Primarch who was least likey to be corrupted ?

[Kol Saresk]

"Best Fighters" is a rather ambiguous title. Any of the Primarchs could e called top fighter except for maybe Magnus and Lorgar. Maybe Alpharius. Maybe. It depends on whether or not it was the real Alpharius who got stabbed in Legion.

 

Virtually all of the Primarchs were in the running for Warmaster.

 

Again, goody-goodiest is an iffy thing to throw around. Some people swear up and down that Dorn, the Lion, Russ or Gulliman are the goodiest of the goody.

 

Douchebag feature? Biggest Legion. Super-endurance. Spy networks that make the CIA jealous. Supposed protection against Chaos in the form of extra body hair.

 

So what do you consider to be Sanguinius' "douchebag" feature? What do you consider to be a "dirty, dishonest, human" trait? Show a list for all of the other 17 Primarchs to show where Sanguinius exceeds them enough to become "Mary Sue."

[Peter the Hermit]

First - he isn't a manchild like the rest of them...

Every primarch were in the running for the warmaster?  IIRC there was Dorn,Sang,Rob and perhaps Lion - some of them didn't want that position (Russ,Angron)

Also by negative traits I mean like:

Lorgar. Fanatism

Russ - Hypocrisy (or not)

Magnus . Hubris

Angron: Bloodlust

etc.

[Vesper]

"Best Fighters" is a rather ambiguous title. Any of the Primarchs could e called top fighter except for maybe Magnus and Lorgar. Maybe Alpharius. Maybe. It depends on whether or not it was the real Alpharius who got stabbed in Legion.

 

Virtually all of the Primarchs were in the running for Warmaster.

 

Again, goody-goodiest is an iffy thing to throw around. Some people swear up and down that Dorn, the Lion, Russ or Gulliman are the goodiest of the goody.

 

I concur, yet since day one, the fluff made clear that there is only one Primarch that is head and shoulders above all the others. And that's Horus.

[Augustus]

Best is subjective. But as I already said Sanguinius lacks personality flaws when compared to the 17 other primarchs.

[Veteran Sergeant]

I always find it rather funny the kinds of bizarre literary criticism that people tend to spout about the fiction behind 40K.  A lot of it is misplaced, at best, and more commonly, misunderstood.

 

When characters in fiction are spoken of, in terms of depth and dimension, and how that relates to how "interesting" they are as a character, it always refers to the protagonists in any given story.  A character like Sanguinius is not the protagonist in the 40K story, and never has been.  He wasn't supposed to be.  I know that now, due to the overwhelming demand for Horus Heresy novels, he's been used as a protagonist simply to fill demand for Blood Angels focused novels.  However, in terms of the greater 40K narrative, he's not ever been the protagonist, or even a focal character.  He was designed as a foil for the principle characters in the Horus Heresy storyline. 

Let's be realistic.  There are a lot of boring, uninteresting people in this world.  My friend's personal trainer is tall, ridiculously good looking, and fit in ways I couldn't even have hoped for even in my mid-twenties as a Marine, surfer, distance runner, and general fitness nut. She says that all he does is eat, sleep and train, and thus has nothing to talk about. He's a real person. Nobody would write a book about him because he's not interesting by himself.  Sanguinius is that character.  He's perfect in many ways, and never needed to have any flaws, because his purpose in the story was to be such a shining example of what the Emperor had hoped to achieve with the Primarchs, and then he is crushed by the Emperor's greatest failure, Horus, the bad guy.  Just because Sanguinius has no readily apparent flaws (other than what the Black Library has feebly tried to assign to him recently in a misplaced effort to give him depth), doesn't make him a bad character.  Really, it's more of a common misunderstanding of what Sanguinius's role is in the 40K story. 

 

A similar problem occurs with Guilliman. But, unlike Sanguinius, Guilliman's role was not to be perfect. And amusingly enough, he's actually quite far from perfect, despite the accusations. I personally think Guilliman is a fascinating character, and for a lot of reasons that get overlooked by what seems to be a majority of 40K fans. But I'll get back to that.  Guilliman's role in the 40K story was to be the protagonist for the second half of the Heresy story. The hero who rises up in the aftermath of the Heresy and puts the Imperium back together. I'm still not quite so sure why this has gotten him so much vehement hatred over the years. He's one of the least glorified and least mentioned of the Primarchs in terms of the Great Crusade narrative. Just kinda cruises in the background doing his thing. Horus is the Warmaster. Dorn saves Earf. Leman Russ gets to smash an entire other Legion and snap a primarch in half. Sanguinius gets to nobly sacrifice himself.

 

However, the culmination of the Heresy plotline is that the Emprah is incapacitated, half the Primarchs have gone traitor, and several of the loyal primarchs are dead or overcome with grief. This is a point in the story, where for the narrative of 40K to continue, somebody had to step up and put it back together. Twenty years or so ago, the guys at Games Workshop decided it would be this guy named Roboute Guilliman. Literally, somebody had to assume this role in the story. There's really no reason to bitch about which character was chosen.

 

The funny part is, Guilliman is ultimately responsible for much of the tragic decline of the Imperium. For everyone who complains that Guilliman gets portrayed as this perfect, do no wrong Mary Sue (one of the most amusingly misused/misunderstood terms on the Interwebs), they don't realize is that it is a lot of his decisions that set the Imperium on the road to ruin. The Imperium was a galactic political entity held together by a cult of personality built around the Emprah. When the Emprah was confined to the Golden Throne, somebody needed to step into his place. The irony is, that was Guilliman, as the "son" of the Emprah. None of the remaining primarchs was more perfectly suited to the job than him, and yet he, for all appearances, declined it, believing the duty of the primarchs and the Space Marines was to fight mankind's wars, and not to lead them.  He formed a government of weak and corruptible (not in the Chaos way, but in the "every politician ever" sort of way) humans and left them in command of the Imperium. There's really very little evidence any of the remaining primarchs would have opposed him as Emprah II. Dorn might have been a little irked, but Russ wouldn't have wanted the job (he just liked killing stuff), and Lionel was out of the picture. Guilliman's departure from the High Lords, and his place of prominence in the Imperium is what allowed for the rise of the Ecclessiarchy (the single most damaging entity in 40K while simultaneously being one of its chief stabilizing elements) and the decline of the Administratum into a bureaucratic mess.  Imagine a 40K where Guilliman had, instead of going back to leading the Ultramarines chapter and being effectively killed by Fulgrim, he remains on Terra and leads the Imperium in the model of Ultramar (which is essentially the Crusade Era Imperium).  It's a whole different 40K.  Guilliman's choices are what led to Grimdark, lol.

So people complaining that Guilliman was without flaws and a Mary Sue, again, aren't understanding what Guilliman's role is in the 40K story.  He isn't a major character in the story of the Great Crusade and Heresy.  He's that "great general" in the background, conquering things. He seems "perfect", but that's because the story of the Great Crusade and the Heresy don't highlight his limitations or depth as a character. A galactic war and empire building under the guidance of the Emprah was where he excelled, and there's nothing wrong with that.  Some people are really good at being generals. The story of Caesar's conquest of Gaul is the most significant portion of his life, and a series of brilliant campaigns where he succeeded in a pacifying a large part of Europe that had, to that point, been impossible for the Romans to accomplish.  However, it's the civil war caused by the conspiracies against him back in Rome and the dissolution of the Republic which leads to his assassination that he's remembered for.  It was the job of the traitor primarchs, and the other loyal primarchs to tell the story of the Heresy, not Guilliman's.  He was just off in Gaul (or the Galactic East) being Caesar while the enemies of the Imperium did their plotting. 

[Kol Saresk]

And even then it's still a debate on which quality made him perfect for the role.

 

First - he isn't a manchild like the rest of them...

Every primarch were in the running for the warmaster?  IIRC there was Dorn,Sang,Rob and perhaps Lion - some of them didn't want that position (Russ,Angron)

Also by negative traits I mean like:

Lorgar. Fanatism

Russ - Hypocrisy (or not)

Magnus . Hubris

Angron: Bloodlust

etc.

Define "manchild." Sanguinius needed a security blanket to feel better about himself because he thought he was the one who cursed his Sons with the Red Thirst and would eventually be the one to curse his Sons with the Black Rage and because of this fault, felt that he had to go above and beyond in order to prove himself to his father. A rather "childish" aspect.

 

Yes, every Primarch was in the running. No one knew who the Warmaster was going to be. Some didn't want it, but that didn't mean they weren't being considered.

 

Expand on the list of negative traits. Compare them. Anyone can come up with a one-liner and say the Primarch "sucked" or was "Mary Sue-ish" and then say that a quality that would be considered failings by others isn't a failing at all. So create a list of all traits, good and bad and show where Sanguinius trumps all other Seventeen Primarchs.

[Peter the Hermit]

Sanguinius has no readily apparent flaws (other than what the Black Library has feebly tried to assign to him recently in a misplaced effort
to give him depth (to quote @vetsarg) 

Now this is a fact (for me),no matter how the majority of fanbase feels about this...

[Olis]

Sanguinius has no readily apparent flaws

I concur. His flaws are not readily apparent. It still doesn't make him a Sue, though.

[Augustus]

Interesting post, VS.

[Kol Saresk]

Sanguinius has no readily apparent flaws (other than what the Black Library has feebly tried to assign to him recently in a misplaced effort

to give him depth (to quote @vetsarg) 

Now this is a fact (for me),no matter how the majority of fanbase feels about this...

So basically, even if someone showed something from a GW source, you still wouldn't accept it as a flaw because it is a fact for you that he is absolutely perfect and therefore Mary Sue?

[Peter the Hermit]

 

Sanguinius has no readily apparent flaws (other than what the Black Library has feebly tried to assign to him recently in a misplaced effort

to give him depth (to quote @vetsarg) 

Now this is a fact (for me),no matter how the majority of fanbase feels about this...

So basically, even if someone showed something from a GW source, you still wouldn't accept it as a flaw because it is a fact for you that he is absolutely perfect and therefore Mary Sue?

Huh? No! Just in this moment he has no readily apparent flaws like the dude said ...Until GW or BL change that, my opinion stands ...

[DarthMarko]

He is not the crude definition of  a "Mary Sue" (YET), but mark my words @Kol he is on the good path....

No offense...I waited that fight with Kabby just to see one primarch getting owned by some other being - and then his payback on terra 10x harder.10x sweeter..But nooooo....ty BL....

[Kol Saresk]

Why are words being marked @me exactly? I'm not the only person who asked how Sanguinius was Mary Sue-ish. Which is still something that hasn't been exactly defined, just that because there are no "readily apparent" flaws, he must have none since none have been revealed. In which case. I say Guilliman and Ferrus Manus are Mary Sue-ish because the only major flaw both Primarchs have is that they are dead. Well technically Guilliman is in stasis, so he really is Mary Sue-ish when compared to Ferrus Manus because he has an empire of 500 worlds, a brilliant tactician and resource manager as well as commanding the largest and most organized Legion.

Note, Sarcasm was heavily featured in claiming that Guilliman and Ferrus Manus are Mary Sue.

[Llagos_Tyrant]

@VeteranSergeant = Great explanation on your part. Certainly casts him in a different, and preferable, light from the traditional mode of thought I had subscribed to. Guillimans actions are all the more tragic in retrospect with the new analysis and seem to hint that he was broken by the Horus Heresy - stuck in denial of the new role he needed to take. But then, the Emperor was already committing the Primarchs to the authority of the High Lords of Terra so I suppose that doing what he had to, would have meant defying the Emperor (which would have been very controversial and would have likely divided the barely recovering Imperium anyway). It seems then that he was stuck in a rock and a hard place, struggling to make the best of the forthcoming Imperial regression.

 

To answer the OP though, I think it that Horus was the most incorruptible and favoured of the Emperors Sons. He was the greatest of all the Primarchs which was why the Horus Heresy was so tragic - as someone else has already posted. He was closest to his father, and he still fell. So even though he was the most 'incorruptible' he still fell, so all of the Primarchs would be vulnerable.

 

Magnus, though I love him, was set on his path when he bargained his Legion's soul with Tzeentch to stop the flesh-change. Angron always harboured a dislike for the Emperor as a Tyrant, and always saw the Imperium and the Emperor from the eyes of the resentful conquered, a sort of slave-master complex - which wasn't helped by the degradation of the Butchers Nails.

 

Sanguinus was always driven by his need to be the most loyal and capable, because he knew he was fatally flawed - he was a mutant, the very thing the Imperium spent a good deal of time exterminating. If the Emperor had been less accepting or if he had not been so driven then who's to say that he was totally incorruptible? And though I haven't read it myself, numerous posts on here have already said that Sanguinous was on the verge of submission in FtT and was prevented from doing so by a different person entirely-not by his horrified consciousness or devotion to the Emperor.

 

The fact is that no Primarch was or could be incorruptible. They are humanity taken to their greatest form, as Lorgar said in Betrayer, so they share their weaknesses and strengths. Anyone is capable of anything, given the right circumstances - so why should the Primarchs be any different? Perturabo says in Angel Exterminatus that each of the Primarchs had to ascend the steps of an ivory tower in a test of mind, body and soul with the Emperor to test them. At least one had failed the test, but 18 at least succeeded. If they were as likely to corrupt then, as they were as the moment they fell then the Emperor wouldn't have let them take to the stars. All 18 we know succeeded and so were allowed to take the Crusade. It's what happened after that, that made them set to fall to chaos or remain loyal. When the points were tallied up from their experiences, some came down on one side, and half came down on the other. We look at it in retrospect and try to say this Primarch was doomed or that one was always going to be loyal, but you can't do that. Life isn't a constant. People - even a Primarch aren't constant. We - and they - are shaped by their experiences and encounters.

 

It's also important to note, I think that most, if not all, of the traitor legions originally felt that they were doing what was right by going against the Emperor (Even Mortarion thought he was saving the Death Guard when he fell, although his reasons were admittedly more selfish). They didn't simply decide to burn down the galaxy and sacrifice the people they'd defended their whole lives to wicked gods on a whim - no, they believed what they were doing was good. Most of the later attempts at converting Primarchs,Sanguins and Guilliman in particular, we're done when this was no longer the case, when their intentions and actions had become more sinister - and so were easier to resist. Ferrus Manus was rather exceptional in the that he immediately attacked Fulgrim at the notion of betrayal (unlike Sanguinus who nearly fell from a similar situation to the Death Guard minus a traitor actively guiding him to Chaos), from my understanding, but unlike when Fulgrim fell to Horus, Ferrus Manus didn't have a daemon sword weakening his resolve and goading him along the path against the Emperor.

 

So the way our history proceeded showed how some of the Primarchs were liable to fall and what could make them turn - but didn't give a proper account of how the loyalist Primarchs might turn. Any alternate history then that shows us a reverse or a mix of any traitors and loyalist legions (so long as it is done in a believable, reasonable sequence of events and not 'Dorn decided to be bad because he stubbed his toe') is a possible way of how the two sides might have formed if events had been different.

 

In how things did proceed, we have our answer in exactly how the legions came down for the Emperor or Chaos. And to ask which of the loyalist Legions was least likely to be corrupt, we either have to say that they were all equally incorruptible as events proceeded - or that the answer is dependent on how events proceeded - which necessitates the consideration that at the closest thing to an equal 'Beginning' of the events that shaped each Primarch post-discovery, which was the Emperors test of climbing the staircase to the tower, they all succeeded and were judged sufficient by the Emperors standards. If nothing else, they at least averaged a 'base loyalty' at that point with no Primarch far more loyal than any other (though it is almost a miracle that Angron passed the Emperors test at all, unless his attitude in Betrayer evolved after he succeeded the climb).

 

I will conclude by reaffirming that prior to his fall, Horus was the incorruptible Primarch and likely successor/right hand of the emperor which is what made the Heresy so tragic. Judging that he could fall, and that Primarchs are just humanity in its greatest form with all it's weaknesses and strengths, I believe that no Primarch was incorruptible given the right circumstances. As I said above, by passing the Emperors Test all the Primarchs were originally at a base average of loyalty and how events proceeded moulded them to take the actions that we saw. If we are to judge this then we must either agree that none of the loyalist Primarchs were any less corruptible than another or they would have fallen, or that had events proceeded differently from their passing of the Test, then any grouping of Primarchs could have fought for either side because it is experience that shapes them to be corruptible, or incorruptible.

[Olis]

A good well reasoned post Grim. As you know, I agree that no primarch was incorruptible. Circumstance is king in this arena - and a ripe arena indeed it is for alternate interpretations of the Heresy. What if Curze had been adopted? What if Corax wasn't a raised by prisoners on Deliverance? What if Dorn had been more antagonistic with his rivalry with Perturabo? These sort of questions allow us to examine and identify character traits in each primarch and derive where such a trait came from. It also allows better understanding for motivations, I think. 

[Legatus]

The funny part is, Guilliman is ultimately responsible for much of the tragic decline of the Imperium. For everyone who complains that Guilliman gets portrayed as this perfect, do no wrong Mary Sue (one of the most amusingly misused/misunderstood terms on the Interwebs), they don't realize is that it is a lot of his decisions that set the Imperium on the road to ruin. The Imperium was a galactic political entity held together by a cult of personality built around the Emprah. When the Emprah was confined to the Golden Throne, somebody needed to step into his place. The irony is, that was Guilliman, as the "son" of the Emprah. None of the remaining primarchs was more perfectly suited to the job than him, and yet he, for all appearances, declined it, believing the duty of the primarchs and the Space Marines was to fight mankind's wars, and not to lead them.  He formed a government of weak and corruptible (not in the Chaos way, but in the "every politician ever" sort of way) humans and left them in command of the Imperium. There's really very little evidence any of the remaining primarchs would have opposed him as Emprah II. Dorn might have been a little irked, but Russ wouldn't have wanted the job (he just liked killing stuff), and Lionel was out of the picture. Guilliman's departure from the High Lords, and his place of prominence in the Imperium is what allowed for the rise of the Ecclessiarchy (the single most damaging entity in 40K while simultaneously being one of its chief stabilizing elements) and the decline of the Administratum into a bureaucratic mess.  Imagine a 40K where Guilliman had, instead of going back to leading the Ultramarines chapter and being effectively killed by Fulgrim, he remains on Terra and leads the Imperium in the model of Ultramar (which is essentially the Crusade Era Imperium).  It's a whole different 40K.  Guilliman's choices are what led to Grimdark, lol.

 

Well, first of, Guilliman did not instate the High Lords of Terra. They were a gathering of the most influential and powerful individuals at that time, and where somewhat a spiritual successor of the Councel of Terra the Emperor had set up. The other point is that the consensus at the time pretty much was that no single individual could have replaced the Emperor. The Imperium threatened to break apart, and the various institutions were about to establish their own realms, but then the High Lords stepped up and kept all of them united. So, "blaming" Guilliman for setting up the High Lords of Terra and then somehow being responsible for current Imperial bureaucracy is doubly inaccurate, since first of all that was not his decision, there was no valid alternative at the time, and second of all that did in fact save the Imperium.

[Wade Garrett]

VS, I said Rob was "as close as we're getting to a white hat" which granted is somewhat stretching it for a group like the Primarchs, where "Who has the fewest genocides on his record?" is a legitimate deciding factor.

 

Relevant to this discussion, in the Lightning Tower short story, Rogal Dorn tells Malcador what he fears most is that

"Horus will explain the reasons for his rebellion to me...and I will agree with him."

[Wade Garrett]

VS, I said Rob was "as close as we're getting to a white hat" which granted is somewhat stretching it for a group like the Primarchs, where "Who has the fewest genocides on his record?" is a legitimate deciding factor.

 

Relevant to this discussion, in the Lightning Tower short story, Rogal Dorn tells Malcador what he fears most is that

"Horus will explain the reasons for his rebellion to me...and I will agree with him."

[Vesper]

Wow. That's a part of Dorn that I was unaware of. It adds another layer to that somewhat one dimensional grumpy guy. And that's great.

[Olis]

Indeed. He knows either Horus has a good reason or has the ability to talk Dorn around to see it his way. Or both. So, with just one simple line Dorn has suddenly become deeper and more complex. And it's a damn good line at that.

[Llagos_Tyrant]

I feel like I've read that in Age of Darkness. Great piece if it's the one I'm thinking of, though I always see Dorn as -

 

fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/111/7/7/rogal_lang_by_slaine69-d4x2j1w.jpg

[Legatus]

Dorn was not expecting to agree with Horus. He was affraid of the potential that there was some justification, some reason that might even make himself turn against the Emperor, even if he could not imagine what that reason might be. Maybe that's what y'all's talking about. I just wanted to make sure.

[Kol Saresk]

Except that "I will agree" is much more definitive than "I might agree" or "I may agree" or "I will probably agree." It's more than likely Dorn already has an idea of why Horus rebelled with the difference being that Horus chose to rebel while Dorn didn't.

[Legatus]

Eh, my copy says "I might... agree". But the Chapbook was handed out at conventions, IIRC, so who knows how different publications have been re-edited.

[Kol Saresk]

Hmm, after looking it up myself, you are correct Legatus. My apologies. Although I do find it interesting that Curze had predicted the Heresy happening and that everyone had thought him a liar and a "blasphemer." No wonder he believes the Imperium betrayed him.

 

EDIT: My copy of the The Lightning Tower is from the Shadows of Treachery anthology.