Why did he choose to deal with Angron the way he did, in a way that basically guaranteed he would be bitter and resentful and wide open to the influence of Chaos?
Why did he again choose to deal with Mortarion the way he did, leaving him also bitter and resentful and open to Horus's manipulation?
Why wasn't he more responsive to the needs of the Iron Warriors? Of course, it should be considered that the account of the Iron Warriors might have been (and very likely was) heavily biased, and Perturabo was in truth a jealous and petty man who just used the Horus Heresy as a excuse to justify his unlawful sedition and a need to lash out at perceived slights.
What was up with the way he handled the Word Bearers? I have not read the First Heretic by ADB just yet, but I'll be getting it soon. I always viewed Lorgar as weak and pathetic; the way the original Index Traitoris is written, he just comes off as a weak and whiny little boy who needed to worship something, anything, to feel a sense of purpose and completeness in his life, and when Daddy told him he really didn't want to be worshiped as a god, the guy flips out and leaps right into the embrace of the Chaos Gods.
Like I said, I haven't read First Heretic just yet, but ADB offers his own version/interpretation of how the Emperor's reprimand/admonition played out; I won't spoil it because I know vaguely what happens, but apparently the Emperor is portrayed as such an unbelievable bastard, it's really no wonder why Lorgar and his Legion decided to go rogue. I guess it depends on whether or not you, the reader, accepts First Heretic as canon, since the Emperor's admonition plays out rather differently, and he is portrayed, not as the harsh but relatively fair lord from the Index Traitoris, but as a total douchebag. But, as I have written before, ADB is a amazing writer and one of the rising stars at Black Library, so I just might. I think it's a testament to ADB's skill as a storyteller, that he can take one of my least favorite, most hated Legions and make them fairly sympathetic, from what little I know of the book at the time of this writing (no spoilers please, I want to read First Heretic for myself).
The Thousand Sons, I think, are one of the best written and most tragic of the Index Traitorises (Traitorii?), and it may well be that their fate was unavoidable. I believe the edict reached at Nikaea was more or less fair... But now I hear that in the new Horus Heresy lore, the Emperor outright bans any kind of psychic activity, except for Astropaths and Navigators?! What the fuck?! This is so unbelievably... I don't want to say "fucking stupid" (oops) because I don't want to clutter up this blog with profanity, but I think in this context Magnus's resentment is quite a bit more understandable. You're going to ban all kinds of psychic activity, essentially tear out the heart of what the Thousand Sons are? Really? And then force all existing Librarians to stop using their powers and basically deny what they are?
Then there's the Emperor's "brilliant" plan to deal with Chaos: push an atheist, secular, scientific world view, ban any kind of religion, keep the vast majority of humanity completely ignorant as to the real nature and danger of the Ruinous Powers, and hope that the Chaos Gods basically starve to death because they no longer have negative emotions to feed on. Yeah, that'll go over real well. What did he think was going to happen? Much as I dislike Lorgar, in the end he might be right. Science cannot explain everything, I think, and people really feel a need to believe in something greater than themselves, in a greater power at work in the cosmos (I'm speaking both in the context of 40k and in real life). God and religion are ways for people to instill order and try to make sense of an often chaotic universe, and if people want to believe in something, why begrudge them that? If the Emperor had decided to set aside his ideals for a moment in favor of pragmatism, perhaps Lorgar would not have turned. Perhaps the Heresy would never have happened, or at least happened to a far less devastating extent, and people would at least worship Him rather than turn to the Chaos Gods. In the end the Emperor is indeed worshiped as a god, the exact opposite of what he wanted, so I think perhaps Lorgar won the argument.
Why was the Emperor written as being so utterly fucking stupid? Is bad writing to blame? I point to Aurelius Rex, a fellow I have had the pleasure of speaking to on a number of occasions and a great writer, the primary author of the Dornian Heresy along with a number of other DIY Chapters. In this 'alternate Heresy,' the Loyalist (now Traitor) Legions fall in a way that is quite a bit more believable, and honestly far better written than the canonical Heresy. In pretty much all cases, the alternate Traitors were corrupted because of events and circumstances that were largely out of the control of the Emperor, rather than the Emperor acting like a fucking idiot.
Was the Emperor deliberately written like this? I wonder about this possibility. I guess it would go a long way toward explaining why the Emperor behaved the way he did. He certainly seemed to be so arrogant that he believed he could just order his Primarchs around like toy soldiers (hmm, kind of like the tabletop...), not caring at all about their feelings and believing that they would be loyal no matter what kind of abuse he heaped on them. And I guess because he was basically a living god, he felt that he knew better than everyone else, that he could just order everyone to stop practicing any religion and they would all automatically obey, and he simply could not conceive of the possibility that he could be wrong and that his plans could blow up in his face.
I don't know. The characterization of the Emperor is one of the things that irks me the most in 40k, and I just want be able to rationalize it as best I can so it makes some kind of sense to me.
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