Horus - Possessed or Not?

[Imperial Overlord]

Yeah. Magnus was a very tragic figure, in the end. Good until papa beat him and his legion shitless and essentially crushed their art.

Magnus was told 'don't mess with sorcery, if you do I will have to hurt you.' then went and messed with sorcery anyway, seriously messing up Earth, and placing all the emperor's plans in peril, even without the heresy.

In short he played with fire and got burnt.

Not quite as simple as that. Magnus was never told why not to mess with sorcery and the disaster he caused on Earth was accidental, a product of the Emperor's own warp manipulations being disrupted by Magnus's sorcery. Magnus himself was a product of sorcery and knew it. The Emperor telling Magnus not to practice sorcery without informing him of why not to is the equivalent of the chain smoking dad forbidding his son to smoke without telling him cigarettes cause cancer.

Keeping the Primarch's in the dark was really the Emperor's most disastrous mistake. Magnus's sorcerous blunders might have been avoided and its clear from the Heresy books that the traitor primarchs were very concerned about the future. The Emperor informed none of them of his plans, feeding their doubt and uncertainty. He really should have talked with his sons.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

Or the primarchs should have just trusted the emperor more.

[Stravo]

Or the primarchs should have just trusted the emperor more.

That's sort of a tricky very human question isn't it? Should the Primarchs trust their father implicitly or should the Emperor share more with his children?

From the Emperor's POV he may have been wanting to protect his children from the revelation of the webway until it was ready or he shielded them from knowledge of the Warp because maybe he felt they would be unready or frankly he himself didn't really that much about it yet and he struck he as someone who always wanted to deal with people from a position of strength and knowledge.

From the Primarchs POV they were out there fighting and dying in his name and they would have rallied around their father as they had done countless times in the past if he just trusted them enough to tell them something. His silence from Terra must have been infuriating to some and perplexing to most of them.

It seemed to be a simple matter of communication or lack thereof that acted as a catalyst and gave the Chaos powers the leverage they needed to get in with Horus and his crowd. Though you have to wonder if two of the Primarchs were a lost cause no matter what - Lorgar of the Word Bearers and Magnus the Red of the Thousand Suns. Lorgar was the first one to fall to Chaos because he felt slighted by the Emperor when he chastised the Wordbearers for being so fervent in their devotion to the Emperor. Seems like wherther he revealed his plans to Lorgar or not that Primarch was too pissy to care and was turning to Chaos based on a petulant hissy fit.

Magnus was more complicated. He had obviously been plumbing the depths of the Warp already for some time and even before he sent his sorcerous message to the Emperor that threw things out of wack it is heavily implied at least in the Art of the Horus Heresy book that he was already falling under the influence of Chaos. Also I believe the Golden Throne was originally meant for Magnus as the Emperor felt that out of all his children, Magnus was the most skilled at holding the breach at his new web way so you have to wonder if Magnus really wanted that job to be stuck in the Golden Throne.

So that two primarchs that I could see having the Emperor open up about his plans on Earth not really affecting. Even so speaking to his children would have been a positive step in cementing their loyalty, but who knows, maybe he truly loved and trusted Horus to be his stand in and keep the others in line. He seemed to have taken the stance that "You guys are all grown up now and have been leaders of men and shown yourselves to be loyal to me and my cause. You can stand on your own now and if you have any issues/doubts Horus stands in for me." He probably never imagined Horus failing him so monumentally. Or on the flip side, never imagined Horus with his own will and initiative seperate from the Emperor's.

BTW anyone troubled by the Patriarchal/male dominant aspect of the Imperium? Twenty Primarchs - all guys. The Emperor - a guy, his Space Marine legions - all guys. It's troubling in some ways.

[Peptuck]

The Primarchs are another story, however. I don't think they were all intrinsicablly bad, but some sources (like Angels of DarknesS) seem to imply that their advnetures after they were scattered by chaos had.. "altered" them somehow. Some were altered worse than others (IE the traitor primarchs) but even others (I'm thinking El'Jonson and the Dark angels, but Corax might be another good example) weren't perfect either. The Primarchs were arrogant, powerful, and often quarrelsome, but then again I dont know if they qualify as truly human either - they were, IIRC, made that way, and their early exposure to their enviroments probably altered them irrevocoably.

Environment alters everyone. The Emperor made the Primarchs, but he did not raise them. A few of them weren't raised all that well. Mortarion, for example, has huge daddy issues. However part of the betrayals were the Emperor's fault. In particular, the Emperor was a huge dick to both Magnus and Angron.

It seems to me that he was unnecessarily dickish with Angron, too. It wouldn't have been that hard for the Emperor to simply blast the armies Angron was fighting from orbit or, if that was out of the question, sending a legion down to help fight off the bad guys. Instead, he simply grabbed Angron, leaving his men to die alone, and unnecessarily pissed off a primarch.

[Cykeisme]

Basically most (if not all) of the Primarchs had really dysfunctional early lives, didn't they? I mean, they were superhuman beings who naturally rose to positions of power as protectors of their adopted communities, but most of them never had normal childhood with a healthy father figure.

If the Emperor had raised them, I think there's little doubt that the probability of a Primarch-led rebellion would be drastically reduced.

Perhaps Connor is right, and the scattering irrevocably altered the Primarchs, deviating them from what they could have been. However, it's possible that the corruption wasn't some insidious seed taking root in their psyches; scattering them was all it was, and it was all it took for things to get really fucked up, years later.


Then again, even if the Emperor raised them himself, he certainly wasn't perfect either. You know, someone should make a complete list of all the mistakes the Emperor has made in the course of his life.

[Chris OFarrell]

Its funny, the Primarchs who actually WERE stable appeared to be those who had something of a normal upbringing with a strong sense of leadership and guidance. Guilliman for example was adopted by a King, put through the same military training as was required -where of course he excelled in both personal combat and officers training- and on merit, rapidly rose to command levels.

He then successfuly led an army on a conquest of the rest of the planet, returned home to find his adopted Father dead and his city in chaos (the general kind, not the mutating kind). He put it down and won the loyalty of his planet, causing Macragge flourished as did its neighbouring systems under his steady, even handed rule, which in turn attracted the notice of the Emperor, whom he and the planets instanlly swore loyalty to.

Unlike many of his Brothers, he was brought up in a real military where he probably learned very well the necessity of being able to TAKE orders as much as GIVE them. A lot of the other Primarchs went from nothing to ruler of the planet over a short time, which can't be that good for the ego and mental health...

Other Primarchs on the other hand, had far less stable upbringings and consequently, become increasingly unstable over time.

[Big Orange]

That would be Fulgrim I believe, and weren't they Chaos-worshippers anyway?

There's been mention of similar attacks against various groups in all the books, except the most recent one, where the only people they actually kill are chaos worshippers.

It would add to the moral ambiguity if the Emperor and his Primarch led legions were viciously beating down on relatively harmless and blameless alien races or human worlds, because they were directly in the way of the expansion of the Imperium of the Man. Stating that they were all Chaos, after the fact, sounds like later Imperium propaganda demonizing their victims (akin to Columbus saying the island natives he massacred were all cannibals).

Unlike many of his Brothers, he was brought up in a real military where he probably learned very well the necessity of being able to TAKE orders as much as GIVE them. A lot of the other Primarchs went from nothing to ruler of the planet over a short time, which can't be that good for the ego and mental health...

What sort of life did Horus lead before the Emperor found him? I guess Horus very likely had a gigantic ego if he was essentially number two of the Primarchs (damn sci-fi spelling!) and was the Emperor's golden boy, so getting put in the sidelines and seemingly ignored by his daddy would breed a feeling of betrayal festering into resentment more easily in a very self-centred and self-important person.

[Aaron]

BTW anyone troubled by the Patriarchal/male dominant aspect of the Imperium? Twenty Primarchs - all guys. The Emperor - a guy, his Space Marine legions - all guys. It's troubling in some ways.

I'm a little fuzzy on the details around the creation of the Primarchs, so I'm not sure if their engineering had the same restrictions that Space Marines have. Space Marines are all male because their implants (especially the first one implanted) are designed to work with male hormones. But there's the Sisters of Battle, while not super human are pretty serious ass kickers themselves.

[Bedlam]

I cant remember anything that would indiciate the Primarch's had to be Male, it might be that if much of there genetic make up came from the emperor himself they had to be the same sex as him or it might have been the Emperors choice. There is a bit in one of the Horus Heresy novels where Horus considers that each primarch is an 'aspect' of the emperor, it might explain why despite being made at the same time there all very different.

As far as I know all Marines are male because all the primarchs were male. The Marines were a sort of spin off from the primarch project another use for the same basic technology to augment a normal human to super human rather than create super humans from scratch.

[Cykeisme]

I'd buy that the Primarchs are each an aspect of the Emperor.
Note that nearly half of them turned to evil. On the bright side, it's still clear that less than half of them turned to evil.
The Emperor was always just a man, flawed, but trying his best.

The Marines were a sort of spin off from the primarch project another use for the same basic technology to augment a normal human to super human rather than create super humans from scratch.

IIRC there were already genetically enhanced troops used by the Emperor for the retaking of Terra, prior to the creation of the Primarch. Those troops didn't use anything from the Emperor.

After the Primarchs were stolen, the Emperor realized that he could use the Primarchs' genetic material to stabilize the existing enhancement process to create the first true Space Marines.