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I've been thinking on the Traitor Primarchs, and just what it was that made them rebel/able to rebel.
I think it's been fairly well accepted that each Primarch is a representation of a facet of the Emperor's whole. Whilst this makes each of them almost godly in that particualr aspect, it also has quite a drawback. When we look at the Primarchs, we can see that they are quite 1-dimensional; by this I don't mean they way they are written, but rather the way they view the world and their place in it, and how they try to solve problems. It also means that if you stress them in the right way and with the correct triggers, they will collapse psychologically much faster than a 'normal' person who's personality is much more rounded.
But when it comes to what each Primarch represents, I actually think that this might hide the real issue. So, we say that Angron is elemental anger; but does this give us a real reason as to why he would rebel? This is what I want to explore. I'll start with an easy one and, if anyone cares, maybe I'll put down the other things I came up with.
So, Magnus. This I believe is the easiest Primarch to identify his character-flaw. Arrogance. A Thousand Sons seemed to be quite clear that Magnus condsidered himself to be second in intelligence and psychic power, to the Emperor; no-one else, according to the one-eyed Primarch, could come close to him. The Emperor had shown him things that no-one else knew. He had tutored Magnus, even before he was 'born', and trusted him, seemingly implicitly.
Magnus also undertook flights into the warp alone and, as he grew in power, took on greater and greater challenges, contesting with the denizens of the warp and besting them, no matter how powerful they were. He truly believed his greatness and was supremely self-confident- arrogant. This meant that when Tzeentch, or whatever warp-presence, wanted to trick Magnus all it had to so was draw him into a competition that it knew it couldn't lose; Magnus was so arrogant that he didn't feel he needed to consider that there was anything in the warp that could beat him, and it was only when he was standing in the ashes of his father's plans that he finally realised just how little he knew.
As a Primarch his personality was totally bound-up in his intelligence and feelings of near omnipotence. When this was pulled away, Magnus' personality unravelled as there was no other pesonality trait strong enough to provide him with an identity.
If anyone would like me to continue, then I'm going to do Horus next.
GFP
I think it's been fairly well accepted that each Primarch is a representation of a facet of the Emperor's whole. Whilst this makes each of them almost godly in that particualr aspect, it also has quite a drawback. When we look at the Primarchs, we can see that they are quite 1-dimensional; by this I don't mean they way they are written, but rather the way they view the world and their place in it, and how they try to solve problems. It also means that if you stress them in the right way and with the correct triggers, they will collapse psychologically much faster than a 'normal' person who's personality is much more rounded.
But when it comes to what each Primarch represents, I actually think that this might hide the real issue. So, we say that Angron is elemental anger; but does this give us a real reason as to why he would rebel? This is what I want to explore. I'll start with an easy one and, if anyone cares, maybe I'll put down the other things I came up with.
So, Magnus. This I believe is the easiest Primarch to identify his character-flaw. Arrogance. A Thousand Sons seemed to be quite clear that Magnus condsidered himself to be second in intelligence and psychic power, to the Emperor; no-one else, according to the one-eyed Primarch, could come close to him. The Emperor had shown him things that no-one else knew. He had tutored Magnus, even before he was 'born', and trusted him, seemingly implicitly.
Magnus also undertook flights into the warp alone and, as he grew in power, took on greater and greater challenges, contesting with the denizens of the warp and besting them, no matter how powerful they were. He truly believed his greatness and was supremely self-confident- arrogant. This meant that when Tzeentch, or whatever warp-presence, wanted to trick Magnus all it had to so was draw him into a competition that it knew it couldn't lose; Magnus was so arrogant that he didn't feel he needed to consider that there was anything in the warp that could beat him, and it was only when he was standing in the ashes of his father's plans that he finally realised just how little he knew.
As a Primarch his personality was totally bound-up in his intelligence and feelings of near omnipotence. When this was pulled away, Magnus' personality unravelled as there was no other pesonality trait strong enough to provide him with an identity.
If anyone would like me to continue, then I'm going to do Horus next.
GFP