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The Emperor expected Magnus to be a good little boy and do what he was told. Spoilers ahead for Fury of Magnus.

 Karhedron wrote:

The Inquisition seems to have been Malcador's idea once the Heresy kicked off. The Emperor does not seem to have been involved but was doubtless aware. The Siege novels also include Malcador noticing the value of faith in fighting Daemons I haven't read the later Siege books yet so I don't know if they hint at the beginnings of the Eclesiarchy before the end of the Heresy but you can see seeds being sown.

The Imperium as it was in 30K was littered with these sorts of compromises in ideology for the sake of immediate gain, even if the Emperor might have later thought or intended to go back and reverse things like the militarism, xenophobia, religious faith and zealotry. Obviously that never happened with the Heresy, and afterwards Guilliman and the rest of the Imperium were so scarred by the Heresy they constructed a new Imperium that basically resisted any change to the status quo.

The Imperium is like a great ship or plane on autopilot. The institutions of the Imperium have their mandates and most actively try to resist change and restore the status quo even without direct command from above. The decentralized nature of the Imperium and its myriad instituations along with their web of feudal obligations and infighting and politicking means the Imperium isn't a true nation state as understood by modern 20th century people. All the singular individuals with the power and force of personality to impose galactic scale changes (such as the Emperor or the Primarchs) are long gone, and the Imperium was restructured after the Heresy to deliberately prevent individuals from having such power in order to reduce the risk of rebellion. The down side of this is of course they also lack the power to enact beneficial sweeping reforms or take major decisions that actually alter the status quo.

The High Lords reign...they don't rule. Although they may issue sweeping decrees, like increasing mobilization to fight the Tyranids as depicted in the Tyranid Codex, these come off more as general ideological mission statements rather than concrete policy. The actual enforcement of these decrees can also be highly variable as these directives can be distorted, minimized, or perhaps even outright ignored as they propagate down the Imperium's organizations. There are numerous vested interests within the Imperium, and anyone threatening these interests may also provoke a backlash such as assassination. So my view is the High Lords of Terra are ineffective no matter who they are because of the very way the Imperium is structured.

The idea that NO ONE at all is truly in charge of the Imperium is an even scarier and more depressing state of affairs than the simple idea of the High Lords as evil corrupt power mongers deliberately twisting the Emperor's ideas: The Imperium as a system given a life of its own, as a blind unthinking beast, in which the uncounted quadrillions of humans in the galaxy are trapped with no hope of escape.

Even the return of Guilliman arguably has not changed things as he is facing an uphill struggle to do any large scale systemic reform. Thus far he has done little besides the changes necessary to get his Indomitus Crusade off the ground and supported. More substantive change gets shelved for "later" because he is too busy beating back the latest immediate threat.

Voss wrote:
Considering his decisions and rationalizations beyond 'daddy lied' were relegated to off-screen, yes.
He was totally a puppet.

At the very best case, he was willingly a puppet, because at least he could smash out his rage.

I do think its one of the major failings of the HH novels. They never managed to reconcile the simple Realm of Chaos script (pre primarchs, first founding or any of that) into an actual motivation for Horus. He just had to fall, so he did.

Yes exactly. That was my biggest frustration with the BL book series also. The original concept was apparently meant to have be taken from Milton’s Paradise Lost, “better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”, for Horus to have made a decision from his own free will. But, the series paints him as being manipulated by other ‘gods’ instead, following the ‘a wizard did it’ plot device of him being stabbed by the anathema.
So ironically we are left with an almost pre-renaissance form of plot line of good vs evil, which seems insufficient (and unrealistic) as a form of storytelling.

I would have loved to have had a real reason d’etre for the Heresy; the Legions being used and abused, knowing they would be replaced by useless Imperial (lesser Human) bureaucrats, the principles of the Crusade subverted. Perhaps the Emperor planning to wipe them out as he had done the earlier Thunder Warriors and Horus being enable to follow his fathers orders with this and rebelling against it. There are bits and pieces of this in the series and when they are used I think they are more effective bits of storytelling, and even let you feel some sympathy for the traitor’s position, but I don’t think there is enough and it just keeps pulling back to the simplistic and unrelatable machinations of the chaos gods.

 Pacific wrote:

I would have loved to have had a real reason d’etre for the Heresy; the Legions being used and abused, knowing they would be replaced by useless Imperial (lesser Human) bureaucrats, the principles of the Crusade subverted. Perhaps the Emperor planning to wipe them out as he had done the earlier Thunder Warriors and Horus being enable to follow his fathers orders with this and rebelling against it. There are bits and pieces of this in the series and when they are used I think they are more effective bits of storytelling, and even let you feel some sympathy for the traitor’s position, but I don’t think there is enough and it just keeps pulling back to the simplistic and unrelatable machinations of the chaos gods.

Yes I think it would have been better if they had detailed more and played up some of the grievances the various Primarchs and Horus had with the Imperium even before the Heresy. Magnus wants psychic powers and learning to be more disseminated and widely practiced. There were references to Mortarion seeing himself as a herald of a new age of justice, but that old thread never gets expanded on. Perhaps they could have done more about him advocating for the common people against the demands of distant cruel overlords, like how he did on Barbarus before the arrival of the Emperor, only to be rejected by the Emperor and Imperial institutions in favor of keeping the work quotas high to keep the Great Crusade supplied. Lorgar also gets maligned a lot because he comes off as a fool that is manipulated. Instead he should come off as having legitimate positions on how faith and ideology is as important to keep the Imperium together, which arguably has come to pass by 40K.

Horus though needs far more exploration because he is ultimately the leader of the Heresy. Maybe more should have been done to show how the Emperor was becoming more distant and aloof, say when Horus sends back some latest victory reports, and Horus starts to struggle more against the bureaucracy that is run by non-SM, to show how the seeds of his discontent.

Betrayer does a damn good job of laying out Angron's grievances, and the trilogy of First Heretic/Know No Fear/Betrayer does the same for the word bearers, showing that in addition to the traitor/loyalist debate in other traitor legions you've got a sort of idealist/ambitious split with Lorgar and Argel Tal on one side and Kor Phaeron/Erebus on the other.

Angron's grievances are kind of a non-issue, though.

He wanted to die, and was more-or-less forcibly converted to a daemon prince without his knowledge or understanding.

He was perfect for the 'dumb brute' version of Khorne the studio has run with, but its honestly baffling that anyone (including himself) let him run around that long, rather than giving him what he wanted.

Angron was very good at killing. The Emperor wanted a weapon and He got a weapon. Angron would have been first on the block if the Emperor wanted rid of certain Legions and the others would be lining up to do it but for the purposes of a shock and awe weapon, Angron and the World Eaters served just fine.

 Gert wrote:
Angron was very good at killing. The Emperor wanted a weapon and He got a weapon.

They all were. 'Killing' and 'living weapon' is not an exceptional skill set in this group.

Angron would have been first on the block if the Emperor wanted rid of certain Legions and the others would be lining up to do it but for the purposes of a shock and awe weapon, Angron and the World Eaters served just fine.

Well, no. The Emperor had a Legion for that. It wasn't the WE. And 'shock and awe' isn't unique either. In fact, the Dark Angels picked up the Angels of Death moniker for space marines as a whole for that very reason.

A suicide run at a hard target and shifting recruits elsewhere would have solved a lot of problems. And been more merciful.

The World Eaters even prior to their reunion with Angron were the "Point and Kill" Legion. Yeah violence is kind of an intrinsic trait of the Legions but the World Eaters did it best. As for the hard target bit, that's what the World Eaters were used for. They got thrown into brutal conflicts that required mindless violence to win. Combined with their geneseed being extremely successful in implantation, losses just weren't an issue. They're the personification of "hit it to fix it" and it worked.
Also, mercy lmao. Where'd you get that idea?

Not sure actively sacrificing a Primarch was ever on the cards.

First, they were a stupendously rare resource. And, given their the original and best source of stuff to make new Geneseed from, irreplaceable.

Second? They were figureheads for The Great Crusade. Demigods fashioned by the Emperor’s own hand to act at his behest.

We know two were likely killed off, though we don’t know that for sure, or indeed the why. But to assign one a suicide mission and get them killed? Folk would see they’re not invincible. What damage might that do to morale and the willingness of their Brothers to follow Orders?

I really enjoyed how Horus got a Calvary moment with the interex in Horus Rising, especially after establishing how he deals with tyrants. I think the subtlety is lost somewhat, but it's really the moment that Horus breaks with the Emperor because he has been abandoned, and all his good intentions are for nought, and he even gets nailed through the wrist to boot.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Not sure actively sacrificing a Primarch was ever on the cards.

First, they were a stupendously rare resource. And, given their the original and best source of stuff to make new Geneseed from, irreplaceable.

Second? They were figureheads for The Great Crusade. Demigods fashioned by the Emperor’s own hand to act at his behest.

We know two were likely killed off, though we don’t know that for sure, or indeed the why. But to assign one a suicide mission and get them killed? Folk would see they’re not invincible. What damage might that do to morale and the willingness of their Brothers to follow Orders?

IMO your last two sentences are probably why the missing two got expunged in the first place…