Reconciling Angron's motivations with his actions

[Phoebus]

The reason why I enjoyed the novels The First Heretic and Betrayer (and the accompanying short stories, audio dramas, and novellas) was that, besides being very good reads, they added context, depth, and a sense of plausibility to characters who previously had seemed rather shallow and one-dimensional.  That having been said, I can't help but feel that there is still a gulf between the ideals said characters espouse, and their actions.

 

For instance:

 

 

“When the Emperor dies under his axes, when his final thought is of how the Great Crusade was all in pathetic futility, and when his last sight is Angron's iron smile... Then the Master of Mankind will learn what Angron has known since he picked up his first blade.

Freedom is the only thing worth fighting for.

It is why tyrants always fall.”

 

Excerpt From: Laurie Goulding. “The Imperial Truth.” iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=8D257B9B9928102D3F3D99A15E0AB9B0

 

And yet, despite these noble words, Angron's actions are very different.  Angron's legacy, from the waning years of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, is that of butchery and genocide.  The thing is, Angron Angron's portrayal since "After Desh'ea" and especially after Betrayer is not one of a hypocrite.

 

As a reader, I am willing to make the logical leap that, whatever Angron's intentions, the increasingly awful effect of the Butcher's Nails means that a hard-fought Compliance can very easily turn into an atrocity like the Ghenna Scouring.  The problem, however, is that Angron - even in his recent portrayals - never displays even an instant of regret for such actions.

 

I would even be willing to accept that Angron's philosophy leads him to believe that death is ultimately better than slavery, and that killing the opposition wholesale is tantamount to granting them freedom from the ultimate enslaver: the Imperium.  "Lord of the Red Sands" elegantly shows that Angron is not above feeling respect for those he has decided must die, and his oldest lore informs us that his respect was not limited to Astartes.  Quite the contrary, in fact.

 

So what are your thoughts?  Is Angron a more or less mindless brute still capable of summoning some grand thoughts for the sake of self-delusion?  Or was there some murderous pseudo-nobility behind his policy of wholesale killings?

 

All of this concerns Angron before his transformation into a Daemon Prince, of course.  After that event, all bets are off.

[Wade Garrett]

Something to remember about Angron is that his greatest regret, the thing that haunts him the most, is that on De'shelika Ridge, there was a hopeless battle against impossible odds that left no survivors....and he was stolen away from it.

 

I'm hesitant to say how much his actions were driven by some grand ideal or philosophy, instead of by being a suffering, broken man expending his frustrations on whatever happened to be in front of him at the time, but I do think "Better to die in the twilight of freedom than draw breath at the dawn of tyranny" is a sentiment he'd agree with.

[mc warhammer]

freedom is his purest motivation as we saw when angron cried for the joy of it after escaping his pod.

[Phoebus]

Wade, agreed on your points.  Where your second paragraph is concerned, however, I'm a bit frustrated by the fact that the former is certainly implied while the latter is stated (in one way or another) more than once.  Unfortunately, those statements are never backed up with any action.  Which brings me right back to my dilemma.  Perhaps that's my failing as a reader, but I would rather that this sort of hypocrisy be addressed, one way or another.

 

Interestingly, when this issue pops up with the Night Haunter, it is dealt ably dealt with through Sevatar - who basically states the obvious in a dialogue with his Primarch that also serves as a monologue to the reader.

[mc warhammer]

i'm not sure that any conqueror or war-leader can be exempt from moral and ethical hypocrisy. which has been one of the themes (not always well told) in the HH.

 

just because angron cries for freedom, doesn't mean that he worships the concept in and of itself as a right for all sentient beings. he's not optimus prime. i can't imagine angron liberating a zoo. i wouldn't be surprised if angron's approach was more "FREEDOM! FOR ME! AND MY BFFS!"

 

and one way to look at that quote is that he believes freedom is worth fighting for. so fight for it damn you. all of you. especially when i'm in town. a somewhat berserker darwinian primarch.

 

i have to admit, i was curious as to what angron's reactions would have been to any gladiator slaves he came across while massacring his home-world. did he feel a bond with them or had he passed the point of caring by then?

[Phoebus]

mc warhammer,

 

Sorry about the late response - I've been enjoying a field training exercise!

 

Your point re: freedom worth fighting for is well-made, but there is still a leap between that "ideal" and Angron's actual actions, and I'm curious as to why neither he nor one of the more-or-less sane and objective protagonists hasn't commented on it yet (much like Sevatar and Curze).

[mc warhammer]

ha, if he were your primarch- would you bring it up?

 

 

there seems to be exceptions, if not outright hypocrisy, for almost any movement or group seeking to represent an ideal. i can think of a couple of examples amongst white supremacist groups; one where the grand wizard was practically best friends with an african american and another group led by a man of mixed asian descent. and the groups functioned perfectly well simply ignoring those facts.

 

whereas the night lords were fairly open about the characteristics of their legion and primarch, the world eaters appear to be much more ashamed about certain traits. you could see it as a collective guilt the entire legion shares and they're afraid that if they voice it, they have to somehow be responsible. instead, they cover it up by bragging about what great weapons they are for the imperium. like the battered wife who ignores the terrible abuses her husband inflicts on the family (and he deludes himself that what he has done is someone else's fault or for his family's own good).

 

the world eaters might see it as " as long as we shut up about it and keep staring straight ahead, we don't have to deal with it".

 

it's the only way they can possibly keep going with the poor choices they've made.

 

 

that, or the writer's haven't gotten around to telling that side of things yet.

[Phoebus]

Dude, I don't even get started with the Lion because his background has been a muddled mess since day one. There was a short reprieve toward sensible character-building with "Savage Weapons", but things quickly went back to status quo.

Beyond that, again, I'm not arguing against a character suffering from hypocrisy. I'm asking for the character - or another character - to simply comment on the gulf between stated ideals and actions.

Allow me to elaborate.

I'm not averse to making a leap of logic for the sake of the story. I don't like to doing so, however, when it comes to a character's motivations.

A D-B writes terrific stories, with terrific characters. I think he's one of the two best authors under the Black Library imprint right now. That's not for nothing; he has taken two of the Heresy characters who I thought were doomed to never attain depth or complexion - Lorgar and Angron - and made them not just interesting but sympathetic in some ways. Lorgar went from being little other than a religious zealot to someone who was genuinely concerned about the fundamental truths of the universe and how they intersected with the very integrity of the institutions he and the Emperor were raising and fighting for. Angron went from someone who was angry at the Emperor for being denied a chance to die honorably to someone fundamentally opposed that the tyranny that made the Imperium possible.

The one complaint I've had for a few of his characters, however, comes down to this topic: a gulf between stated motivations and actions.

Lorgar, for instance, is depicted in The First Heretic and Aurelian as having a sincere desire to unlock the truth behind the Empyrean and free humanity from the tyranny of ignorance. By the time the actual Heresy kicks off, though, he is quite willing to accept the deaths of countless of the human beings he sought to free, but (and here's the kicker) he doesn't seem all that torn up about it. Where Angron is concerned, you have my thoughts already.

I don't like making leaps of logic about Lorgar or Angron's motivations versus their actions precisely because their motivations are powerful stuff. It does the story a disservice, I think, to simply assume that the gulf between the two is mere hypocrisy.

I really don't want to sound like this is somehow ruining the stories for me. We're talking about something that ultimately registers as a "0.5" in a rating that might range from 8.5 to 9.5 out of a possible 10. I just think it's worth talking about, is all.

I hope you're right and that the authors simply haven't gotten to talking about those gulfs, but I think it would have been far better if they'd addressed them already.

[fluxdeluxe]

Dude, I don't even get started with the Lion because his background has been a muddled mess since day one. There was a short reprieve toward sensible character-building with "Savage Weapons", but things quickly went back to status quo.

Beyond that, again, I'm not arguing against a character suffering from hypocrisy. I'm asking for the character - or another character - to simply comment on the gulf between stated ideals and actions.

Allow me to elaborate.

I'm not averse to making a leap of logic for the sake of the story. I don't like to doing so, however, when it comes to a character's motivations.

A D-B writes terrific stories, with terrific characters. I think he's one of the two best authors under the Black Library imprint right now. That's not for nothing; he has taken two of the Heresy characters who I thought were doomed to never attain depth or complexion - Lorgar and Angron - and made them not just interesting but sympathetic in some ways. Lorgar went from being little other than a religious zealot to someone who was genuinely concerned about the fundamental truths of the universe and how they intersected with the very integrity of the institutions he and the Emperor were raising and fighting for. Angron went from someone who was angry at the Emperor for being denied a chance to die honorably to someone fundamentally opposed that the tyranny that made the Imperium possible.

The one complaint I've had for a few of his characters, however, comes down to this topic: a gulf between stated motivations and actions.

Lorgar, for instance, is depicted in The First Heretic and Aurelian as having a sincere desire to unlock the truth behind the Empyrean and free humanity from the tyranny of ignorance. By the time the actual Heresy kicks off, though, he is quite willing to accept the deaths of countless of the human beings he sought to free, but (and here's the kicker) he doesn't seem all that torn up about it. Where Angron is concerned, you have my thoughts already.

I don't like making leaps of logic about Lorgar or Angron's motivations versus their actions precisely because their motivations are powerful stuff. It does the story a disservice, I think, to simply assume that the gulf between the two is mere hypocrisy.

I really don't want to sound like this is somehow ruining the stories for me. We're talking about something that ultimately registers as a "0.5" in a rating that might range from 8.5 to 9.5 out of a possible 10. I just think it's worth talking about, is all.

I hope you're right and that the authors simply haven't gotten to talking about those gulfs, but I think it would have been far better if they'd addressed them already.

1. Angron

Angron is essentially an anarchist which is freedom in its purest form. Like all philosophical concepts distilled to their pure meaning and applied to the real world the results can be terrifying. Here you have a posthuman God, that doesn't believe in any fetters, in any restraint, no law, no order just rage. Angrons actions clearly show that the only opinion, the only motivation that truly matters is his and even then he attempts to lose his very sense of self to surrender himself to his basest instincts. Because his upbringing and the nails essentialy define him the imperium, the emperor just replace the establishment that he sought to tear down in the first place. Make no mistake angron doesn't care about horus or his plans he just wants to watch the Galaxy burn and himself with it.

2. Lorgar

Lorgar wants to reveal the truth to the 'people' in the same way that the missionaries wanted to reveal the truth about christian superiority. Essentially as Stalin said if you want to make an omelette you have to break some eggs. Lorgar doesn't care how many people die to reveal the truth he cares about the revelation itself, just like every zealot the world over.

I don't think Angron is hypocritical not at all. Lorgar is for all his preaching his quest is for power and revenge.