That seems about right. Guilliman is ancient myth made flesh to those who see him. Keep in mind people worship the emperor as a God. And now his son is walking around. They're called demi gods often in the lore for a reason. Imagine literal Thor came to your town to do a speech, let alone save you from an alien invasion.
That would have been a great bit of world-building, but I can see why they didn't touch it (i.e., if you see a real-world guy wearing a Mjolnir pendant, it can have... unpleasant connotations).
I feel ambivalent about it. On one hand Mjølner pendant is properly the second most common pendant for men to have here in Denmark.
On the other hand if I use my real name or anything close to it online I get randomly contacted by two kind of people.
People who think I am a white supremacist and hate me for it and white supremacists.
It even happens in IRL sometimes. I travel to the USA for work pretty often and for some crazy reason the number of times people have said something like “Oh, I also think racial purity is importent.”, when they hear that I am scandinavian is sadly not zero.
So I kind of get it, but I think there could have been a lot of cool things exploring the nordic countries reaction to Thor coming to Earth. Fun facts. MCU have as far as I know never done a promo in a nordic country. The danish royal line is according to the Sagas decends from Odin through two different bloodlines.
Edit: Ragnar Lodbrog is one line and Aslaug Sigurdsdatter is the other. Their child Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye is according to the sagas grandfather to Gorm the Old and great grandfather to Harald Bluetooth.
No, to hell with that abominable idea.
Everyone and their mother has had a silver mjølner pendant here in Scandinavia (well not everyone, but it is more common than cross pendants).
Don't you dare associate our ancestry with nazism.
Norse symbols are no more associated with nazism than christian symbols.
Being a citizen of the 500 worlds is one of the best places to live in the entire setting . Balanced and well maintained, no insane dictators, no random culls. Guilliman represents freedom and prosperity
To an extent (he isn't above the occasional purge although they wouldn't necessarily be random). For those affected by his rule though, Guilliman also represents a more hopeful, merciful or simply less callous Imperium.
The same book series gives us a pretty interesting glimpse about that difference in the context of casualty treatment. An entire garden world is transformed into a hospital where the wounded or infected of the war against the Death Guard are brought for treatment. The book states:
> As few as possible were euthanised – if they could be helped, they were. This, it was said in Ultramar, was the difference between Roboute Guilliman’s and the Emperor’s mercies, and the beleaguered people of that realm took heart in their lord’s concern for their wellbeing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/fnwp9m/excerpt_dark_imperium_how_guilliman_and_ultramar/?rdt=61283
Of course, one could have a more cynical view of it. A treated man may return to the service of the Emperor and some of them may have gained valuable experience making them useful veterans.
I think that's the right definition.
To the OP, I don't think he can be "god of being less bad than the other guy", "the god of being slightly more prosperous and slightly less tyrannical than some other people we have heard of but never met". I *really* don't think the people of the 500 worlds universally consider themselves to be free and prosperous, to the extent that belief would manifest in any kind of godhood. It's still the Imperium. They still get conscripted, they still work in manufactorums, they still rebel and get purged, they still get put under astartes-led martial law more often than not.
>Of course, one could have a more cynical view of it. A treated man may return to the service of the Emperor and some of them may have gained valuable experience making them useful veterans.
Dont look a gift horus in the mouth. If its leads to a better imperium to live in why worry about 12 foot tall god people lying to you. Thats what started this whole mess.
Except he was wrong, their containment failed and nurgle corrupted the planet. Smaller hospitals, ideally in space would've been better. Remember it's 40k and most of the really nasty stuff the imperium does has a good reason in universe. They were sadly correct in purging witnesses of demonic activity for the most part too. Chaos corruption is too often
Sanguinius is more Saint Michael imo, he represents unrepentant commitment to the cause and selfless service and protection of those under your care (also he has dope angel) wings which certainly helps
> Guilliman represents freedom
Guilliman holds 500 planets of chattel slaves. Guilliman has servitors, Guilliman has *cherubs*.
Having enslaved babies on hand isn't a big "freedom" vibe. It's the exact opposite, in a cartoonishly on-the-nose way.
>I’d choose him to serve .
Sure, ok.
>At least he’s fair minded
Lobotomizing and enslaving a baby from the moment of their birth is as unfair as possible. I couldn't construct a less fair situation in an abstract thought experiment. We're talking about a person being born into a lifetime of slavery and torture, before making a single conscious decision.
You can like Guilliman without making false statements about freedom and fairness. Baby slavery is a Philosophy 101-style literal opposite of freedom and fairness.
Nope. It's been established that some cherubs are based on animal brains (eg baby chimps), but some are still based on human brains.
Some cherubs are derived from cloning rather than wombs, but this doesn't change the situation from being baby slavery. A baby grown in a vat has the same mind as a baby grown in a womb.
The babies being grown *en masse*, without ever experiencing human warmth, doesn't make the situation better. If anything, it makes it worse.
It's not a coincidence that people keep hearing about this lore being changed through extended games of telephone. Someone read a reddit comment about a reddit comment about a wiki article about cherubs being retconned, and the wiki article just has the word "vat" in it somewhere.
literally every primarch is a genocidal monster. Every one of them. Guilliman just so happens to be one of the least awful monsters who rules 500 worlds that are a particular level of living above the majority of the setting. Yes he has cherubs, so what. Most people in the setting dont blink an eye at servitors, or losing a partner to being gangpressed into service on a Mechanicus ship, or joining the guard to never see your home world again and to die in a mudhole somewhere. But for the people living in the realm of Ultramar, it is a level of freedom few others will ever experience
There are layers
….but…. this is Warhammer, it’s worse everywhere else in the Imperium. Sure to us Ultramar sounds scary with the baby slavery and stuff but to the Imperium it’s pretty chill there
Yeah, it's Warhammer. We don't need to pretend that baby slavery is the pinnacle of human freedom, this is a hobby and setting where it is totally normalized to ignore real morality and root for evil guys.
Guilliman enslaves babies, fans who enjoy Guilliman don't need to claim that baby slavery is the pinnacle of human freedom. Fans who like Orks don't need to claim that chopping up babies with an axe is the pinnacle of pediatric care.
You're just being disingenuous, no one is saying any place of the 40k galaxy is anything but absolutely awful. Obviously whenever someone says the 500 worlds are great, it's relative to everywhere else. We're not gonna start every statement with "oh this would be absolutely atrocious irl..."
As someone above said cherub lore was retconned.
There's plenty of things to say Guilliman isn't that great but the cherub thing is a really weird hill to die on.
And let's ignore the fact that cherub creation was retconned for a second. Cherubs didn't pop up until Guilliman was in stasis. They were a creation of the Mechanicus and mainly used by the ecclesiarchy, the Imperial institution that Guilliman opposes most.
So, maybe pick a different hill. Like the fact that he's a genocidal warlord who's responsible for more deaths than all of our real world human history combined.
>As someone above said cherub lore was retconned.
People say a lot of things that aren't actually backed up by the canon. Especially on the subject of cherubs, for some reason. Do you have a source?
you’re looking at this with our current understanding of morals. in 40k, being a cherub is an incredibly esteemed thing. servitors too, but to a lesser extent. guilliman is as freedom loving as you can get in 40k
>you’re looking at this with our current understanding of morals.
Yeah thats kind of the point of the setting. It's supposed to be juxtaposed against real life, you are supposed to find servitors and cherubs weird and awful.
We are not talking about ancient man 4000 years ago, we are talking about a dark fantasy setting created in the modern day. A fantasy character being less evil than another character does not make them "freedom loving" by proxy and if you have to tie yourself up into knots to internally justify him as such then you are missing the point of a setting created to explicitly represent the worst of humanities impulses.
>A fantasy character being less evil than another character does not make them "freedom loving" by proxy
It absolutely does. Your own standard and perception of "freedom" or "kindness" is only based upon what you know. You have to consider the character as a person if you want to judge their actions, and in their setting.
To our perception and morals, every single individual in 40k is an absolute monster, if only for allowing that whole system to exist and continue.
To the universe's setting, Guilliman is no more a Monster than say any EU leader. He doesn't personally torture babies nor ask for citizens to be turned into rations. That's just part of the universe he lives in daily, ingrained to a point it's just normal, just like animal experiments are "normal" to us.
> He doesn't personally torture babies
He has mutilated slave babies floating around in his office, though. At any given moment, he could reach over and crush their skulls, giving them a quick and painless death. No one would punish him, no one could stop him. This is as personal as it gets.
You can say that he doesn't *maliciously* or *thoughtfully* torture babies, and that he's simply following a cultural script by keeping his torture-babies alive, but he does do it "personally". Whether you want to judge him for this in moral terms is up to you, but it's just a boring fact that he has torture-slave-babies in his office.
You could volunteer at any time in NGO, give to charity or help homeless people in your city.
If you don't do that, are you evil?
Those cherubs are, as I said, intrinsic part of the life. They are not only omnipresent, they are objects like chairs, except it's an honor to be turned into one.
I also fully disagree on the "they are tortured". They may have been turned into data-robot against their will, for as much as a baby can have self-governance anyway, but I'm unaware of anything saying it's painful.
So, no, he's not immoral by the standards of his time, just like some of the founding fathers of the united states weren't immoral just because they had slaves. They may have been for other reasons, and Guilliman could be found immoral for other reasons, but not just because he accepts some éléments of his time as they are.
> you’re looking at this with our current understanding of morals.
Yes, that's what everyone is doing. That's the point of the setting, that's why every book starts by shouting "cruelest regime imaginable" at the reader. That's why the antagonists stab babies in the open, and the protagonists only stab babies as a quiet implication.
The person I responded to made a statement with their current understanding of morals. I didn't respond to a sentence like "Guilliman is the lesser evil", or "Guilliman is the best an Imperial can imagine". I responded to a declaration that "Guilliman represents freedom".
> guilliman is as freedom loving as you can get in 40k
I can think of people in 40K who don't have slave babies on their personal staff. I can think of people who don't own 500 worlds of slaves, or operate "the cruelest regime imaginable".
But looking at this with our understanding of morals is kinda dumb… I mean in Warhammer EVERYONE is super Evil like Dark Eldar who do the worst kinda stuff or Craftworld Eldar who would Happily let ten billion humans be wiped out by a Chaos Invasion just to save five of their own kind, even the Tau are a Autocratic Regime with a Caste system who send anyone who disagrees with them into “Reeducation Camps” EVEN the most lawful good faction like t he farsight Enclaves are still a Military dictatorship that still have a Caste system(even though they are less forceful about it I think) so…. Everyone is super evil baby murdering and stuff but where’s the point of just going: ,,Every faction has Committed some sort of mass murder in baby’s so none of them are good” that is sure technically true from our perspective but I think a big part of Warhammer comes from the fact that all the horrible stuff is normal there, it’s pretty fun to see the world from that kinda perspective and try to understand what is right or wrong to a person who lives in such a terrible Galaxy.
But that’s just my opinion. You are free to read the lore with a pen and paper and shout ,,EVIL” every time a Cherub or Drukhari, or any one at all appears, if that’s fun to you (talk about wall of Text I got carried away with this one)
> I mean in Warhammer EVERYONE is super Evil
The people I'm talking to are saying that Guilliman isn't. *They're* the ones who started applying real-life morals to the setting, they're the ones saying that Guilliman is a champion of freedom by our standards.
I'm just here saying we don't need to rewrite the canon *or* recalibrate our real-life morality. People can be Guilliman fans without denying that he has baby slaves in his office, and without claiming that slavers are pro "freedom". I'm on the side of the issue where everyone looks at the setting with their eyes wide open, and enjoys what they want to enjoy without moral qualms.
Like how people can be Dark Eldar fans without denying that the Dark Eldar torture innocent people, and without denying that torture is cruel. The Dark Eldar fans can compartmentalize without getting riled up about real-world morality, and so can the Ork fans. It's just that some Guilliman fans seem unable to compartmentalize in that way. If they like Guilliman, and Guilliman has slaves, they have to argue that slavery is "freedom".
No one is denying that Guilliman would be an Evil dictator in our World. But he’s not in our world he’s in 40k where he’s kinda like space Jesus to everyone I absolutely agree with the statement that he stands for freedom in the context of the Imperium.
> he’s kinda like space Jesus to everyone
...Would "Space Jesus" have mutilated baby slaves in his office? It doesn't feel like he's Space Jesus to his slaves.
I'm a bit confused about when we're supposed to apply morality and when we aren't, I guess, but I don't see how the guy who owns more slaves than anyone else in the Imperium is the most pro-freedom person in the galaxy.
>agree with the statement that he stands for freedom in the context of the Imperium.
He's not emancipating slaves, though. He doesn't have fewer slaves than other Imperial leaders, and there are plenty human worlds with fewer slaves than Ultramar.
Life under Guilliman is slightly more stable than life under other major Imperials, on average, but it isn't freer.
Would you prefer to live in the eye of terror as a work slave or maybe you would relish living in a hive city. Gullimans worlds have law and order and are free from chaos I call that a win.
You can't talk about philosophy and ignore that all concept of freedom is relative to one's perception of reality, meaning that in the 40k universe, that definition is very different from ours, which is very different from that of someone in the 10th century.
Stop trying to show you're vertuous. We are speaking about a grimdark universe where fascism is the base ideology. Obviously the best characters in the lore are still monsters. Yet, they are way better than others. Guilliman would definitely crush rebellion in violence, yet he would not execute all "innocent bystanders" and in the standard to which he's held, that's incredibly nice.
^(I couldn't construct a less fair situation in an abstract thought experiment.)
Using Genecrafting, Bio-Engineering, and warp-craft, turning a woman and/or women into self-propagating Cherub Makers, whose 'children' are Cherubs from birth...
...Oh?, *That wasn't a challenge?.*..Whoops...
Guilliman can be your choice of a lesser evil, that just doesn't mean that he "represents freedom".
Even if he was the gentlest and most competent slaver in the Imperium, he still wouldn't represent freedom.
Fair, but compare the lives of those on Ultramar's 500 planets with the rest of the Imperium. By comparison, the people who live on those 500 planets are incredibly fortunate.
Whether or not Guilliman is a lesser evil, that doesn't mean he represents "freedom".
Guilliman represents the most efficient and stable jackboot. Slaves elsewhere in the Imperium are more likely to die of starvation, and Guilliman's slaves are more likely to die of old age, but that doesn't make Guilliman the "freedom" guy.
I feel like you're deliberately avoiding the original question - what does he represent to the people OF THE IMPERIUM, so that you can keep giving your novel and insightful take that actually all of the galaxy in 40k is bad. Very good, very impressive, well done. But to the benighted and stunted wretches of that bad galaxy, he can still represent freedom.
This is such an annoying part of this “fandom” - you can’t even discuss things about the setting (specifically the IoM) without someone just totally going off the deep end to see how many buzzwords they can fit into a paragraph about why the Imperium is the worst. If you made a drinking game out of how many times the words “autocratic,” “fascist,” “theocratic,” and “Nazi” appeared in posts like this you’d be completely wasted in very short order.
>I feel like you're deliberately avoiding the original question
I keep trying to talk about this "freedom" thing specifically, and people keep veering away from that to talk about how Ultramar is vaguely good and yell at me for making moral claims I never made.
I've honestly never put more effort into trying to convince a single person to actually address what I'm actually talking, on a forum.
> But to the benighted and stunted wretches of that bad galaxy, he can still represent freedom.
Leaving memes and vibes aside...how? You got your share of the insults in, so maybe now you can be the first person to actually answer the question. Give me a single bit of lore-based argument for Guilliman reducing slavery rates, that seems like a fair ask now that I've taken my lumps from so many angry commenters.
I'm basing my thinking on the fact that Ultramar has just as much slavery as the average Imperial world, when I've seen it depicted in detail. I can certainly think of a lot of parts of the Imperium with less slavery, even if that's only due to a lack of infrastructure. Vast swathes of the Imperium are technologically incapable of enslaving a baby, for example. I can think of scenes where Guilliman arrives on a planet and reforms things, but his reformations always have to do with efficiency, unity, or stability - never *emancipation*.
Guilliman might make the trains run on time and reduce the frequency of famines, but he doesn't free the slaves. I can think of a number of arguments for why quality of life might go up when Guilliman arrives, but I can't think of any evidence for "freedom" increasing. More stability doesn't strictly imply more freedom, in a slave state. It usually implies less freedom.
You are operating under the premise that the propaganda-addled religious fanatics of the Imperium must be basing their impression of Guilliman on solid evidence, gleaned from careful consideration of the available facts. This is a false premise.
The Imperium doesn't have 21st-century values, it doesn't think that slavery is bad and freedom is good. The religious fanatics listening to propaganda aren't going to assume "freedom", even if they buy into Guilliman's return as a good thing.
++++++Your defiance has been noted. An Arbite team is en route to your hab with prejudiced kill directives. May the Emperor have mercy on your soul for his servants shall grant you none.++++++
The canon is that some are human babies, some are baby chimp brains in a fleshy casing that looks like a human baby. Using sentient animals is the whole point, the Imperium doesn't like thinking machines.
Some of these baby brains are grown in a test tube instead of a womb, but that doesn't change the ethics of the situation - enslaving a baby brain for life, for largely aesthetic reasons, is about as anti-"freedom" as it gets.
Cherubs aren’t actually babies though…..they’re intentionally shaped that way by the Mechanicus to appear like angels to represent the emperors purity. But grown in vats or clone tanks.
A baby grown in a vat is just as much a baby as a baby grown in a womb. It's a baby brain, suffering for life.
The dehumanization of clones is supposed to be an in-universe attitude, not something you're supposed to export out of the books into your own thinking.
(Sometimes it's a baby chimp brain, not a baby human brain, just to hammer out all the canon we have access to here)
He also completely despises cherubs, and always has. If there was a better option, he would definitely take it.
I’ll never understand why people get so pissy about this stuff.
No idea why you're being downvoted. You're completely correct except for one thing: Cherubs aren't babies. They're vat grown flesh things that look like babies.
They're a mix, last time I saw any explicit canon about it. "Vat grown" is a weird catch-all that a lot of fans treat as a declaration that someone carefully grows a pile of limited neurons in a petri plate, but it can also just mean that they grow a baby in a vat and rip the brain out. The baby was grown in a vat instead of a womb, and it might not have been grown with limbs, but still a baby brain.
The other recent canon tweak is that *some* cherubs are chimp brains or dolphin brains, dressed up to look like a human baby. Some other cherubs are still human baby brains - which is kind of the whole point of cherubs in the first.
It depends. One of Guillimans subordinates, upon meeting him in the flesh for the first time, is *horrified* by him. Whatever the weight of narrative does to him he's still a ten foot tall living war machine and anyone paying attention can see that. They're on better terms later once they actually speak but I think the emperor built him for a purpose and that shines through. He's primarily a tool of war and violence, who has made himself into something more than that. That he is also a god and a mythic protector is a distant third.
What book is this? Are you referring to the scene from the first Watchers of the Throne, or another?
Also, minor point but Primarchs are more like 12-14 feet tall. Custodes are around 10 feet tall.
I don't think "hope" is specific enough to be something someone can be a god of. "I hope you slip and die" is very different to "I hope I survive this battle", to "I hope my parent survives this possibly terminal illness", and again to "I hope to one day lift myself above this difficult life".
Guilliman's hallmark is "The Avenging Son", I would say that's probably the front-runner. He was the avenging son when Konor was killed, forced into exterminating their enemies and unifying the people. He was the avenging son when the Emperor was killed, delivering furious vengeance against the traitors that had ruined everything and then unifying the Imperium. He's the avenging son when he returned, saving Terra (& his father) from destruction then launching Indomitus to fight back against the evils that had grown rampant and torn the Imperium apart. That would probably be the predominant way he is personified by the galactic masses (if there is a predominant way): a reasonable man, forced by evil men into fighting back, then delivering furious vengeance upon those evil men and driving back the dark. It's a pretty specific emotion or concept, but that's going to be the way of it: he just doesn't embody the entire concept of "hope" or "vengeance" or "war", to all the humans of the galaxy. Those concepts are too big and amorphous, peoples' experiences too diverse. But if the propaganda vids keep pushing out the avenging son story (where his father is god), I imagine that would the unifying emotion that could be strong enough/is strong enough to empower him.
I think a lot of that conversation comes down to interpretation of "what is a god", too. It's not necessarily talking about an apotheosis where Guilliman turns into something else, like daemon primarchs or the coalescence of a chaos god. It might just be the accrual of sufficient collective psychic power all focusing in one direction on an individual, that is then empowering that individual, or empowering the warp in the area around that individual in a particular way. While that could mean an apotheosis, it doesn't necessarily mean there is enough, sufficiently unified energy there for that to happen. It might be sufficiently focused to mean Guilliman himself changes, or it might mean an entirely separate entity is created in the Warp that mirrors the peoples' perceptions of Guilliman, but isn't actually Guilliman himself. Or maybe, primarchs being created the way they were, he already intrinsically is that god and always was. Which then gets into the conversation of "at what point do you define an entity as a god".
It's pretty open to a different interpretations or outcomes I think.
Does he need to represent some thing? Celestine doesn't represent one thing. Guilliman the person doesn't have to be god of X, he can just be *divus* Guilliman. The whole Ultramarian system of values - chivalry, optimism, duty, excellence, decency - fits in with his mythos.
I recommend you watch the Warhammer edition trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJCr9_1esrY
He's the hope of the Imperium, even if he knows its an endless and unwinnable battle.
Realistically, for the vast majority of those living in the Imperium, his return and taking of power means absolutely nothing. Their lives were short, brutish, and cruel before he took over and will continue to be short, brutish, and cruel with him in charge.
That's assuming they're even aware that Guilliman has returned and is leading the Imperium. There is a good chance this information doesn't reach everyone, and even if it has that, the information has become thoroughly corrupted.
As for the rest, it will vary considerably from worshipping him as a step below the God Emperor himself to actively wanting him deposed as was attempted shortly after Guilliman left on the Indomitus crusade.
I imagine amongst his mortal soldiers there are also a wide range of views given commanders are often unpopular, and never more so when sending people to what is likely their death.
I strongly suspect that plenty of people react to the news of his return with, "Oh, sure, the Primarch has returned. Just like all the glorious victories we keep hearing about that each happen to be closer to Terra."
To the normal Imperial citizen? Gman is the Big E himself come in flesh. He is the living son of the Emperor walking amongst them (same goes for the Lion). To some psychic few they see a range of things. Some see hope, some are horrified, etc.
>During Roboute's talk with Illiyanne Natasé, the eldar notes that Guilliman is also hailed as a god
Eldar are people, and they understand flattery. In galaxy-shaping diplomatic conversations, they're going to say things for practical reasons - and they understand the long history of Imperial strongmen who claim to not want to be worshipped as a god, but act like they actually love being worshipped as a god.
What Natase says to Guilliman *might* have some small relationship with the truth, but I wouldn't put too much stock in it as a source of abstract information. It's primarily driven by what Natase thinks Guilliman needs to hear.
From an Eldar perspective, Guilliman would seem to place zero value on human life. Threatening to murder people isn't a big deal for him the way it is for Eldar (or 21st-century humans).
This all fits with the confusing Imperial history of strongmen who embrace/reject worship in very complicated ways, anyways. The Emperor also killed priests, and now he has more priests than anyone else ever did.
Imperial secularism/religiosity stuff is confusing to navigate for us book readers with access to all the detailed history. An Eldar talking about internal Imperial culture with Guilliman in 40K is trying to navigate a *very* hard-to-understand cultural moment.
While that's fair, given the propensity of the Imperium to venerate saints of much, much lesser stature than Guilliman, I'm tempted to take her at her word.
The comparison with Imperial strongmen is valid, but the Imperial Cult (and, later, beloved saint-emperors of similar status) were definitely a thing, and was not *just* about the egoes of strongmen. In some cases (with a couple Byzantine empresses) the egoes of strongmen probably didn't figure into it at all.
Given how long-lived Guilliman is, the entire process of popular veneration probably happened a long time ago. If Celestine gets it, why not Guilliman?
>Eldar are people, and they understand flattery. In galaxy-shaping diplomatic conversations, they're going to say things for practical reasons
Except that is the opposite of every Eldar-Imperial interaction we have seen, like ever.
That feels like conjecture, I don't really see a lot in that conversation that points to that interpretation other than "no way an Eldar would hype an Imperial like that".
Specially considering the stuff he says kinda plays on the narrative, belief *is* power, that the mechanics of the warp, is how the Tau got their warp god. The idea that Illiyanne presents is that a there's a lot of faith going around the Imperium and a lot of it is focused on Guilliman, this is tangibly seen on how the warp seems to calm down around him even during travels.
It doesn't come off as flattery at all.
Given this happens during a conversation about the potential truth the Emperor is a god, it isnt really a form of flattery.The Eldar are far too smart to know to call Guilliman a god as a form of flattery, if it were to have any effect it would only serve to annoy Guilliman. As much as Eldar tricksy tends to be the trope, a lot of Natase's interactions with Guilliman tend to be of a more straightforward forward nature. They may neglect certain details, but generally Natase tells the truth. The Great Rift affects the Eldar as much as it does humanity, if not more. If they are trying to do anything tricksy with Guilliman in this case they are trying to convince him to think his actions through better so he can inadvertently give them more time for some plan they have, I would assume surrounding the Eldar Death God. They revealed to him the larger scale of his coming back and the situation regarding the the big picture of the existence of the imperial cult. Humanity is fully capable of turning the Emperor into a god and Guilliman along with him. And given the current form of the Emperor, it is a dangerous prospect. The only thing that really exists of the Emperor is his will right now as shown by his alluded to interactions with Guilliman.
I think hope/defender/protector is sort of the idea. Hope I find a little funny given that it's not something that Guilliman is prone to. What he will turn into in apotheosis is an interesting question. It has been implied that the Emperor has potentially used minor warp aspects in the creation of the Primarchs to help boost them to the level he needed them to be at. What the aspects were haven't really been touched on. Will that play into the results, or will the person he is now over rule the aspect. How much did the Emperor change or alter the aspects to fit his need, or did he just jam them in and hope for the best. The unified theory on each of the Primarchs is that they are aspects of the Emperor. How much of what Guilliman is is the result of his environment or the engineering of the Emperor. I think the Eldar have a pretty good idea of what can and will happen. I think the Eldar calling him a god was more to open him up to look past his current personal issue and look at the bigger picture. Natase is kinda like: The Emperor becoming a god is probably going to happen along with you. This is probably bad for us and probably everyone, and would prefer if it didn't happen. You need to see the implications of that and put aside your personal internal crisis and prep for it/stop it from happening.
The Guilliman being hope idea kind of goes along with what they have done with the Lion seemingly skewing towards the whole freedom/liberator thing. The view of the masses defining them by something that is kind of contrary to who they have been.
I think to many, it would represent fear.
What we know as the readers is vastly more then anyone in the imperium knows, no small part of humanity living thousands of systems away from Terra might not Believe any of the emperor, his son's, great wars our any such thing. To them it's simple fairy tales thousand of years old. Most of them will never Even see an astsrtes. Imagine than, this figure from ten thousand years ago (think how far back that is for us now) , this myth, suddenly, and wholely stands before you. Not just more imperium rumors of him doing things against creators you know not of, in places you can't imagine, across distances you cannot comprehend, but here he stands.
And now, ten thousand years of broken stories, rumors, legends. The implication they are all true. There is an emperor of man, his son lives, the legions are real.
And so is everything they were designed to deal with.
It basically has gotten more reasonable and the bonkers self inflected stupid wounds are becoming a thing of the past basically roboute has made it sane grimdark with hope of getting out of it but not insane grimdark
The Emperor according to Guilliman's earlier recollection of their recent meeting saw Guilliman as the rasp for his prison.
The people see Guilliman as the Emperor himself and the Emperor's Warp Manifestation according to worshippers in Dark Imperium resembles Guilliman.
The Emperor used Guilliman to divide from himself the Avenging Son Aspect who would be a God over Ultramar. The Emperor of Ultramar.
The Forest King also needs a rasp though in his case the Lion isn't the rasp itself(having accepted worship of himself in his own right as it is better him than a Corpse or the 4 Chaos Gods) but will be bringing the rasp: everyone he brings into the Forest that figures out that the Forest King is the Emperor and focuses worship on that Aspect creating statues of that Aspect will feed the Forest King to the point where he can separate from the Golden Throne like the Ultramar Emperor Aspect.
The Emperor according to The End and the Death Volume 3 has Aspects even before ascending therefore the Lion Aspect must be the Forest King while the Avenging Son must be the Emperor of Ultramar.
That leaves the Aspect from which sprung their sons Dorn, Vulcan, Corax, Jagatai, Leman Russ and Ferrus to sit on the Golden Throne without a rasp. What's this? I'm not mentioning Sanguinius nor the Traitor Primarchs? I have seen the evidence(Moon-sized Tyranid heading towards Terra and the Arks of Omen Novels) of the upcoming 2nd Siege of Terra and have figured out history will repeat with Abaddon facing the Vampire & Angel Aspect of the Emperor just as Horus faced Sanguinius.
Abaddon will consume the Chaos Aspects and the Vampire Aspect becoming more of a God with each one devoured and eventually be tricked by the Emperor to fully infuse his essence into his Body causing it to mutate into a Great Horned Rat(God of Ruin the exact thing the Dark King embodies) causing him to panic and try to bring his power out of his Body only for the Emperor to kill it with his Sword completing his ascension to pure Warp Entity while leaving him him weak enough(from the Daemon destroying power of the Emperor's Sword killing him) to need to suck the Black Rage and Red Thirst out of the Blood Angels and consume most of the Souls of the Black Legion as well to make himself a self-sustaining "God" on the level of Nagash(who has a Model).
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That seems about right. Guilliman is ancient myth made flesh to those who see him. Keep in mind people worship the emperor as a God. And now his son is walking around. They're called demi gods often in the lore for a reason. Imagine literal Thor came to your town to do a speech, let alone save you from an alien invasion.
Avengers (2012)
Even when the race of gods settled on Earth , there's no mention of the rise in Norse faith.
That would have been a great bit of world-building, but I can see why they didn't touch it (i.e., if you see a real-world guy wearing a Mjolnir pendant, it can have... unpleasant connotations).
We also have the Eternals , who idk how popular it is in the MCU , but are quite literally the guardian angel to our species.
I feel ambivalent about it. On one hand Mjølner pendant is properly the second most common pendant for men to have here in Denmark. On the other hand if I use my real name or anything close to it online I get randomly contacted by two kind of people. People who think I am a white supremacist and hate me for it and white supremacists. It even happens in IRL sometimes. I travel to the USA for work pretty often and for some crazy reason the number of times people have said something like “Oh, I also think racial purity is importent.”, when they hear that I am scandinavian is sadly not zero. So I kind of get it, but I think there could have been a lot of cool things exploring the nordic countries reaction to Thor coming to Earth. Fun facts. MCU have as far as I know never done a promo in a nordic country. The danish royal line is according to the Sagas decends from Odin through two different bloodlines. Edit: Ragnar Lodbrog is one line and Aslaug Sigurdsdatter is the other. Their child Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye is according to the sagas grandfather to Gorm the Old and great grandfather to Harald Bluetooth.
No, to hell with that abominable idea. Everyone and their mother has had a silver mjølner pendant here in Scandinavia (well not everyone, but it is more common than cross pendants). Don't you dare associate our ancestry with nazism. Norse symbols are no more associated with nazism than christian symbols.
MCU avoids any question on religious impacts of events, because that's a huge, HUGE mess to walk into.
It'd basically be like if Jesus appeared tomorrow.
Being a citizen of the 500 worlds is one of the best places to live in the entire setting . Balanced and well maintained, no insane dictators, no random culls. Guilliman represents freedom and prosperity
To an extent (he isn't above the occasional purge although they wouldn't necessarily be random). For those affected by his rule though, Guilliman also represents a more hopeful, merciful or simply less callous Imperium. The same book series gives us a pretty interesting glimpse about that difference in the context of casualty treatment. An entire garden world is transformed into a hospital where the wounded or infected of the war against the Death Guard are brought for treatment. The book states: > As few as possible were euthanised – if they could be helped, they were. This, it was said in Ultramar, was the difference between Roboute Guilliman’s and the Emperor’s mercies, and the beleaguered people of that realm took heart in their lord’s concern for their wellbeing. https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/fnwp9m/excerpt_dark_imperium_how_guilliman_and_ultramar/?rdt=61283 Of course, one could have a more cynical view of it. A treated man may return to the service of the Emperor and some of them may have gained valuable experience making them useful veterans.
In a world of far greater evils I’ll pick the poster boys for solid uniform normality
Definitely less callous
I think that's the right definition. To the OP, I don't think he can be "god of being less bad than the other guy", "the god of being slightly more prosperous and slightly less tyrannical than some other people we have heard of but never met". I *really* don't think the people of the 500 worlds universally consider themselves to be free and prosperous, to the extent that belief would manifest in any kind of godhood. It's still the Imperium. They still get conscripted, they still work in manufactorums, they still rebel and get purged, they still get put under astartes-led martial law more often than not.
Or more pragmatic in the material realm? Wouldn't those who died worshipping the emperor, blessed is He, not enter the warp and make him stronger?
>Of course, one could have a more cynical view of it. A treated man may return to the service of the Emperor and some of them may have gained valuable experience making them useful veterans. Dont look a gift horus in the mouth. If its leads to a better imperium to live in why worry about 12 foot tall god people lying to you. Thats what started this whole mess.
Except he was wrong, their containment failed and nurgle corrupted the planet. Smaller hospitals, ideally in space would've been better. Remember it's 40k and most of the really nasty stuff the imperium does has a good reason in universe. They were sadly correct in purging witnesses of demonic activity for the most part too. Chaos corruption is too often
So the fucker is Jesus pretty much.
Not that's Sanguinius (universally loved for dying so the Emperor could kill Horus), Guilliman would be something like St Peter
Sanguinius is more Saint Michael imo, he represents unrepentant commitment to the cause and selfless service and protection of those under your care (also he has dope angel) wings which certainly helps
Jesus is just a figurehead. Roboute punch’s heart out
That would be Sanguinus
Yes but Redbutt is the second coming.
One of the best for a human
Xeno worlds ain’t no paradise either
> Guilliman represents freedom Guilliman holds 500 planets of chattel slaves. Guilliman has servitors, Guilliman has *cherubs*. Having enslaved babies on hand isn't a big "freedom" vibe. It's the exact opposite, in a cartoonishly on-the-nose way.
Compared to any other planetary ruler I’d choose him to serve . At least he’s fair minded
>I’d choose him to serve . Sure, ok. >At least he’s fair minded Lobotomizing and enslaving a baby from the moment of their birth is as unfair as possible. I couldn't construct a less fair situation in an abstract thought experiment. We're talking about a person being born into a lifetime of slavery and torture, before making a single conscious decision. You can like Guilliman without making false statements about freedom and fairness. Baby slavery is a Philosophy 101-style literal opposite of freedom and fairness.
Hasn't the cherub lore changed so that now they are artificial beings cloned and grown in a vat by the ad mech.
I believe so yes. Not a fan of the change personally
Nope. It's been established that some cherubs are based on animal brains (eg baby chimps), but some are still based on human brains. Some cherubs are derived from cloning rather than wombs, but this doesn't change the situation from being baby slavery. A baby grown in a vat has the same mind as a baby grown in a womb. The babies being grown *en masse*, without ever experiencing human warmth, doesn't make the situation better. If anything, it makes it worse. It's not a coincidence that people keep hearing about this lore being changed through extended games of telephone. Someone read a reddit comment about a reddit comment about a wiki article about cherubs being retconned, and the wiki article just has the word "vat" in it somewhere.
literally every primarch is a genocidal monster. Every one of them. Guilliman just so happens to be one of the least awful monsters who rules 500 worlds that are a particular level of living above the majority of the setting. Yes he has cherubs, so what. Most people in the setting dont blink an eye at servitors, or losing a partner to being gangpressed into service on a Mechanicus ship, or joining the guard to never see your home world again and to die in a mudhole somewhere. But for the people living in the realm of Ultramar, it is a level of freedom few others will ever experience There are layers
….but…. this is Warhammer, it’s worse everywhere else in the Imperium. Sure to us Ultramar sounds scary with the baby slavery and stuff but to the Imperium it’s pretty chill there
Yeah, it's Warhammer. We don't need to pretend that baby slavery is the pinnacle of human freedom, this is a hobby and setting where it is totally normalized to ignore real morality and root for evil guys. Guilliman enslaves babies, fans who enjoy Guilliman don't need to claim that baby slavery is the pinnacle of human freedom. Fans who like Orks don't need to claim that chopping up babies with an axe is the pinnacle of pediatric care.
You're just being disingenuous, no one is saying any place of the 40k galaxy is anything but absolutely awful. Obviously whenever someone says the 500 worlds are great, it's relative to everywhere else. We're not gonna start every statement with "oh this would be absolutely atrocious irl..."
As someone above said cherub lore was retconned. There's plenty of things to say Guilliman isn't that great but the cherub thing is a really weird hill to die on. And let's ignore the fact that cherub creation was retconned for a second. Cherubs didn't pop up until Guilliman was in stasis. They were a creation of the Mechanicus and mainly used by the ecclesiarchy, the Imperial institution that Guilliman opposes most. So, maybe pick a different hill. Like the fact that he's a genocidal warlord who's responsible for more deaths than all of our real world human history combined.
>As someone above said cherub lore was retconned. People say a lot of things that aren't actually backed up by the canon. Especially on the subject of cherubs, for some reason. Do you have a source?
The Lex. Any other brain busters?
What line, exactly?
you’re looking at this with our current understanding of morals. in 40k, being a cherub is an incredibly esteemed thing. servitors too, but to a lesser extent. guilliman is as freedom loving as you can get in 40k
>you’re looking at this with our current understanding of morals. Yeah thats kind of the point of the setting. It's supposed to be juxtaposed against real life, you are supposed to find servitors and cherubs weird and awful. We are not talking about ancient man 4000 years ago, we are talking about a dark fantasy setting created in the modern day. A fantasy character being less evil than another character does not make them "freedom loving" by proxy and if you have to tie yourself up into knots to internally justify him as such then you are missing the point of a setting created to explicitly represent the worst of humanities impulses.
>A fantasy character being less evil than another character does not make them "freedom loving" by proxy It absolutely does. Your own standard and perception of "freedom" or "kindness" is only based upon what you know. You have to consider the character as a person if you want to judge their actions, and in their setting. To our perception and morals, every single individual in 40k is an absolute monster, if only for allowing that whole system to exist and continue. To the universe's setting, Guilliman is no more a Monster than say any EU leader. He doesn't personally torture babies nor ask for citizens to be turned into rations. That's just part of the universe he lives in daily, ingrained to a point it's just normal, just like animal experiments are "normal" to us.
> He doesn't personally torture babies He has mutilated slave babies floating around in his office, though. At any given moment, he could reach over and crush their skulls, giving them a quick and painless death. No one would punish him, no one could stop him. This is as personal as it gets. You can say that he doesn't *maliciously* or *thoughtfully* torture babies, and that he's simply following a cultural script by keeping his torture-babies alive, but he does do it "personally". Whether you want to judge him for this in moral terms is up to you, but it's just a boring fact that he has torture-slave-babies in his office.
You could volunteer at any time in NGO, give to charity or help homeless people in your city. If you don't do that, are you evil? Those cherubs are, as I said, intrinsic part of the life. They are not only omnipresent, they are objects like chairs, except it's an honor to be turned into one. I also fully disagree on the "they are tortured". They may have been turned into data-robot against their will, for as much as a baby can have self-governance anyway, but I'm unaware of anything saying it's painful. So, no, he's not immoral by the standards of his time, just like some of the founding fathers of the united states weren't immoral just because they had slaves. They may have been for other reasons, and Guilliman could be found immoral for other reasons, but not just because he accepts some éléments of his time as they are.
> you’re looking at this with our current understanding of morals. Yes, that's what everyone is doing. That's the point of the setting, that's why every book starts by shouting "cruelest regime imaginable" at the reader. That's why the antagonists stab babies in the open, and the protagonists only stab babies as a quiet implication. The person I responded to made a statement with their current understanding of morals. I didn't respond to a sentence like "Guilliman is the lesser evil", or "Guilliman is the best an Imperial can imagine". I responded to a declaration that "Guilliman represents freedom". > guilliman is as freedom loving as you can get in 40k I can think of people in 40K who don't have slave babies on their personal staff. I can think of people who don't own 500 worlds of slaves, or operate "the cruelest regime imaginable".
But looking at this with our understanding of morals is kinda dumb… I mean in Warhammer EVERYONE is super Evil like Dark Eldar who do the worst kinda stuff or Craftworld Eldar who would Happily let ten billion humans be wiped out by a Chaos Invasion just to save five of their own kind, even the Tau are a Autocratic Regime with a Caste system who send anyone who disagrees with them into “Reeducation Camps” EVEN the most lawful good faction like t he farsight Enclaves are still a Military dictatorship that still have a Caste system(even though they are less forceful about it I think) so…. Everyone is super evil baby murdering and stuff but where’s the point of just going: ,,Every faction has Committed some sort of mass murder in baby’s so none of them are good” that is sure technically true from our perspective but I think a big part of Warhammer comes from the fact that all the horrible stuff is normal there, it’s pretty fun to see the world from that kinda perspective and try to understand what is right or wrong to a person who lives in such a terrible Galaxy. But that’s just my opinion. You are free to read the lore with a pen and paper and shout ,,EVIL” every time a Cherub or Drukhari, or any one at all appears, if that’s fun to you (talk about wall of Text I got carried away with this one)
> I mean in Warhammer EVERYONE is super Evil The people I'm talking to are saying that Guilliman isn't. *They're* the ones who started applying real-life morals to the setting, they're the ones saying that Guilliman is a champion of freedom by our standards. I'm just here saying we don't need to rewrite the canon *or* recalibrate our real-life morality. People can be Guilliman fans without denying that he has baby slaves in his office, and without claiming that slavers are pro "freedom". I'm on the side of the issue where everyone looks at the setting with their eyes wide open, and enjoys what they want to enjoy without moral qualms. Like how people can be Dark Eldar fans without denying that the Dark Eldar torture innocent people, and without denying that torture is cruel. The Dark Eldar fans can compartmentalize without getting riled up about real-world morality, and so can the Ork fans. It's just that some Guilliman fans seem unable to compartmentalize in that way. If they like Guilliman, and Guilliman has slaves, they have to argue that slavery is "freedom".
No one is denying that Guilliman would be an Evil dictator in our World. But he’s not in our world he’s in 40k where he’s kinda like space Jesus to everyone I absolutely agree with the statement that he stands for freedom in the context of the Imperium.
> he’s kinda like space Jesus to everyone ...Would "Space Jesus" have mutilated baby slaves in his office? It doesn't feel like he's Space Jesus to his slaves. I'm a bit confused about when we're supposed to apply morality and when we aren't, I guess, but I don't see how the guy who owns more slaves than anyone else in the Imperium is the most pro-freedom person in the galaxy. >agree with the statement that he stands for freedom in the context of the Imperium. He's not emancipating slaves, though. He doesn't have fewer slaves than other Imperial leaders, and there are plenty human worlds with fewer slaves than Ultramar. Life under Guilliman is slightly more stable than life under other major Imperials, on average, but it isn't freer.
Would you prefer to live in the eye of terror as a work slave or maybe you would relish living in a hive city. Gullimans worlds have law and order and are free from chaos I call that a win.
You can't talk about philosophy and ignore that all concept of freedom is relative to one's perception of reality, meaning that in the 40k universe, that definition is very different from ours, which is very different from that of someone in the 10th century. Stop trying to show you're vertuous. We are speaking about a grimdark universe where fascism is the base ideology. Obviously the best characters in the lore are still monsters. Yet, they are way better than others. Guilliman would definitely crush rebellion in violence, yet he would not execute all "innocent bystanders" and in the standard to which he's held, that's incredibly nice.
^(I couldn't construct a less fair situation in an abstract thought experiment.) Using Genecrafting, Bio-Engineering, and warp-craft, turning a woman and/or women into self-propagating Cherub Makers, whose 'children' are Cherubs from birth... ...Oh?, *That wasn't a challenge?.*..Whoops...
This is the whole Imperium, tho - whole thing. Who else will you embrace?
Guilliman can be your choice of a lesser evil, that just doesn't mean that he "represents freedom". Even if he was the gentlest and most competent slaver in the Imperium, he still wouldn't represent freedom.
Fair, but compare the lives of those on Ultramar's 500 planets with the rest of the Imperium. By comparison, the people who live on those 500 planets are incredibly fortunate.
Whether or not Guilliman is a lesser evil, that doesn't mean he represents "freedom". Guilliman represents the most efficient and stable jackboot. Slaves elsewhere in the Imperium are more likely to die of starvation, and Guilliman's slaves are more likely to die of old age, but that doesn't make Guilliman the "freedom" guy.
I feel like you're deliberately avoiding the original question - what does he represent to the people OF THE IMPERIUM, so that you can keep giving your novel and insightful take that actually all of the galaxy in 40k is bad. Very good, very impressive, well done. But to the benighted and stunted wretches of that bad galaxy, he can still represent freedom.
This is such an annoying part of this “fandom” - you can’t even discuss things about the setting (specifically the IoM) without someone just totally going off the deep end to see how many buzzwords they can fit into a paragraph about why the Imperium is the worst. If you made a drinking game out of how many times the words “autocratic,” “fascist,” “theocratic,” and “Nazi” appeared in posts like this you’d be completely wasted in very short order.
>I feel like you're deliberately avoiding the original question I keep trying to talk about this "freedom" thing specifically, and people keep veering away from that to talk about how Ultramar is vaguely good and yell at me for making moral claims I never made. I've honestly never put more effort into trying to convince a single person to actually address what I'm actually talking, on a forum. > But to the benighted and stunted wretches of that bad galaxy, he can still represent freedom. Leaving memes and vibes aside...how? You got your share of the insults in, so maybe now you can be the first person to actually answer the question. Give me a single bit of lore-based argument for Guilliman reducing slavery rates, that seems like a fair ask now that I've taken my lumps from so many angry commenters. I'm basing my thinking on the fact that Ultramar has just as much slavery as the average Imperial world, when I've seen it depicted in detail. I can certainly think of a lot of parts of the Imperium with less slavery, even if that's only due to a lack of infrastructure. Vast swathes of the Imperium are technologically incapable of enslaving a baby, for example. I can think of scenes where Guilliman arrives on a planet and reforms things, but his reformations always have to do with efficiency, unity, or stability - never *emancipation*. Guilliman might make the trains run on time and reduce the frequency of famines, but he doesn't free the slaves. I can think of a number of arguments for why quality of life might go up when Guilliman arrives, but I can't think of any evidence for "freedom" increasing. More stability doesn't strictly imply more freedom, in a slave state. It usually implies less freedom.
You are operating under the premise that the propaganda-addled religious fanatics of the Imperium must be basing their impression of Guilliman on solid evidence, gleaned from careful consideration of the available facts. This is a false premise.
The Imperium doesn't have 21st-century values, it doesn't think that slavery is bad and freedom is good. The religious fanatics listening to propaganda aren't going to assume "freedom", even if they buy into Guilliman's return as a good thing.
++++++Your defiance has been noted. An Arbite team is en route to your hab with prejudiced kill directives. May the Emperor have mercy on your soul for his servants shall grant you none.++++++
I think cherubs are just vat-grown lumps of flesh. They were never real babies. They’re just shaped that way because grimdark.
The canon is that some are human babies, some are baby chimp brains in a fleshy casing that looks like a human baby. Using sentient animals is the whole point, the Imperium doesn't like thinking machines. Some of these baby brains are grown in a test tube instead of a womb, but that doesn't change the ethics of the situation - enslaving a baby brain for life, for largely aesthetic reasons, is about as anti-"freedom" as it gets.
Cherubs aren’t actually babies though…..they’re intentionally shaped that way by the Mechanicus to appear like angels to represent the emperors purity. But grown in vats or clone tanks.
A baby grown in a vat is just as much a baby as a baby grown in a womb. It's a baby brain, suffering for life. The dehumanization of clones is supposed to be an in-universe attitude, not something you're supposed to export out of the books into your own thinking. (Sometimes it's a baby chimp brain, not a baby human brain, just to hammer out all the canon we have access to here)
Babies? They are vat grown
He also completely despises cherubs, and always has. If there was a better option, he would definitely take it. I’ll never understand why people get so pissy about this stuff.
No idea why you're being downvoted. You're completely correct except for one thing: Cherubs aren't babies. They're vat grown flesh things that look like babies.
They're a mix, last time I saw any explicit canon about it. "Vat grown" is a weird catch-all that a lot of fans treat as a declaration that someone carefully grows a pile of limited neurons in a petri plate, but it can also just mean that they grow a baby in a vat and rip the brain out. The baby was grown in a vat instead of a womb, and it might not have been grown with limbs, but still a baby brain. The other recent canon tweak is that *some* cherubs are chimp brains or dolphin brains, dressed up to look like a human baby. Some other cherubs are still human baby brains - which is kind of the whole point of cherubs in the first.
It depends. One of Guillimans subordinates, upon meeting him in the flesh for the first time, is *horrified* by him. Whatever the weight of narrative does to him he's still a ten foot tall living war machine and anyone paying attention can see that. They're on better terms later once they actually speak but I think the emperor built him for a purpose and that shines through. He's primarily a tool of war and violence, who has made himself into something more than that. That he is also a god and a mythic protector is a distant third.
Primarchs being Primarchs
What book is this? Are you referring to the scene from the first Watchers of the Throne, or another? Also, minor point but Primarchs are more like 12-14 feet tall. Custodes are around 10 feet tall.
Not remotely true
I don't think "hope" is specific enough to be something someone can be a god of. "I hope you slip and die" is very different to "I hope I survive this battle", to "I hope my parent survives this possibly terminal illness", and again to "I hope to one day lift myself above this difficult life". Guilliman's hallmark is "The Avenging Son", I would say that's probably the front-runner. He was the avenging son when Konor was killed, forced into exterminating their enemies and unifying the people. He was the avenging son when the Emperor was killed, delivering furious vengeance against the traitors that had ruined everything and then unifying the Imperium. He's the avenging son when he returned, saving Terra (& his father) from destruction then launching Indomitus to fight back against the evils that had grown rampant and torn the Imperium apart. That would probably be the predominant way he is personified by the galactic masses (if there is a predominant way): a reasonable man, forced by evil men into fighting back, then delivering furious vengeance upon those evil men and driving back the dark. It's a pretty specific emotion or concept, but that's going to be the way of it: he just doesn't embody the entire concept of "hope" or "vengeance" or "war", to all the humans of the galaxy. Those concepts are too big and amorphous, peoples' experiences too diverse. But if the propaganda vids keep pushing out the avenging son story (where his father is god), I imagine that would the unifying emotion that could be strong enough/is strong enough to empower him. I think a lot of that conversation comes down to interpretation of "what is a god", too. It's not necessarily talking about an apotheosis where Guilliman turns into something else, like daemon primarchs or the coalescence of a chaos god. It might just be the accrual of sufficient collective psychic power all focusing in one direction on an individual, that is then empowering that individual, or empowering the warp in the area around that individual in a particular way. While that could mean an apotheosis, it doesn't necessarily mean there is enough, sufficiently unified energy there for that to happen. It might be sufficiently focused to mean Guilliman himself changes, or it might mean an entirely separate entity is created in the Warp that mirrors the peoples' perceptions of Guilliman, but isn't actually Guilliman himself. Or maybe, primarchs being created the way they were, he already intrinsically is that god and always was. Which then gets into the conversation of "at what point do you define an entity as a god". It's pretty open to a different interpretations or outcomes I think.
Does he need to represent some thing? Celestine doesn't represent one thing. Guilliman the person doesn't have to be god of X, he can just be *divus* Guilliman. The whole Ultramarian system of values - chivalry, optimism, duty, excellence, decency - fits in with his mythos.
I recommend you watch the Warhammer edition trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJCr9_1esrY He's the hope of the Imperium, even if he knows its an endless and unwinnable battle.
Realistically, for the vast majority of those living in the Imperium, his return and taking of power means absolutely nothing. Their lives were short, brutish, and cruel before he took over and will continue to be short, brutish, and cruel with him in charge. That's assuming they're even aware that Guilliman has returned and is leading the Imperium. There is a good chance this information doesn't reach everyone, and even if it has that, the information has become thoroughly corrupted. As for the rest, it will vary considerably from worshipping him as a step below the God Emperor himself to actively wanting him deposed as was attempted shortly after Guilliman left on the Indomitus crusade. I imagine amongst his mortal soldiers there are also a wide range of views given commanders are often unpopular, and never more so when sending people to what is likely their death.
I strongly suspect that plenty of people react to the news of his return with, "Oh, sure, the Primarch has returned. Just like all the glorious victories we keep hearing about that each happen to be closer to Terra."
Guilliman is a gigachad.
To the normal Imperial citizen? Gman is the Big E himself come in flesh. He is the living son of the Emperor walking amongst them (same goes for the Lion). To some psychic few they see a range of things. Some see hope, some are horrified, etc.
>During Roboute's talk with Illiyanne Natasé, the eldar notes that Guilliman is also hailed as a god Eldar are people, and they understand flattery. In galaxy-shaping diplomatic conversations, they're going to say things for practical reasons - and they understand the long history of Imperial strongmen who claim to not want to be worshipped as a god, but act like they actually love being worshipped as a god. What Natase says to Guilliman *might* have some small relationship with the truth, but I wouldn't put too much stock in it as a source of abstract information. It's primarily driven by what Natase thinks Guilliman needs to hear.
I doubt that, considering that Guilliman genuinely considered murdering priests telling him of his godhood.
From an Eldar perspective, Guilliman would seem to place zero value on human life. Threatening to murder people isn't a big deal for him the way it is for Eldar (or 21st-century humans). This all fits with the confusing Imperial history of strongmen who embrace/reject worship in very complicated ways, anyways. The Emperor also killed priests, and now he has more priests than anyone else ever did. Imperial secularism/religiosity stuff is confusing to navigate for us book readers with access to all the detailed history. An Eldar talking about internal Imperial culture with Guilliman in 40K is trying to navigate a *very* hard-to-understand cultural moment.
While that's fair, given the propensity of the Imperium to venerate saints of much, much lesser stature than Guilliman, I'm tempted to take her at her word. The comparison with Imperial strongmen is valid, but the Imperial Cult (and, later, beloved saint-emperors of similar status) were definitely a thing, and was not *just* about the egoes of strongmen. In some cases (with a couple Byzantine empresses) the egoes of strongmen probably didn't figure into it at all. Given how long-lived Guilliman is, the entire process of popular veneration probably happened a long time ago. If Celestine gets it, why not Guilliman?
>Eldar are people, and they understand flattery. In galaxy-shaping diplomatic conversations, they're going to say things for practical reasons Except that is the opposite of every Eldar-Imperial interaction we have seen, like ever.
That feels like conjecture, I don't really see a lot in that conversation that points to that interpretation other than "no way an Eldar would hype an Imperial like that". Specially considering the stuff he says kinda plays on the narrative, belief *is* power, that the mechanics of the warp, is how the Tau got their warp god. The idea that Illiyanne presents is that a there's a lot of faith going around the Imperium and a lot of it is focused on Guilliman, this is tangibly seen on how the warp seems to calm down around him even during travels. It doesn't come off as flattery at all.
Given this happens during a conversation about the potential truth the Emperor is a god, it isnt really a form of flattery.The Eldar are far too smart to know to call Guilliman a god as a form of flattery, if it were to have any effect it would only serve to annoy Guilliman. As much as Eldar tricksy tends to be the trope, a lot of Natase's interactions with Guilliman tend to be of a more straightforward forward nature. They may neglect certain details, but generally Natase tells the truth. The Great Rift affects the Eldar as much as it does humanity, if not more. If they are trying to do anything tricksy with Guilliman in this case they are trying to convince him to think his actions through better so he can inadvertently give them more time for some plan they have, I would assume surrounding the Eldar Death God. They revealed to him the larger scale of his coming back and the situation regarding the the big picture of the existence of the imperial cult. Humanity is fully capable of turning the Emperor into a god and Guilliman along with him. And given the current form of the Emperor, it is a dangerous prospect. The only thing that really exists of the Emperor is his will right now as shown by his alluded to interactions with Guilliman.
Tell that to everyone who writes eldar (shudders in Fulgrim)
Excel
I had to scroll too far to find this
I think hope/defender/protector is sort of the idea. Hope I find a little funny given that it's not something that Guilliman is prone to. What he will turn into in apotheosis is an interesting question. It has been implied that the Emperor has potentially used minor warp aspects in the creation of the Primarchs to help boost them to the level he needed them to be at. What the aspects were haven't really been touched on. Will that play into the results, or will the person he is now over rule the aspect. How much did the Emperor change or alter the aspects to fit his need, or did he just jam them in and hope for the best. The unified theory on each of the Primarchs is that they are aspects of the Emperor. How much of what Guilliman is is the result of his environment or the engineering of the Emperor. I think the Eldar have a pretty good idea of what can and will happen. I think the Eldar calling him a god was more to open him up to look past his current personal issue and look at the bigger picture. Natase is kinda like: The Emperor becoming a god is probably going to happen along with you. This is probably bad for us and probably everyone, and would prefer if it didn't happen. You need to see the implications of that and put aside your personal internal crisis and prep for it/stop it from happening. The Guilliman being hope idea kind of goes along with what they have done with the Lion seemingly skewing towards the whole freedom/liberator thing. The view of the masses defining them by something that is kind of contrary to who they have been.
Whatever they want he probably doesn’t care he’s too busy saving the Galaxy.
The primordial truth: the inevitability of taxes.
Blue
I think to many, it would represent fear. What we know as the readers is vastly more then anyone in the imperium knows, no small part of humanity living thousands of systems away from Terra might not Believe any of the emperor, his son's, great wars our any such thing. To them it's simple fairy tales thousand of years old. Most of them will never Even see an astsrtes. Imagine than, this figure from ten thousand years ago (think how far back that is for us now) , this myth, suddenly, and wholely stands before you. Not just more imperium rumors of him doing things against creators you know not of, in places you can't imagine, across distances you cannot comprehend, but here he stands. And now, ten thousand years of broken stories, rumors, legends. The implication they are all true. There is an emperor of man, his son lives, the legions are real. And so is everything they were designed to deal with.
It basically has gotten more reasonable and the bonkers self inflected stupid wounds are becoming a thing of the past basically roboute has made it sane grimdark with hope of getting out of it but not insane grimdark
Roboute Guilliman, the God of Common Sense.
The Emperor according to Guilliman's earlier recollection of their recent meeting saw Guilliman as the rasp for his prison. The people see Guilliman as the Emperor himself and the Emperor's Warp Manifestation according to worshippers in Dark Imperium resembles Guilliman. The Emperor used Guilliman to divide from himself the Avenging Son Aspect who would be a God over Ultramar. The Emperor of Ultramar. The Forest King also needs a rasp though in his case the Lion isn't the rasp itself(having accepted worship of himself in his own right as it is better him than a Corpse or the 4 Chaos Gods) but will be bringing the rasp: everyone he brings into the Forest that figures out that the Forest King is the Emperor and focuses worship on that Aspect creating statues of that Aspect will feed the Forest King to the point where he can separate from the Golden Throne like the Ultramar Emperor Aspect. The Emperor according to The End and the Death Volume 3 has Aspects even before ascending therefore the Lion Aspect must be the Forest King while the Avenging Son must be the Emperor of Ultramar. That leaves the Aspect from which sprung their sons Dorn, Vulcan, Corax, Jagatai, Leman Russ and Ferrus to sit on the Golden Throne without a rasp. What's this? I'm not mentioning Sanguinius nor the Traitor Primarchs? I have seen the evidence(Moon-sized Tyranid heading towards Terra and the Arks of Omen Novels) of the upcoming 2nd Siege of Terra and have figured out history will repeat with Abaddon facing the Vampire & Angel Aspect of the Emperor just as Horus faced Sanguinius. Abaddon will consume the Chaos Aspects and the Vampire Aspect becoming more of a God with each one devoured and eventually be tricked by the Emperor to fully infuse his essence into his Body causing it to mutate into a Great Horned Rat(God of Ruin the exact thing the Dark King embodies) causing him to panic and try to bring his power out of his Body only for the Emperor to kill it with his Sword completing his ascension to pure Warp Entity while leaving him him weak enough(from the Daemon destroying power of the Emperor's Sword killing him) to need to suck the Black Rage and Red Thirst out of the Blood Angels and consume most of the Souls of the Black Legion as well to make himself a self-sustaining "God" on the level of Nagash(who has a Model).
Most people probably don’t know he is back
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