say that Lorgar's gone too far and so has his legion and his will be the third legion to be taken out.

I mean in hindsight he should have killed every traitor Primarch except for arguably Magnus lol.

Given what he knew at the time killing Lorgar would have been a huge overreaction and abuse of power and only the more blindly loyal of his sons like Dorn or Russ (and maybe not even him, since he liked and defended Lorgar) would support it I'd imagine.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:
Basically given how far gone Lorgar and his legion were even before Monarchia and the treatment Lorgar and his legion gave to planets they conquered, should the Emperor have just dialed up Russ, Guilliman and let's say Dorn and say that Lorgar's gone too far and so has his legion and his will be the third legion to be taken out.

I mean in hindsight he should have killed every traitor Primarch except for arguably Magnus lol.

Given what he knew at the time killing Lorgar would have been a huge overreaction and abuse of power and only the more blindly loyal of his sons like Dorn or Russ (and maybe not even him, since he liked and defended Lorgar) would support it I'd imagine.

Yeah, without a legitimately good reason to execute Lorgar, the Emperor killing him, even "quietly" would have raised red flags and freaked out a lot of the other Primarchs. Lorgar's death in such a fashion could have even inadverdently caused another event that led to the Heresy, because if he kills one of the most fanatically loyal sons at the time due to his lack of progress, that would have been cause for concern for even Horus to think that he was just as expendable, which was one of the core reasons behind the original HH to begin with.

I suspect Big E wasn't paying close attention to the non-Primarchs in the room when he found Lorgar, or he may well have eliminated Erebus and Kor Phaeron for being corrupted by Chaos.

That might have staved off the worst of the Heresy, had he done so.

The better question is, why didn’t he just kill Lorgar?

I don’t think he spared him out of paternal affection or to avoid creating political turmoil. He doesn’t seem capable of affection. And sparing him arguably created more political turmoil than executing him would have. Also, other Primarchs may have already been executed at that point.

My theory has always been that the Heresy was the plan all along and that Lorgar was behaving exactly as the Emperor desired.

 Arbitrator wrote:
It anybody should've been taken out back with an especially large shotgun it ought to have been Angron.

Angron's retrieval was botched by the Emperor, getting him a legitimate grudge right off the bat.
Curze, on the other hand, was never anything but a monster.

Bran Dawri wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:
It anybody should've been taken out back with an especially large shotgun it ought to have been Angron.

Angron's retrieval was botched by the Emperor, getting him a legitimate grudge right off the bat.
Curze, on the other hand, was never anything but a monster.

There was never any hope for Angron. The Butcher's Nails literally replaced large sections of his brain and were slowly killing him. Once the Emperor found out the process was irreversible he should have just put the mad dog down.

Same with Curze.

Betrayer was great. Angron is a bit whiney the whole time, but he does make some good points.

Why did the Emperor not come down to the surface? Why didnt he drop the 12th down to support their genefather?

Angron was the only Primarch to be "greeted" that way. Even Konrad Kurze got a face to face visit (which ended up triggering his Premonition pre-TSD).

No drinking contest. No show of skill. No boasts and daring like he did with all the other Primarchs.

How different would Angron be if the Emperor actually helped him?

 Manchu wrote:
The better question is, why didn’t he just kill Lorgar?

I don’t think he spared him out of paternal affection or to avoid creating political turmoil. He doesn’t seem capable of affection. And sparing him arguably created more political turmoil than executing him would have. Also, other Primarchs may have already been executed at that point.

My theory has always been that the Heresy was the plan all along and that Lorgar was behaving exactly as the Emperor desired.

He does refer to them as his sons. The problem is that a lot of his treatment can be excused with necessity as he is literally trying to stave off quite literally hell.

We know that two were culled and he did sick Russ on Magnus. I rather think he just miscalculated with Lorgar underestimating the threat.

 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:
Basically given how far gone Lorgar and his legion were even before Monarchia and the treatment Lorgar and his legion gave to planets they conquered, should the Emperor have just dialed up Russ, Guilliman and let's say Dorn and say that Lorgar's gone too far and so has his legion and his will be the third legion to be taken out.

If the emperor was'nt going to kill Angron & Kurze for who the argument for killing them is much stronger then for Pre Monarchia Lorgar he was not going to kill Lorgar.

Shinji wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
The better question is, why didn’t he just kill Lorgar?

I don’t think he spared him out of paternal affection or to avoid creating political turmoil. He doesn’t seem capable of affection. And sparing him arguably created more political turmoil than executing him would have. Also, other Primarchs may have already been executed at that point.

My theory has always been that the Heresy was the plan all along and that Lorgar was behaving exactly as the Emperor desired.

He does refer to them as his sons. The problem is that a lot of his treatment can be excused with necessity as he is literally trying to stave off quite literally hell.

The first doesn't mean affection though. Its been broadly hinted lately that 'sons' was just simple manipulation.

Same with the second. It isn't entirely clear how he saw none of this coming, through either his ridiculous psychic powers or ~40000+ years of experience. Which begs the question of how much hell he wanted to happen in order to achieve his goals.

The other theory is, of course, that the Heresy was his cost for calling on the chaos powers to help create the primarchs in the first place. Maybe he thought he could get away without paying the cost, but that leads back to the unavoidable conclusion if he didn't plan for the Heresy- that the Emperor is the biggest idiot ever.

Voss wrote:

Shinji wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
The better question is, why didn’t he just kill Lorgar?

I don’t think he spared him out of paternal affection or to avoid creating political turmoil. He doesn’t seem capable of affection. And sparing him arguably created more political turmoil than executing him would have. Also, other Primarchs may have already been executed at that point.

My theory has always been that the Heresy was the plan all along and that Lorgar was behaving exactly as the Emperor desired.

He does refer to them as his sons. The problem is that a lot of his treatment can be excused with necessity as he is literally trying to stave off quite literally hell.

The first doesn't mean affection though. Its been broadly hinted lately that 'sons' was just simple manipulation.

Same with the second. It isn't entirely clear how he saw none of this coming, through either his ridiculous psychic powers or ~40000+ years of experience. Which begs the question of how much hell he wanted to happen in order to achieve his goals.

The other theory is, of course, that the Heresy was his cost for calling on the chaos powers to help create the primarchs in the first place. Maybe he thought he could get away without paying the cost, but that leads back to the unavoidable conclusion if he didn't plan for the Heresy- that the Emperor is the biggest idiot ever.

It does. We are hardwired for that to a degree. It goes even so far that a biological link isn't completely necessary. I'm going on from the convo between him and Malcador in 'The Board is Set' which is completely private and he wouldn't have had a reason to use that term then.

The second one is easier and actually supports the first to a degree. We are pretty blind to the faults of our children. That hard wired response makes us overlook things we would never have excused in anyone else.
There is also the fact that we are also blind to our own faults more often than not. Since he made the primarchs to each embody a part of his nature those same blind spots would apply.

Indeed the emps would be an idiot. But it also makes him a much more interesting character. Susceptible to the same flaws as we all are. Pride and hubris.

The terms “sons” and “father” as applied between the Emperor and the Primarchs are primarily political, and in that regard, to some degree necessarily mythical. Some of the Primarchs had more, shall we say, emotional personalities than others and took the metaphor to heart, as it were. But not all of them.

I don’t think the Emperor was a hubristic fool. IMO he took the only path available, considering his long-term ambition, even despite that it required a gamble. There is also the issue that his goals may be a lot more complicated than we tend to think. While it is almost certainly true that he wanted to liberate humanity from predation by Warp entities, exactly how this could be accomplished may well implicate something far beyond the webway and the Golden Throne.

Then how do you explain the individually stupid decisions? Like Angron, there's nothing to justify how he was dealt with in universe.

Cultivating traitors.

Well I gave a reference where the context is not political and the statement is in a private conversation straight from the horses mouth to his best friend. It's debatable how much of that was reciprocated but the topic of discussion is the emps motivation and we only need to know his side for that.

He chose to go to Molech and get chaos involved in their creation. He failed to protect them from it before they were born and he failed to protect them from falling. Whether he chose get chaos involved out of necessity or expediency or just because he wanted someone to relate to is anyones guess.

His solution to the sequence of events that led to Horus falling was having them run around the galaxy commanding vast armies with little or no oversight and pretending that chaos wasn't a factor and didn't exist.
We all know how spectacularly that blew up in his face.

 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:
Basically given how far gone Lorgar and his legion were even before Monarchia and the treatment Lorgar and his legion gave to planets they conquered, should the Emperor have just dialed up Russ, Guilliman and let's say Dorn and say that Lorgar's gone too far and so has his legion and his will be the third legion to be taken out.

Not really. What he should have done is killed Kor Phaeron, but sadly Lorgar's adoptive father had enough sense never to be in the same room as the Emperor, and Lorgar's crusade had erased any evidence of the Colchisian 'old faith' before he got there...