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There was a recent twitter post between Gav Thorpe, Aaron-Demski Bowden and others this week. I'll post some of their comments here:

From Gav:

"Dear people that are complaining that 'the Imperium wouldn't work like that',

It Doesn't Work.

That's the point. It's the corpse of a terrible, broken, monolithic entity that has survived 10,000 years on ignorance, momentum and general stubborness.

It's Not Meant To 'Work'."


From Aaron:

"The one I see a lot of is the notion of it being a homogeneous empire, with planets in regular contact, and an Imperium-wide single religion. So when anything contradicts that, there's 'unease'.

A misunderstanding *that* profound makes it almost impossible to even debate."


I'm trying to wrap my mind around what they were trying to say about it not 'working'. Do they mean whether or not they think it's possible for the Imperium to exist? Or that it simply operates poorly?

If it's the latter, then...obviously. But if it's the former, then I am a bit taken aback that these two prominent 40k writers would think such a thing. Not because it's unreasonable to think the Imperium can't exist because of the sheer unlikelihood of anything like the warp existing etc., but rather because I have always thought that one of the most compelling things about the Imperium is that it COULD be possible, and it could exist, assuming the warp is real. That is because, in the end, the warp's existence doesn't do much to the image of how the Imperium reflects us as a society. It still teaches us about the extremes of where our culture(s)/world could go, in ways we rarely think about. How far we can go with how great our technology can become, and how great we can fall, in almost every way imaginable. I've always thought it helps teaches us lessons that most don't even realize we need. That to me has always been one of the most powerful things of what I have always said was a beautiful conception of a narrative idea - the Imperium.

So as I wrap my head around what was meant on Twitter, I'm left to wrap my mind around this as well. What do you all think?

Aaron's comment hits the nail on the head. the Imperium of man is NOT a unified nationbut is rather a lose confederacy. So that there is a ton of room for variation etc.

The Imperium isn't like a modern nation state with a unified government and currency. Imperial sectors are oases of human civilization separated by swathes of wildnerness and alien dominated space, linked only by trade routes and the overarching veneer of Imperial control. The Imperial institutions we take for granted as players only interact with the normal average human in so far as they have to render up their labor or their bodies to serve them. For some worlds the Imperium is an abstract concept bordering on myth and may only show up once a generation or even less frequently.

Imperial "civilization" and "culture" is a veneer of identity that only really the elite really share, in much the same way that shared religion, use of Latin among the educated, and shared background history of descent from the Roman empire linked medieval Western Europe together. The average commoner would have not had any sense of shared identity, and their loyalties would have been to their local community. Similarly, the average 40K citizen on a planet would have their concerns focused on the planetary or even smaller scale matters.

Gav Thorpe was once asked on the old Warseer forums something along the lines of why the Imperium bothers trying to help worlds seriously invaded by the enemy, instead of just launching Exterminatus as the first response. His response was that the Imperium was really a web of mutual defense pacts. One reason (aside from coercion by threat of force) why worlds participated in the idea of the Imperium was this belief that they would get aid if they needed it. If worlds saw their neighboring worlds being immediately sacrificed without even an inkling of an attempt at saving them, then that incentive to stay part of the Imperium would be gone, and the Imperium would be at threat of unraveling since the Imperium's institutions are clearly not everywhere simultaneously coercing by force.

Yep, you need to defend the peasants so you dont have to put down other peasants who are pissed you didnt protect the first peasants.

After all, how would actually important worlds fare without their tithes of food and bodies?

Remember, this is all a fictional construct. While internal consistency and "realism" might be desirable to fans and players of the game, they may not be to authors. If the Warhammer 40,000 setting is supposed tomake you think about real society, then the fact that the Imperium "can't work" could be the deliberate intent of the author, not a "mistake". That could be what Gav Thorpe was getting at. Like Judge Dredd, the intent isn't necessarily to invent a plausibly functional future government, but to point back at people who argue that a totalitarian government is necessary or desirable and say "no, it isn't."

Alternatively, if you want to confine yourself to "watsonian", or in-universe discussion, it could mean that the Imperium is failing; it's just taken 10,000 years to decay to this point.

The entire point of the Imperium is to provide a framework to justify a game full of conflicts, where the internal strife is only matched by the external threats. Without the Heresy as a backdrop to the current setting of bad infrastructure and religious craziness, by M41 Imperium would have crushed all threats save for Necrons and Tyranids, and even they would have a much, much tougher time.

The Imperium could definitely exist, take a look at the British Empire: a world spanning empire that collapsed after a great war (exaggerating a little bit), now a days the members of the Commonwealth are only thinly held together by the memory of a fading 'almighty leader' and the promise to come to each others aid in times of need. Take the modern day empire, blow it up to galaxy wide level, amplify it's nationalism, religious leanings, attitude to other empires and stick it in an all encompassing warzone and you have the Imperium.

Yeah it's definitely about the latter point. Sounds like a rebuttal to people saying how the Imperium is set up really poorly and saying that if they were put in charge (or anyone with half a brain from the 20th C) then they could fix loads of things.

The response is: well duh. It's not supposed to work. It's a galactic-level feudal society that's creaking at its seams. It works about as well as Rome did when it was falling apart.

Really like the points made too, especially the one about the Imperium not being a state, but being more like a sprawling web of mutual defence pacts.

The Imperium has already fallen. How long did it take for the Roman empire to fall apart? It didn't happen overnight, obviously. Well, for the Imperium it has taken about 10,000 years. But the point is that nobody is really in control or even knows what's going on.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
Yeah it's definitely about the latter point. Sounds like a rebuttal to people saying how the Imperium is set up really poorly and saying that if they were put in charge (or anyone with half a brain from the 20th C) then they could fix loads of things.

The response is: well duh. It's not supposed to work. It's a galactic-level feudal society that's creaking at its seams. It works about as well as Rome did when it was falling apart.

Really like the points made too, especially the one about the Imperium not being a state, but being more like a sprawling web of mutual defence pacts.

Yeah thanks lol, appreciate it. I was starting to get paranoid about my favorite 40k authors thinking that 40k would never be possible even if there WAS a warp etc lol. Peace of mind restored, ty

If you read the comment carefully he clearly means the last. Then again, many things in 40k are also utterly unrealistic, so the Imperium could never exist in real life as it does in 40k for various reasons ranging from the fact that most of the Imperium's technology simply would not be able to work in the real life (Titans would collapse under their own weight, rhino's would barely be able to carry 4 Space Marines let alone 10 etc.) to the fact that their culture and language resembles medieval Europe despite being 40,000 years into the future (realistically, the Imperium and its culture, language and religion should be utterly unfamiliar and alien to us, not just direct copies of concepts from just the last 1000 years of European history.). And then there is the fact that the Imperium remains nearly stagnant and still remembers events from 10,000 years ago. 10,000 years! Do those writers even realise how incredibly long that is? Nobody remembers what Humans were up to 10,000 years ago. Nothing from 10,000 years ago has survived into the present day. The idea that any civilisation can last that long and that people in the Imperium remember Horus or the Emperor is ridiculous. So maybe he did mean both. To be a bit more realistic, 40k would need to remove a zero and become 4k.

There's a quote from Carl Sagan, I forget exactly what it is, but it's something like "we are a society dependant on science and technology where nobody understands science and technology"- I think the Imperium represents the ultimate expression of that idea

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Nobody remembers what Humans were up to 10,000 years ago. Nothing from 10,000 years ago has survived into the present day. The idea that any civilisation can last that long and that people in the Imperium remember Horus or the Emperor is ridiculous.

WE (or at least ones with some education) DO aware of (many) historical events that were HALF as far away from us as 40M from HH. For second - it's almost 5 millenias, with written sources BACK THEN copied in numbers that won't make you took off your boots to finger-count.
And that we know most of this only partially and mostly from indirect or second-hand sources is EXACTLY how Imperium knows most of it's history.

But think for second - unlike us Imperium 40M has both surviving pieces of 30M information in quantitions too huge to even properly organize and categorzie - and millenia of retells and compilations, not to count Emperor with his Custodes and AM as physical evidences of basic facts.

And Imperial continuity is just _six_ times longer that Roman Empire by direct Rome-Byzantium link, and only four times if one counts time between fall of Rome and creation of Holy Roman Empire as interregnum...

chyron wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Nobody remembers what Humans were up to 10,000 years ago. Nothing from 10,000 years ago has survived into the present day. The idea that any civilisation can last that long and that people in the Imperium remember Horus or the Emperor is ridiculous.

WE (or at least ones with some education) DO aware of (many) historical events that were HALF as far away from us as 40M from HH. For second - it's almost 5 millenias, with written sources BACK THEN copied in numbers that won't make you took off your boots to finger-count.
And that we know most of this only partially and mostly from indirect or second-hand sources is EXACTLY how Imperium knows most of it's history.

But think for second - unlike us Imperium 40M has both surviving pieces of 30M information in quantitions too huge to even properly organize and categorzie - and millenia of retells and compilations, not to count Emperor with his Custodes and AM as physical evidences of basic facts.

And Imperial continuity is just _six_ times longer that Roman Empire by direct Rome-Byzantium link, and only four times if one counts time between fall of Rome and creation of Holy Roman Empire as interregnum...

I am an archaeologist, so there is no need to tell me what we do and do not know about the past. There is some things we know, certainly. But what we know is very little, and a lot of it is very uncertain. Written sources especially are very scarce, and even then most written sources from the distant past are nothing but storage accounts and other mundane day-to-day communications. We know next to nothing however about important events that took place then. Take the Mycenaeans for example. They build huge palaces and wrote down lots of stuff, we know plenty of the contents of Mycenaean storerooms and can even reconstruct their economy to some extent. But then after some point they start to crazily fortify their palaces, building massive fortifications. Then all palaces and all other Mycenaean sites are suddenly destroyed, all roughly at the same time. Some of the last Mycenaean written accounts mention defense preparations for an expected attack, but that is all. What were these palaces defending themselves from? What destroyed the Mycenaean civilisation? We do not know. This is a massive event in the late bronze age, and we know next to nothing about it! And this the Horus Heresy is much, much farther in the past to the people of 40k than the destruction of Mycenae is to us. To translate it to 40k terms, we would know the Emperor died and was put on the Golden Throne roughly 10,000 years ago, but we would have no idea what the cause of that was. We might have some records detailing the battle of heroic Astartes legions against unspecified enemies, we may find traces of ancient battles and thus conclude it had to do something with war. We might even be able to theorise it had something to do with a civil war, but we would not know any specifics. We would not know what the war was about, what caused it, who exactly were involved etc.
However, from the novels it is clear a lot of people in the Imperium do have a very clear understanding of such a distant past. The fluff makes it seem as if the Horus Heresy happened only a hundred years ago, not 10,000. Stories get retold for long times, yes. But not for 10,000 years. 10,000 years is a ridiculously long time beyond Human comprehension and beyond recorded Human history. It is not realistic to have such a long history. 40k often makes a big deal about the knowledge of the past being forgotten, but given the fact that it has been 10,000 years they are far better at remembering and recording the past than Humans are in real life.

The history of the Imperium is 'just' 6 times longer than that of the Roman civilisation, but Rome is one of the longest-lasting civilisations in Human history, and by the time it finally fell its origins were already virtually forgotten. Sure, Constantine XI may have known that Rome had once been founded by a guy named Romulus, and that it changed at some early point from a kingdom to a republic, but that is about all he would have known of the early days of Roman civilisation. And Imperial history is 6 times longer than that. So why would even a High Lord of Terra know anything more about early Imperial History beyond 'Emperor united Earth, went on crusade, had civil war, died'? After 10,000 years, it is quite remarkable that even such basic details are still remembered.

With technology more records are kept. I remember a year or two ago reading that "more has been written this year then was written in the rest of human history combined" that fact combined with longer lvied individuals (the rich and powerful living 2 centuries is hardly uncommon) means the effective gap in time shortens a bit (if the high ranking of the IoM live on average 150 years, a pretty conservitive estimate IMHO if halves the "effective time passed"
Also keep in mind there is a LOT of myth and misinformation about the Heresy. it's basicly a time of legend. Space Marines even don't have a compelte picture of it, Dark Imperium refers to them giving quotes attributes to Gulliman that Gulliman knows he didn't actually say.

I suspect those with the most complete view of the heresy are the Custodes

More records may be kept, but the format they are kept in doesn't remain consistent. Even old computer storage formats have become hard to access due to the technology changing so much. Sure, we still have books, and 2 people currently understand enough Sumerian to read those texts (it was 4, 2 of them died).

Who remembers microfiche?
Or reel-to-reel data tape?

Let alone cp/m and 8" floppies.

All of these are within MY lifetime.

Do not forget, during the heresy, the stored data was also exposed (not just on mars) to chaos machine viruses and incalculable amounts of data were lost or corrupted during the mechanicus schism.

 chromedog wrote:
More records may be kept, but the format they are kept in doesn't remain consistent. Even old computer storage formats have become hard to access due to the technology changing so much. Sure, we still have books, and 2 people currently understand enough Sumerian to read those texts (it was 4, 2 of them died).

Who remembers microfiche?
Or reel-to-reel data tape?

Let alone cp/m and 8" floppies.

All of these are within MY lifetime.

Do not forget, during the heresy, the stored data was also exposed (not just on mars) to chaos machine viruses and incalculable amounts of data were lost or corrupted during the mechanicus schism.

data storage changing requires technological development and innovation... not a problem in 40k

Man I love it when people lay down some realism as far as I'm concerned, the people of the Imperium know of the Horus Heresy like the people of today know about the ancient Egyptians. Something about Ra being king, Anubis is evil (spoiler: he isn't) and maybe that Set is evil and Osiris is dead. People who are well educated may know more about te actual history, but still comparatively sod all.

And this XKCD does a great job of showing the issue with our current methods of storing data:

The religious significance of the Emperor and the Primarchs means those core ideas would get passed on in the Imperium, especially since the Throne, Astronomicon, and Custodes are concrete material evidence. The actual story may be distorted or forgotten or redacted though. The Heresy for example has been apparently redacted for the general populace. In one of Chris Wraight's Custodes novels (can't remember which of the 2 and can't be bothered to trawl them at this hour), one of the characters remembered being punished for asking why the Emperor only brought forth an equal number of Primarchs to match the evil monsters (i.e. the traitor Primarchs). Clearly the version of the Heresy he had grown up with had omitted the fact the Emperor had had Primarchs turn traitor since that would imply fallibility.

The nitty gritty historical details of chronology or which government figures did what though would be buried in the sweeps of time. The legends get passed down in the form of religious instruction or morality tales, while the actual facts and history becomes forgotten or censored or edited to be unrecognizable. That's why Guilliman has been having so much trouble figuring out exactly just what went on while he was in stasis.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

I am an archaeologist, so there is no need to tell me what we do and do not know about the past. There is some things we know, certainly. But what we know is very little, and a lot of it is very uncertain. Written sources especially are very scarce, and even then most written sources from the distant past are nothing but storage accounts and other mundane day-to-day communications. We know next to nothing however about important events that took place then. Take the Mycenaeans for example. They build huge palaces and wrote down lots of stuff, we know plenty of the contents of Mycenaean storerooms and can even reconstruct their economy to some extent. But then after some point they start to crazily fortify their palaces, building massive fortifications. Then all palaces and all other Mycenaean sites are suddenly destroyed, all roughly at the same time. Some of the last Mycenaean written accounts mention defense preparations for an expected attack, but that is all. What were these palaces defending themselves from? What destroyed the Mycenaean civilisation? We do not know. This is a massive event in the late bronze age, and we know next to nothing about it! And this the Horus Heresy is much, much farther in the past to the people of 40k than the destruction of Mycenae is to us. To translate it to 40k terms, we would know the Emperor died and was put on the Golden Throne roughly 10,000 years ago, but we would have no idea what the cause of that was. We might have some records detailing the battle of heroic Astartes legions against unspecified enemies, we may find traces of ancient battles and thus conclude it had to do something with war. We might even be able to theorise it had something to do with a civil war, but we would not know any specifics. We would not know what the war was about, what caused it, who exactly were involved etc.
However, from the novels it is clear a lot of people in the Imperium do have a very clear understanding of such a distant past. The fluff makes it seem as if the Horus Heresy happened only a hundred years ago, not 10,000. Stories get retold for long times, yes. But not for 10,000 years. 10,000 years is a ridiculously long time beyond Human comprehension and beyond recorded Human history. It is not realistic to have such a long history. 40k often makes a big deal about the knowledge of the past being forgotten, but given the fact that it has been 10,000 years they are far better at remembering and recording the past than Humans are in real life.

The history of the Imperium is 'just' 6 times longer than that of the Roman civilisation, but Rome is one of the longest-lasting civilisations in Human history, and by the time it finally fell its origins were already virtually forgotten. Sure, Constantine XI may have known that Rome had once been founded by a guy named Romulus, and that it changed at some early point from a kingdom to a republic, but that is about all he would have known of the early days of Roman civilisation. And Imperial history is 6 times longer than that. So why would even a High Lord of Terra know anything more about early Imperial History beyond 'Emperor united Earth, went on crusade, had civil war, died'? After 10,000 years, it is quite remarkable that even such basic details are still remembered.

The existence of some super long lived individuals changes the calculus a bit, but yeah, you're basically right. This is why I preferred when Horus Heresy was just some myth told about unimaginably distant events that may or may not have some connection to the truth.

I think the IoM / 40k / Rogue Trader started more akin to an RPG setting modelled on WHFB / WFRP Old world with some sci-fi tropes mixed in, to enable whatever story the players wanted with the added bonus of some familiar elements

Thing is we've had 30 years of lore adding more and more idea's ranging from utter gak to fantastic that the best you can do is heed the words of the beginning;

" Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."

I'm sure the people in the 41st millennium, especially the average person, really don't know anywhere near as much about the Horus Heresy as we do. They just know the basics. And the religious significance has I'm sure helped keep a lot of that relevant to people as generations pass. Also, keep in mind, like it or not (or think it's really stupid storytelling), there are plenty of people around in the 41st millennium who were alive during the heresy. There are space marines that are 1000 years old without being preserved in a dreadnaught, and wealthy humans can extend their lives to many hundreds of years, if not longer.

And a lot of things would just be passed down from generation to generation as stories and myths. It's not like trying to find out about a previously collapsed civilization that you have no connection to.

So no, them knowing about major events from 10,000 years ago isn't that strange.

 Netsurfer733 wrote:
From Gav:

"Dear people that are complaining that 'the Imperium wouldn't work like that',

It Doesn't Work.

That's the point. It's the corpse of a terrible, broken, monolithic entity that has survived 10,000 years on ignorance, momentum and general stubborness.

It's Not Meant To 'Work'."

Sigh. I really despise such quotes from people who are supposed to be experts in the setting (and its shepherds) because they show they either don't know anything about it at all, or are blinded by their own headcanon. Sure, Imperium works badly. It's ignorant. It's a drunken man who can't stay on course. But the picture Gav paints is contradicted by the very basis of the setting, the 40K rulebook that plainly shows periods of peace and expansion that would never exist if what he says is remotely true.

Overflowing coffers funding great crusades and golden ages, plain statement that in M37 borders of the Imperium were actually greater than during Great Crusade - hell, even their last big book series, War of the Beast, starts with Imperium so peaceful and prosperous there are voices to disband Space Marines altogether because they are no longer needed. True, in both cases things get worse quickly, but still, the two account don't gel together at all. Either there are big hope spots (which are higher level canon, to boot), making above statement completely absurd, or the Imperium is a wreck and things are getting worse all the time. You can't have a cake and eat it too, Gav, pick one.

And sadly, 'the people' are 100% right. I am not sure Gav has any idea how long a period 10.000 years is, but to put things in perspective, it's only oh, as long as the entire human civilization had existed, from its beginnings till today. With hundreds of thousands of states, princedoms, empires, name it, being born and dying. The very notion broken, not working, headless Imperium he envisions lasting that long is utterly absurd. Especially if building it lasted all of 200 years. It's like the entire Roman Empire being built in a month given how long it survived, and it wasn't even remotely a failed state for most of this time...

From Aaron:

"The one I see a lot of is the notion of it being a homogeneous empire, with planets in regular contact, and an Imperium-wide single religion. So when anything contradicts that, there's 'unease'.

A misunderstanding *that* profound makes it almost impossible to even debate."

That is perfectly, 100% true. Imperium is a patchwork, yes. Which makes me wonder just where he saw anyone claiming this with a straight face without being complete, far out outlier. Is ADB by any chance building (yet again) a strawman he can then heroically defeat?

If it's the latter, then...obviously. But if it's the former, then I am a bit taken aback that these two prominent 40k writers would think such a thing. Not because it's unreasonable to think the Imperium can't exist because of the sheer unlikelihood of anything like the warp existing etc., but rather because I have always thought that one of the most compelling things about the Imperium is that it COULD be possible, and it could exist, assuming the warp is real. That is because, in the end, the warp's existence doesn't do much to the image of how the Imperium reflects us as a society. It still teaches us about the extremes of where our culture(s)/world could go, in ways we rarely think about. How far we can go with how great our technology can become, and how great we can fall, in almost every way imaginable. I've always thought it helps teaches us lessons that most don't even realize we need. That to me has always been one of the most powerful things of what I have always said was a beautiful conception of a narrative idea - the Imperium.

You know, I agree. That is my biggest problem with Black Library - a lot of its authors doesn't want to spend 5 minutes thinking how to give the setting a bit of verisimilitude, considering the implications of what they just wrote, or in general stopping to think for even a second at all. Instead, they just hack together narrative with old, tired cliches, trying to substitute "rule of cool" and bolter porn for coherent plot, ignore established rules and history in ways that can't be explained even by old 'unreliable narrator' excuse, and more.

This is why I like Ciaphas Cain, for example, it's a series maybe not 100% adhering to loosely regarded 'canon' but where the author takes liberties it's to make better characters, add a bit of fun to the story, and to explore various interesting scenarios that might happen to (perfectly human) protagonists. When Mitchell wants Cain to go to pub to play some cards, he just does. The story feels natural, no 'RAR everything must be hellish dysfunctional dystopia everywhere including coffee brewed from human bones cuz' GRIMDUMB' other authors try to shove in their stories without regard on how it even fits the story or if it adds anything.

That doesn't mean Cain doesn't face dark periods - being stuck in the middle of Ork territory with band of helpless civilians, little resources, constantly under threat of being enslaved or killed is certainly not a rosy thing, but how it happens and resolves feels natural, everyone reacts naturally, the outcome is up in the air (well, we know Cain survives, of course, but other than that, no one else is safe and the plot doesn't feel forced). I wish more authors could do just that, instead of 'LOL chaos already won, now let me write more Night Lords torture porn of plot-powered CSM butchering these dirty unwashed Imperial peasants who can't even wipe their own behind and are dumber than medieval serfs because that's how HOPELESS things are, har har!'

BrianDavion wrote:


data storage changing requires technological development and innovation... not a problem in 40k

Innovation happened during the age of exploration when the STC system was developed that made the colonising of the stars easier.
After the fall, no-one (the mechanicum go into orgasmic joy when they find a template or a shard of data from it) HAS or can maintain a full STC library, only fragments of the system remain. Hell, the rhino was designed as an all-terrain colonial "tractor" that could be built from ANY local resources and fuel sources - and only modified to become an APC - and its design has remained static for centuries. Not innovation, just using existing tech in a different way. Tech advancement is static- or at least so slow moving that Geology is comparatively speedy compared to it. Because ALL of the groundwork for the understanding of the tech in use was lost. All they have left is notes on how to keep it going based on old user manuals elevated to holy writs. Religion doesn't make for free-thinkers and in 40k, technology IS religion.

40k is an 80s game, reflecting the SF loves of the writers and the politics of the time. Techno-barbarism and stagnant tech was a trope of that time. It's the future dystopia ramped to 11. It doesn't make logical sense, it isn't supposed to. It's a game, not a real life setting. People thinking up ways to make it work are overthinking the premise. In the same way over-analysing a joke ruins it - or Seth Rogen telling one ruins it.

I don't find anything compelling enough in the fluff to make any real life self identity with any of it any more the I would do so with Bugs Bunny and friends. But I find cartoons entertaining and I find 40k fluff entertaining. Try not to invest so much of yourself in these silly stories , most of it being poorly written anyways. Keeps your world from being turned upside down when an author realizes an old Grammer mistake and corrects it.

Gav Thorpe knows a lot more about the background than you, Irbis.

Given that phrases that started topic lack wider context, here's my thoughts:

Of course Empire didn't 'work' - not in 'as Imperium's creators envisioned it' way nor in 'the way it must to answer challenges in front of it'.

The sacrifice was much too high,
our greed just made us all go blind.
We tried to hide what we feared inside.
Today is the end of tomorrow.

That's the whole appeal of WH40M, isn't it?
Imperium/Order fails - and ultimately doomed heroes face impossible challenges and make horrible sacrifies to keep alive just a bit longer something that had no right to exist in first place - because alternatives is even worse.

What about us
Isn't it enough
No we're not in paradise
This is who we are
This is what we've got
No it's not our paradise
But it's all we want
And it's all that we're fighting for

And we,fans, love it like fraking Drukhari wannabees, feasting on universe's carnage, pain, sacrifice and destruction.
It's evident as recently accusations of 'betrayal of grimdark" and branding any glimpse of hope 'heretical noblebright' were 'voice that drone out all other voices' across the boards.

PS Though really setting became pretty stale for people not involved with TT - but pretty fittingly to in-universe logic attempts to fix it most probably make things worse...

Well the emperor would of gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling chaos gods.

Its entirely possible that a galaxy spanning imperium could of worked especially if the human webway was finished.

 ProwlerPC wrote:
I don't find anything compelling enough in the fluff to make any real life self identity with any of it any more the I would do so with Bugs Bunny and friends. But I find cartoons entertaining and I find 40k fluff entertaining. Try not to invest so much of yourself in these silly stories , most of it being poorly written anyways. Keeps your world from being turned upside down when an author realizes an old Grammer mistake and corrects it.

Problem is that nowadays fluff became too complex and sounds too serious. And this automatially engages parts of our brain that try to asses, sort, and make assumptions.
That 40M LOOKS like hybrid of (greatly philosophical) 'Dune' with (back in it's days groundbreaking and grimdark as far as i understand) 'Empire of Atom' but with <insert colour> 'knights' didn't helps too.

Yeah the Imperium can certainly work if you've got a good grounding in history.

The British Empire managed to have outposts from the Bahamas to Bombay with local authorities enforcing laws set down in London and they did it before the telegraph. Heck they did in the age of sail!

The British Empire was not homogenized or consistent but organized enough that an Indian lawyer could practice in South Africa or an Australian Engineer could work in Egypt.

I see the Imperium working the same. No two worlds are alike but some Assistant Sub-Director from the Ministry of Grox Hides can still move from world to world in a familiar Imperial bubble eating the same foods, meeting people with the same clothes and outlook as him. They'd look down on the locals, build walls to keep them out and sneer at their colleagues who go native. And somehow they'd keep things working well enough to make sure the troopers half a segment away get their grox hide cloaks.