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Okay. So I recently finished listening to a bunch of audio books about Corax, and I'm still trying to digest it. Below is my probably spoiler-heavy understanding of the guy and what the author was trying to convey.

So as I understand it, Corax's big traits are:
* He wants to think of himself as a "good guy" or at least as a necessary evil to ultimately make life better for humanity. That is, he's willing to do the shady, cold-blooded jobs under the rationalization that such actions will be justified by the end result.

* He seems very eager to not be in charge of things. Like, he's good at being in charge, but he straight up wishes Russ would tell him what to do when they meet. You could maybe read a similar desire to not be in charge in the way he 100% supports the Emperor and in fact uses the Emprah as a valid justification for all the crummy stuff he and his legion end up doing.

* By the end of his arc, he seems to have decided that primarchs were a bad idea, even to the point of basically not seeing the Emperor as infallible and thus furthering big E's goals is no longer a valid excuse to commit atrocities. Instead, his goal seems to shift to wiping out warp-related creatures, including primarchs (at least daemon ones), with the subtext being that using shady sources of power to do so is justified. That is, the Raptors (the birdy boys, not the second-founding chapter) being useful in fighting Horus mirrors Crow-Mode Corax wailing on daemon prince Lorgar.

* So the piece that doesn't quite fit, for me, is how Corax comes to be onboard with committing atrocities to further the Emperor's goals in the first place. Like, he's angry enough at the the sight of a slaver/overseer to go (very briefly) off-mission during a time-sensitive mission, and he repeatedly emphasizes that he wants to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. Maybe my interpretation is off, but it seems like this comes from a place of having some relatively relatable, agreeable ethics rather than from some unknowable alien 10th level intellect calculus. But then he's okay basically wiping out planets if it means the locals will shut up and do what his dad wants a little bit faster.

I think this is meant to come across something like, "Dad says the ends justify the means, and I'm convinced Dad is 100% right about everything," but we've seen other primarchs question/push-back-against the Emperor/not come across as thinking he's infallible. So what has the freedom fighter raised by political dissidents acting like big E's biggest boot licker? It strikes me as such a contradiction that I'm half-convinced it's the result of the Emperor basically psychically brainwashing Corax with his "charisma" powers, but that feels like a bit of a leap.

* Also, daemon crow Corax. Super cool scene, but the general consensus is that that's the result of where he was at the time, not his new literal permanent form, right? There's a line in the story where he basically says as much, but maybe I missed something.

To be fair, Corax and his Legion did actually try to help people. His tactics and creed focussed on liberation of the masses rather than their subjugation, it just worked out that the wider Imperium didn't care but Corax never really got the chance to find that out.

Corax saw the Emperor as the way to liberate the galaxy from oppression and believed in the vision for humanity he was building. Again, things just didn't turn out that way.

The tactics used by the Terran portion of his Legion disgusted him both in terms of the waste of Astartes' lives and the needless cruelty the warriors enacted on their foes, something they learned by serving with Horus. Entire Chapters of the XIXth were sent into unofficial exile by Corax because he couldn't stand to have them in his ranks.

The VIIIth and XIXth are foils to each other in that they both use infiltration and rapid strikes to destabilise their enemies but the Raven Guard would focus on military targets, using their skills to keep casualties to a minimum and uplifting the populace of a world. The Night Lords would do the opposite. Maximum fear and damage to soft targets to utterly crush the morale of their foes.
Unsurprisingly, both Primarchs hated each other.

The sad part is that given what the Imperium is and always was, Curze was right and Corax was an idealist. In a better world Corax would have been a beloved figure rather than one of the last sons fighting a war he eventually didn't believe in but was trapped in his allegiance to a monster.

True, Corax was raised as a rebel fighter, but it was the whole reason he fought for Emps in the first place. He believed in uniting the people and such, but his ways were always more stealthy and guerilla-based. Rather than throw his legion around like space wolves, blood angels, etc, he took a more cunning approach which would've saved more human lives in the long-run. I'd bet that only Kurze and the Night Lords sis better, but that's because they were REALLY doing war crimes so that others would be so scared of them they'd capitulate at the drop of a hat.

What got me was how jarring the Emps secret deal with Chaos was to Corax, and how he faltered when he realised he was using the warp's powers- because, for some reason, going virtually invisible is totally normal.. Right.

I just wish that GW would flesh out the chapter's iconography a bit more- you can literally swap things from Dark Angels Ravenwing around and it'll fit. They could either do the "ravens in the tower of London" or the more Inuit look of the north Pacific. Even though they have a whole mark of power armor associated with them and even have beakie Primarius armor, a few details or sprue of accessories would be nice, and I don't even play Space Marines!

The loyalist primarchs sans Guilliman and arguably Russ (probably the Khan too but I've read no WS works) are essentially interchangeable. They have very few distinguishing personality traits and are blindingly and boringly loyal to the Emperor. They are differentiated largely by the color of their armour and which IRL culture they are caricaturing.

Bit late I know but think about how beneficial it is for the Emperor to have "liberators" alongside "subjugators".
People are more likely to cooperate with a "benevolent" power than one that oppresses them and those Primarchs like Guilliman and Corax provide that. All the Emperor would need to do is keep the worst parts of the Imperium hidden from Corax to keep him in line.