Editing The God-Emperor of Mankind (section)

==The Emprah Himself==
[[File:Climax.jpg|250px|right|thumb|A typical father-and-son chat between Empy and Horus.]]
{{Topquote|1=The Emperor was a brilliant scientist, a powerful warrior, and great psyker, but he was a terrible [[Venus' Burn|father...]]|2=[[Roboute Guilliman]] giving a short, yet accurate, biography of the Emperor.}}
{{Topquote|1=I'm here to conquer the galaxy and raise children, and I'm all out of fathering skills|2=Montu Plays}}

After He shaved His goatee, His chin radiated [[Astronomican|a brilliant light]] through the [[Warp]]. The [[Imperial Navy]] uses this light as a beacon to guide them through that beautifully terrible place. He is sometimes referred to as the Emprah, a joke derived from the voice acting in the ''[[Dawn of War]]'' game, ''[[Dawn of War: Soulstorm|Soulstorm]]'', specifically [[Indrick Boreale]]'s final speeches.

It is common knowledge that the Emperor is the most powerful psyker <s>alive</s> around, humbling even the [[Eldar]]. The Emperor is said to be so powerful that He could [[C'tan|destroy suns with ease]], though He has never actually done so (However, he ''made'' a golden sun which he put in the middle of his broken [[Webway]] gate to prevent daemons from spilling through, albeit needing to concentrate on powering it for the next ten thousand years. This would indicate that the Emperor does indeed have the power to destroy stars). The [[Chaos Gods]] are scared as fuck of the guy, calling him "The Anathema", as in the polar opposite to [[Chaos]]. Their fear of him cannot be overstated: during a discussion between Ku'Gath and Mortarion, you'd think Ku'Gath was referencing Morgoth. The idea his gathering strength terrified Ku'Gath to the point he feels they're dead if he's active and won't even say his name; whatever Emps is, Chaos is THAT scared of him. The [[Eldar]] fear that if the Emperor were to die, a new [[Eye of Terror]] would pop out with Terra at its center and possibly a new Chaos God would be born.

He was also capable of summoning what can only be called an army of human souls (including every soldier who had died for him, [[Ferrus Manus]] included) to fight for him; an ability utterly unseen in the 40k universe and suggesting that he has some fundamental connection to human souls in the afterlife - a comforting thought compared to dissolving into the Warp to be eaten by daemons and giving some credence to the 40k era theory that when the Time of Ending ...ends... the Emperor and all loyal human souls will join in one final battle against Chaos.

It is also suggested that He has guided humanity in a guise of people like Julius Caesar, [[Conan the Barbarian]], [[meme|Chuck Norris]], Christopher Lee, Tommy Wiseau, Keanu Reeves, and Jesus.

Overall the Emperor has always had a strong desire to protect and shepherd humanity, even if his methods are a bit... [[Blam|unorthodox]]. His desire to guide and protect humanity, in addition to his power and foresight made the Emperor as close to a Farseer as humanity was ever going to get. He declared humanity to be superior to all Xenos which was fair enough considering the collapse of the Eldar, planned to destroy every shard of religion by force of arms if needed in order to protect them from the whispers of Chaos (though at the time he got the whole thing backwards, since said religions were starving the Chaos gods), planned to reunite humanity under His rule no matter what anyone else wanted/thought of that (again by force of arms if needed), originally loved the Primarchs as his sons (and then retconned into a confusing mess suggesting he cares little for the Primarchs being His actual sons. In "The Outcast Dead" he even implies that he sacrificed Ferrus Manus because he knew he could not win the war and that the most he could hope for was a stalemate, i.e. prevent Chaos from winning. However, this theme has varied greatly from novel to novel and is hard to pin down.), carried out many unorthodox, morally questionable experiments and much much more... all because this was the only way He could foresee humanity surviving the threats to come. Also known as the "[[Golden Path]]".

His reign eventually [[Inquisition|killed more humans]] (not even counting those who were innocent) than the entire total of all of humanity's dictators in history (ironically that may have been [[A Game of Pretend|past personas]] of the Emperor). Even during the Unification Wars, several Terran cultures were wiped out completely (Orioc on Antarctica, for example, was razed to the ground for being religious, just to make a point, even after its forces were defeated and its people ready to surrender), while simultaneously being pretty terrible at incorporating non-Terran elements. Because THAT is just how damn important and dire the circumstances were. An entire galaxy spanning empire needed to be constructed in little under two centuries when the cataclysm was foreseen to occur and ain't no one got time to fart about with treating people the way they deserve if the species won't survive.

Contrary to popular belief, he really did think the post-Ullanor phase through to some degree, Horus was the right choice as Warmaster for no other could command the respect of nearly all his brothers better than Lupercal the First, and Dorn as Praetorian was as correct a decision as was possible to make considering that his talents were put to good use throughout the Heresy that followed. There was no need to put a Primarch in charge of the Council of Terra for the Primarchs were not made to rule, but to serve as generals in retaking the galaxy since his goal was for humanity to be governed by humanity (as he clearly said to Lorgar in "The First Heretic". "This is not my Imperium, it is humanitys". Primarchs like say, Guilliman, though perfect as an administrator, were better suited and needed as generals for the Great Crusade. Stil the whole theory that the Emperor wanted to dispose of the Primarchs once they ceased being useful is utter horseshit, for why would he have created living rooms for all of his sons in the Emperor's palace. And why create 20, functionally immortal tools if he had no plans for them following the crusade. Either way, it's bewildering that no one in the military saw the need for human administration, having godlike Primarchs in charge at the top only serves to increase superstition in a secular galaxy when the idea was to rid humanity of religion and superstition in order to better protect it from warp predation (no matter how bad that idea played out in practice).

After Big E was nearly killed by his favourite son / tool, He was placed upon the Golden Throne and hasn't moved for the past 10 millennia, presumably because he later died (why he hasn't come back to life despite being a perpetual is a highly debated topic). Most of the fluff maintains that His mere existence since then has been living hell (by comparison, the torture astropaths go through when becoming one would be like a trip to the dentist). It's the mother/father/uncle/2nd Cousin of all mindfucks, so bad that even an Inquisitor would likely go insane as a result (or anybody else for that matter).... and yet He carries on. Why? He may be the universe's most powerful vegetable, but that doesn't mean that he will just sit there and remain dead. Oh no, it's exactly the opposite and death's not the handicap it used to be, because it gives Him a fuckton of work to do. Along with being THE lighthouse in the Warp, guiding the Imperial Navy, he also needs to make the aforementioned astropaths, as well as keeping all the [[daemon|nasties]] of the Warp where they're supposed to be (i.e. not invading realspace to make the lives of all living things miserable). He also does it for the good of humanity (sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it?).

That being said, his love of humanity doesn't exactly extend to his sons. In older lore it did, however, in the retconned lore the Emperor himself states to [[Arkhan Land]] ''(the guy who discovered '''Land's''' Speeders/Raiders)'' that he never considered the Primarchs to be his literal sons and saw them as well-crafted tools so he could get his work done. Likening himself to Geppetto ''(from 'Pinocchio')'' in that it is only natural for 20 wooden boys to think of their creator as "Father". Whether He felt any kinship between all of them or only some of them is not entirely known. But it seems like He was all like, "Yall think I'm a bad dad, but look, shit I just made these kids in a lab! I'm not really their dad!". Then again He puts on personas for every occasion (during the meeting, Land saw him as not as a gold armoured god, but as an utterly logical scientist and the Emperor had the whole shtick of people interpreting his words in the manner that made the most sense to them personally) who really knows when He's being genuine or not or how He feels. There must have been a reason why he prevented Vulkan from going completely batshit insane when he was killed over and over by his brother Konrad Kurze after all... but to say it in Guillimans own words (from memory) "our father never loved us, but he certainly does love humanity". Also Guilliman reflects that Big E could not have afforded deep affection for any of his sons, so lets see how the final confrontation between Horus on roid rage and Big E will play out in the end - as in older fluff Big E held back because he couldn't bring it upon himself to snuff out his most favoured son (and it did not read like in "my most favoured screw driver" kind of way). But in the end, despite being the most powerful psyker to have ever lived he may still have been "human" after all, and every living being has emotions. So maybe his biggest "flaw" (if you want to call it such) may have been that he might not have been able to separate himself from his sons (err I mean toolbox) as he would have hoped for.

*On that note, Aaron Demski-Bowden has insisted that nothing the Emperor says in Master of Mankind should be taken at face value. Moreover, the Emperor is inconsistent in how He describes the Primarchs. While He uses numbers and "it" when talking to Ra and Land, at the end of a book He's referring to Horus by name and as a "he", not an "it". AD-B has doggedly refused to clarify, because he enjoys watching the arguments he's kicked off. As noted in "Valdor: Birth of the Imperium" by Cris Wraight, it was noted by Valdor and Malcador that they were both surprised by the Emperor referring to the Primarchs, his planned generals, as sons. Valdor noted that the Emperor's emotions "are ebbing still" with Malcador saying all three predicted this and that victory had a price.
*However, in [[Laurie Goulding]]'s audiobook: Malcador First Lord of the Imperium; Malcador pretty much spells out exactly the same thing, saying that the primarchs were designed to be ''"conqueror's tools and nothing more"'', and had been manipulated into conflict with each other from the very start so that they would eventually destroy each other and pave the way for a "human" civilisation, rather than a "transhuman" one and that the Horus Heresy was always [[Just as Planned|part of the plan]]. He does later have a minor breakdown and admit that he was forced to lie though, but is not clear on what elements. As a result, it is entirely possible (and in fact more likely) that there was no such plan to have the Primarchs destroy each other and that Malcador was merely trying to hide the fact that things had gone off the rails. This is confirmed in ''The Board Is Set'' short story by [[Gav Thorpe]], which seemingly reconfirms Malcador's admission as the the Big E and His bestie play a game of cards with each Primarch represented (heavily implied). In such a game, Mal takes the role of "Warmaster" ''(symbolically representing [[Chaos]])'' whilst Big E played the position of the "Emperor". The two play out the entire events of the Horus Heresy and even hypothetical scenarios had they played each Primarch differently against the others, though they still get caught off guard from time to time as the rules change unexpectedly. Though Malcador only belated understands that considering this was a symbolic game of "what if?" rather than simply a means of devising strategy. So, while Emps and Mal were partly responsible for the current state of everything; if Malcador's "lie" was that it was all planned and that everything was under control, then the truth would be an acknowledgement that their opponents ''(the Chaos Gods)'' actually existed which was something they had been denying for centuries. Now they were backed into a corner and desperately scrambling to find a solution that didn't fuck everything.

While interred on the Golden Throne, the Emperor's psychic-essence prevents [[Daemon|daemonkind]] from directly assailing [[Terra]] through the broken remains of the Imperial Webway (in the form of a golden sun), while additionally sustaining and managing the psychic-beacon known as the [[Astronomican]], that makes warp travel within 50,000 light years around Terra possible.

An interesting theory is that if Emps was born of a group of psykers combining their might and souls in one ritual act then maybe Empy has gained all human souls since he got put on that Throne {see: leveling in Dark Souls), as he ''is'' the afterlife now, provided one excludes the veritable Hell that is the Warp (and all that [[Infinity Circuit|stuff]] the Eldar get up to).

A question that remained unanswered for a long time is that, is the above thing the only thing he is capable of doing these days? Or can he communicate with others? In the past few supplicants were allowed an audience with the Emperor though the fluff's always been iffy on whether or not they talked, or if it was more a spiritual visit to a shrine. The recent advance in the timeline revealed that the newly revived Guilliman had an audience with him for a whole day in which they did talk (and he still seems to have some sort of connection to the Custodes), so yes, he can. But then, what is he [[Black_Crusade| waiting for]] [[Emperor%27s_To-Do_List| before]] waking the [[Lion_El%27Jonson| sleepy beauty ]] up? It could be that he literally couldn't talk to anyone before that, considering that even Guilliman shuddered at the thought of the mental sand blasting that was speaking with the Emperor. It's possible the same communion might destroy a mortal, or kill the comatose Lion by accident. Perhaps the only thing stopping the Emperor from direct governance of the Imperium is his psychic voice delivering the equivalent of an Ordinatus blast every time he uses it, so he cannot chastise the incompetence of the High Lords for fear of killing them outright.

Speaking of talking to him, when Roboute was revived from stasis and finally got to Terra to talk to dad, Roboute noted the Emperor regarded him with the interest one would regard a tool. He also reflects on how he feels that the Emperor's psychic might has grown since his death, but that his humanity has gone as well, to the point that Guilliman thinks that even if he is a god he doesn't deserve to be worshiped. However, following the Plague Wars Guilliman has considered the possibility that his ascension may have been a plan B for humanity following the failure of the Imperial Truth, and both [[Mortarion]] and [[Ku'Gath]] believe the Emperor is gathering energy to create what they call an "Unliving Legion".

{{Topquote|He's been up to all sorts of things, our beloved father. Consorting with Xenos, resurrecting ancient technology. Don't believe that he is blameless in this...|Magnus the Red}}

In contrast to the above quote, the Emperor (and the Imperium as a byproduct) fucking hates aliens, though not without reason. During the Age of Strife numerous Xenos races exploited humanity's trust and either raided, lollygagged, [[loot]]ed or all of the above and were generally a nuisance the entire time. Then the Emperor comes along and decides that the best way to stop all that from happening again is to wipe out all Xenos that might even think to pose a threat to the fledgling Imperium. However, those few Xenos species that did not pose an immediate threat to humanity were usually made protectorates similar to the Tau government (unless they resisted, were in the way, or <s>possessed a planet</s> influenced human culture at all). Ever since His ascension, the Imperium mostly forgot about the part where harmless aliens could be tolerated, but on the other hand, [[Orks|the]] [[Necron|most]] [[Tyranids|common]] [[Tau|xenos]] [[Dark Eldar|are]] [[Asdrubael Vect|massive]] [[Eldrad|dicks]] and aren't exactly willing to buddy up with the Imperium themselves. Plus, at least according to ''Horus Rising'', the idea of letting Xenos exist and then eventually grow stronger is wrong on every level to the Imperium (hence the whole mess with the [[Interex|Interex/Diasporex]]).

To be even more fair (and meta), the triumvirate of Horus Heresy authors tend to have their own interpretation of the Big E. [[Graham McNeill]] generally portrays Him as competent and benevolent (if flawed), [[Dan Abnett]] portrays Him as competent but bloodthirsty, while [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden]] portrays Him as a vicious, needlessly cruel imbecile (and even this is counterbalanced by his portrayal in Master of Mankind, where he's interestingly a mixture of all the previous portrayals at once - which is kinda of appropriate really). Chris Wraight, as far as he has portrayed Him, has done so through the eyes of Jaghatai Khan, showing Him as deeply flawed and distant from His own sons, but also countering that He was working towards goals even the Primarchs couldn't fully grasp. Even in Path of Heaven, where the Khan gets close to learning the secrets of the Webway project, he's shown to not have all the cards (the Emperor's knowledge that humanity is evolving into a psychic race, for example).

On another note, [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|long before the Horus Heresy novel series]], there were hidden gems Noobs are not aware of, such as a text describing the fight between Horus and the Emperor (although it wasn't written especially well), or Conspiracy Theories. One of them was actually the possibility that the Emperor was already dead when Rogal Dorn managed to reach him; however, in the aforementioned text, [[Luther|Horus had realised that he had been wronged and deceived]] by the [[Assholetep|Chaos Gods]], who immediately ceased to possess the Warmaster and fled before the Emperor's final Force attack [[FATAL|bring woe to both of them]]. What if the Emperor had spared him or if the Warmaster survived somehow? In Olden Fluff, all Primarchs were Psykers and originally supposed to be [[Grey Knight|shining examplars of Human free from the taint of the Empyrean]] which they failed to bear true potential due to their early contact with the Warp, via the Dark Gods abducting them pedobear style.

This in turn was what caused their mutations and unique characteristics and diversity which was more of a metaphor that each Primarch was an image of humanity themselves; in fact, much of the powers of the Primarchs, like the Emperor, would have come from their psychic abilities. It is known that [[Sensei]]'s powers include health, regeneration, greater athletic prowess and [[God Stat|overpowering their Strength stat]] when they try to attack something, thus it would not be surprising if it was also the case for Primarchs (baby Sanguinius was super healthy and immune to Baal's radiations, Curze crawled out of his molten drop-pod and crater while screaming in pain and fled immediately, instinctively, into the darkness, and later his body was fully healed) prior to the new fluff messing everything up, 'cause BL writers have trouble getting their shit together.

But back to where we are; the notion that the Emperor was dead forebodes a terrible possibility, in which [[Pretend|the corpse that Rogal Dorn took back on Terra's Imperial Palace was not Big E but of Horus being passed as the Emperor... and was worshipped as such for Ten Thousand Years]]. While [[Retcon|this has become highly unlikely]], it would both be a great and GRIMDARK [[Just As Planned|plot twist]] and an immense source of [[Lulz]] especially when you mix in the events of Gathering Storm 3 with [[Roboute Guilliman]].

===On His Strengths and Flaws===
The Emperor was a firm believer that the ends justified the means and was a hard lined utilitarian, but He was a man whose vision was so long-sighted, so singular, that literally no one else around Him could comprehend either His motives, His lack of patience, His ambition, or His lack of tolerance; even those who had stuck with Him throughout the millennia saw him as being (rather ironically) inhuman. His own son, His closest and most cared for progeny, the Primarch Horus Lupercal, ends up rebelling because of this destructive character flaw that constantly shows up.

*Though his pragmatism made him a superb ruler in wartime, the ultra-militarized society He had [[First Founding|created]] was entirely dependent on the Imperium being constantly at war. Even if the Great Crusade had [[Just as Planned|proceeded exactly as the Emperor expected]], it still would have run out of enemies eventually. And when you have a few trillion newly unemployed soldiers with no other skills beyond killing on your hands and no other purpose in life beyond said killing...well, they tend to get rowdy. He may have realized this already when he had to mop up the surviving [[Thunder Warriors]]. It remains unknown how the Imperium would have continued to look after the Great Crusade was completed, how its colossal military forces would be scaled down, or how such a feat could even be achieved. Though there were signs that change was in the air as the Emperor quit the Great Crusade and the Council of Terra was formed to officially begin transition of the Imperium from its permanent war footing to a civilian government. Sure, it appears that some of the Primarchs and Legions had other skills like Guilliman's organizational talents and Dorn's talent for architecture and engineering, but what of the enormous host of veteran Imperial Auxilia? (That one's actually pretty easy; do what the Romans did and have them settle all the Imperium's new territories.) Or the conscripted or indentured taken from conquered worlds? What about the legions of super soldiers who were bred to do nothing else but war-making, such the [[World Eaters]], [[Space Wolves]], and [[Luna Wolves]]? There are hints that he might have planned to fix that by arranging the Primarchs to come to blows with each other, [[Horus Heresy|but we all know exactly how well ''that'' turned out]]- where He'd sweep in (presumably utilizing the [[Webway]]) with the Custodes and mop up the leftovers. But the sheer scale of destruction that would've caused to the galaxy and Mankind in general, not even speaking of the depth of betrayal He'd have to commit against His loyal Space Marines and Primarchs, is almost unfathomable in its callousness.
*The Emperor's concern for humanity as a whole belied his refusal to acknowledge that humanity was not just a species, but also a group of individuals with infinite variety and whose goals are also infinitely individualized. In His mind, He alone knew what was good for humanity's survival and anything short of total submission to the Imperium was grounds for destruction. In effect, all his efforts were performed in the name of an abstraction that arguably never existed in the first place. To His credit, a great many of His predictions did come to pass, and arguably when the man set His mind to a task, He got it done no matter what, but He failed to take into account that the species He so loves cannot see the future like He sees it. So that even if He was right, assuming His foresight was impeccable (and it wasn't), He's an immortal being with infinite knowledge making plans for very flawed short-sighted mortals who each act independently and have very different ideas from him about what they actually want in life. That's always going to be an impossible task to foolproof, and even if it was possible it would end up shackling people's needs, wants, and desires to a "collective good" with little to no connection to the people it allegedly represents. 
*He made a critical mistake in that trying to erase religion. Lacking the immortality and inhumanly grand perspective of the Emperor, it's a basic part of human nature to look for meaning and purpose in a cause greater than oneself, especially in the harsh and grimdark universe that was the [[Age of Strife|Old Night]], and when your day-to-day existence is shit then religion becomes far more appealing than any sort of secular ideology. The Imperial Truth tried to do this, but was ultimately doomed to fail because it offered no comfort to people struggling just to survive (and for all the good things the Great Crusade did, that still described the vast majority of the Imperium's inhabitants). What good are abstract concepts like "reason", "logic", and "humanism" when you can't feed yourself or your family, when your world is obliterated and you now live in a slum, when you're liberated from alien oppressors only to be press-ganged into manual labor, when your existence is just as tiny and insignificant as it was before you became part of the Imperium, if not even more so? What good is secularism when the super soldiers who are supposed to defend you think of you as idiotic sheep? What good was the Imperial Truth when it failed to teach about the extra-dimensional alien entities that assume the form of old superstitions and wield so much power that they might as well ''be'' gods? The fact that the Imperial Cult took off so quickly after the Emperor's interment on the Golden Throne (and is arguably the only thing keeping the Imperium a remotely unified entity in the present) is proof that the Emperor was once again either too stubborn for his own good or too divorced from the "normal" human condition to understand the value of life. The latter is more probable, as the Khan recounts scrambling to even converse with the Emperor and the Custodes have an internal school to try figure out out what ''exactly'' he meant in his orders and how it applies to the modern day. Yes, his Companions have what are basically rabbis Talmudically mulling over every syllable the Emperor ever uttered.
**In either case, all the Imperial Truth accomplished was giving all four of the Ruinous Powers a reason to get rid of him, while also giving them an invaluable tool to do so in the form of Lorgar. And all while he was telling the Primarchs that daemons were just another xenos race in an ill-advised attempt to dispense with their mythological appearance and obvious possession of supernatural powers, which left them and their Legions vulnerable to Chaotic corruption. Yes, He gave them incredibly vague warnings, but those were not even close to the amount of information He needed to give them. Or, for those of us who think this sounds just a little bit religious for our tastes and don't want to get into a philosophical debate over the importance of belief, imagine the trillions of citizens who had gone their whole lives worshiping a belief only to have ol' Emps turn up and just say "No" without a word of explanation beyond "it's bad". To his credit, His strength here was that He pushed Mankind to embrace secularism hoping that not only would it combat Chaos, but that it would propel us forward with greater scientific endeavors and understanding...but the way he chose to do so was still ultimately based on a lie which blew up in his face the moment it turned out that gods and daemons were very real.
*For a guy who says he's trying to avoid the same mistakes the Eldar made, his obsession with human supremacy and the supposed "purity" of the human form (as defined by what, his own opinion?) are almost indistinguishable from the pre-Fall Eldar's certainty that they were the rightful rulers of the galaxy. Even if humanity did become a purely psychic race, nothing would stop it from making ''another'' Chaos God by accident. It's a bit of a stretch to hypothesize that this was itself a ploy for him to use the collective psychic power of humanity to elevate himself to the status of godhood, where he could truly rule with infinite power. A stretch, but not a far-fetched one. Without a doubt, this could have been a very distant backup plan. However, it may be unlikely, as the Emperor admits to his Custodian Dio that he has no idea what to do anymore after the Webway Project fails.
**The only beings who knew how to create new parts of the Webway were the [[Old Ones]], and they're all dead. At best, the Webway project would've delayed the inevitable before the fact that nobody can figure out how to keep it working became obvious. And since the Warp already bleeds into the Webway at the best of times...well, the whole thing would've been rendered pointless if no psychic material could be replicated, produced or reinvented to fix, repair and expand the Webway. We'd like to hope that the Emperor would not have undertaken the Webway's conquest without a plan to unlock its secret. Ambitious plan is an understatement, ambitious but very very fragile and dangerously lacking in any kind of backup in case something went wrong. And it went ''very'' wrong, thanks to Magnus.
**The so-called mistakes and subsequent "Fall" of the Eldar [[Lileath|may have been foreseen]] and [[Morai-Heg|apparently planned for]]. By the close of the 41st Millennium, the psychic gestalt of the conscious-dead Eldar have formed the new god [[Ynnead]], quite probably proving that willpower eventually counters [[Slaanesh|desire]] and completing the Eldar's psychic ascension as a species. The Emperor may not have been aware of this and humanity's own psychic awakening may not have been as tragic, but to give him credit, his own endgame is somewhat similar in wanting to nurture mankind's psychic ascension but without the catastrophe. He is possibly positioning himself to become the focus for humanity's willpower rather than needing enough souls to die before they gestalt together, becoming a guiding will rather than a collective one.
**The humiliation of Lorgar was the ultimate catalyst for the Horus Heresy, and is probably the most colossal failure the Emperor has ever produced. This event is what showed the future "heretics" (and us) that when the Emperor says He isn't a god, you better believe it. Lorgar was so enthralled with his father and the religious extremism he was raised amongst that he not only worshipped him as a god, but made it his life's goal to convince others to do so as well. He built gleaming monuments and cities in His name. He brain-washed an entire legion to glorify their "perfect and benevolent" father. Suddenly, the Ultramarines descend and obliterate the greatest of Lorgar's cities and the Emperor himself forces Lorgar's entire legion to kneel before the invaders. The Emperor tells his most admiring son that he, alone of all his brothers, has failed. It would be as if God descended from the heavens, set Vatican City on fire, kicked the pope over, put out the fire by covering him in dog shit, and then told him to quit being such a fucking pussy. The main thing this incident says about Lorgar is that he's such a tough motherfucker that he didn't break down completely forever or kill himself upon the revelation that the most powerful and perfect being he can even imagine hates him, personally. The Emperor took the leader of the most powerful religious organization in the galaxy, one that could have easily been one of the greatest forces for its unification, and kicked him straight into the hands of power-hungry sociopathic narcissists in his two closest "friends". However, the biggest irony is that the Ecclesiarchy used religion to battle Chaos for several millennia using the very book that Lorgar wrote and ultimately proved to be better at it than the so-called Imperial Truth. (Unless it really WAS a test as [[Traitor_Legion_Loyalists#Known_Loyalist_Members_of_the_Traitor_Legions|the Anchorite]] believes). What might be completely inexcusable was how someone as drenched in corruption like Kor Phaeron, or someone as darkly anointed as Erebus, could have escaped the Emperor's attention on Monarchia.
**Angron's case is self-explanatory; honestly, if it weren't for Emps sending him into battle so often he would have rebelled sooner. Sure, he couldn't just let one of his Primarchs get himself killed in a slave revolt, but you'd think he'd send down some of the War Hounds or something instead of just warping him away and earning Angron's undying hatred. Instead he could have earned Angron's undying love, furious loyalty and in the worst case, a martyr Primarch who'd die from the Nails and be gotten rid of. Was one fucked up dusty planet's short term compliance worth the whole shit roller coaster? We will never know. Why a <s>man</s> <s>superman</s> Primarch (god damn it!) who knew only killing (not even war, just murdering people because of the MURDER NAILS JAMMED IN HIS BRAIN), and is traumatized to ETERNALLY HATE HIS LORD should be controlling 100,000+ Space Marines is something only the Emperor and his divine ass can fathom. There's no strength here, the Emperor was simply a callous dick who treated the son that would've been the most empathic with a complete lack thereof for no good reason.
**[[Fulgrim]]'s road to damnation started because he decided to loot a Slaaneshi-possessed sword. Knowing nothing about Chaos, Fulgrim had no idea he was using an incredibly dangerous warp artifact that that would lead to untold consequences. It didn't help that his strict xenophobic teachings prevented Fulgrim from taking [[Eldrad]]'s advice about the Laer Blade into account.
**The Emperor, being the wisest and most powerful human psyker in the galaxy, should have been able to see that [[Konrad Curze]] was an unstable psyker who was on the fast road to devolving into insanity due to his uncontrolled talents. And if he already was aware of it, then at best he was being incredibly careless. And what with the whole Night Lords being comprised of sociopaths and criminals, one must really question his quality control. Or maybe he just totally relied on his <s>large</s> huge brain capacity to manage things, and simply dismissed things that couldn't fit in.
**Even with the Webway fuck-up, Magnus might have remained a loyalist if the Emperor had him stationed on Terra along with Dorn. Why not bring the most crucial piece of the building project to the construction site to keep it safe? Instead, he brings a fortress builder home with Him, whilst He secludes Himself away to work on a project that Magnus was critical to achieving, all the while He was just confronted with evidence that said son was already teetering close to the same powers he was trying to defeat. Then he sends Russ to apprehend Magnus (the one Primarch who most wanted Magnus dead). And with the door already broken, he could have simply psy-phoned Magnus to clear it all up instead of jumping to conclusions. Then again, Magnus wouldn't even comply to his demand to stop practicing sorcery...
**Similarly to Angron, [[Mortarion]] always resented the Emperor for not letting him get to kill his adoptive father, and when the Emperor refused to give him an answer about the obvious piece of Warp-tech that was the Golden Throne he concluded that the Emperor was a hypocrite and the Imperial Truth was bullshit. Which in all fairness, wasn't wrong- if Ollanius Pius' experiences with the Emperor as his first Warmaster are any indication, it's not even the first time He's tried to pull off such a stunt.
**Completely ignoring that [[Perturabo]] needlessly had one in ten men in his legion killed by decimation under flimsy pretenses. Coupled with the fact that Perturabo was originally a peaceful, diplomatic soul, these two should have triggered some alarm bells about his mental stability. While it was said that the Emperor considers the Primarchs more of tools and less of his children, in retrospect it was obvious that there was plenty of [[Rogal Dorn|favoritism]] going on. Seriously, why can't the Big E act like a spiritual psychiatrist for ONE FUCKING MOMENT?
**Horus himself was only pushed to fall because the Chaos Gods played on his worries that he wasn't fit to be Warmaster combined with the unrealized, greater fear that the Emperor never cared for him as a person and that he, the other Primarchs, and the Astartes as a whole would have no place in the Imperium after the Great Crusade's conclusion. (Horus likely being aware of what happened to the [[Thunder Warriors]] when they outlived their usefulness at the end of the Unification Wars probably stoked that particular fire nicely.) You'd have thought the Emperor's most beloved 'son' would at least have been shown the special rooms in the Imperial Palace the Emperor made specifically for the Primarchs to live in after the Great Crusade ended, or at least discussed what he had planned for them when they weren't needed as generals any longer, but no.
**Perhaps the biggest kicker to this is that if we're going to take all of Black Library into account, the Emperor never truly cared for the Primarchs at all (loyalist and traitor included), viewing them as nothing more than powerful but ultimately expendable tools to further the ambitions of Humanity's survival and ascendancy. As determined by the Emperor, of course.
***Although one can always argue that the remaining Primarchs stayed loyal either because they believed in his vision for humanity or were too loyal to be turned, there's no telling exactly how long that might have gone on after the Great Crusade's end - some of them showed signs of disloyalty to the Emperor even during the Heresy, only staying on his side either out of loyalty to Mankind as a whole or the ideals that the Emperor represented (Guilliman and his [[Imperium Secundus]] come to mind here), by recognizing the other side as an even greater evil (like Jaghatai), or only because the Imperium is on the winning side (The Lion if Curze's trolling was true, which it probably isn't considering he stabbed him in the next paragraph and told Curze that he didn't care and that he was balls-to-the-wall loyal).
******To clarify the above point, after Guilliman's meeting with the Emperor following the Primarch's revival, he noted that while he loved humanity as a whole, the Emperor was practically incapable of caring about individual people, even the Primarchs. Everything and everyone was just a tool to him. While some might interpret this as the Emperor simply being a dick, you have to understand his situation; he's an immortal superhuman with a plan to uplift humanity. The fact he's immortal means he would be unable to form any meaningful relationships with mortals, because he'll always outlast them in one way or another. His plan also involved tons of sacrifices for the <s>greater good</s> {{Blam|'''*BLAM!* HERESY!'''}}, common good, when you're forced to sacrifice anything to continue your plans; you can't afford to be too attached to someone you might have to throw into the fire in a split second. The Emprah is cursed to always look forward on the endless road of the future, so he can never live in nor understand the concept of the present. As a result, his plans failed to account for the fact others might not just meekly go along with his plans without question and became further detached from the real human condition.
*Overall, and quite ironically, the main reason why the Emperor's plan was doomed to fail in time was because while the Emperor understood the path on what humanity must take for a brighter future, he himself was either unable or unwilling to understand humanity. Instead, he chose to remain distant from them and act like he was above their understanding, and that they should just simply follow him because he's the Emperor and he alone knows what's best for humanity, because shut up or be on the receiving end of a boltgun.(Even more ironically, this was how the majority of the gods that humanity originally believed in acted as well, and at least they had the excuse that they really were divine. For all his efforts to remove religion and his hatred of religion, the Emperor played the part of a god hilariously well.) 
**Lastly, maybe the Emperor understood that his Primarchs were unstable and unreliable. Given the issues with the Thunder Warriors he had to know all of this was coming eventually just from past experience. But it's possible he just didn't expect it to be in the form of a team deathmatch. For example, he probably could see Angron and Curze eventually becoming unstable enough that they and their Legions would need to be removed, but expected it to be individual Legions and Primarchs that would need censure but couldn't foresee his own flaws causing enough gulfs with each of his Primarchs that they would have a reason to band together. If that was the case, he was a poor father and a poor leader not to see his own arrogance as creator a flaw in his design. If it is true that he had always intended the Primarchs' rivalries to grow to the point that they would begin fighting each other, all of the above is even more damning since it means he had made them flawed on purpose and yet failed to see how Chaos would gladly exploit said flaws at the first opportunity it got.

On another note, the fact his ossified self has managed to shed tears and there was an incident where everyone across the Imperium saw statues of the Emperor weeping tears of blood due the incoming disasters of the End Times may mean that he has finally started to realize how horribly he fucked up on every possible level. Or maybe it's hurting even more than ever to stay sit at the Golden Throne.

The latter is far more likely; according to Roboute Guilliman, when he met with the Emperor after his revival, He treated Guilliman as a mere tool without showing even the faintest display of affection or care for him as a person. One can only assume that 10,000 years on the Golden Throne has done absolutely nothing to make the Emperor be less of an asshole; in fact, he's described as being human in name alone, and Guilliman believes that [[HERESY|even if he is a god he doesn't deserve to be worshipped.]] Strangely, the final novel of the trilogy, ''Godblight'', makes the whole thing even more confusing, as it's revealed Guilliman's meeting with the Emperor was what can only be described as fractally confusing in nature. You see, when referring to Guilliman, Emps uses all sort of descriptions, from "my son" "my last hope" to "betrayer" and "failure"- all in the same exchange, making it impossible to tell what, if anything, the Emperor actually feels towards him. in every single novel of the Horus Heresy we see E-Money seen differently through the eyes of different characters. To the Adeptus Mechanicus he acts like the epitome of passionless logic to the point of seeing his own offspring as disposable tools. A similar thing happens with the Custodes, where they see him as their king, with them being their favorites and above the Primarchs. On the other hand to Malcador he acts like an old friend who he can confide with, and we don't even need to begin with the Primarchs and the Space Marines, being a father-figure and patriarch to them, or the citizens of the Imperium, whenever he appears to one of them he looks like what they want him to look like, a glorious superb leader, a kind if stern master (Uriah Olathaire, Kai Zulane, etc), the incarnation of all that is good in mankind.

A god you say?

We may consider the following: every single human group has a tendency to see the aspects they feel more appealing in their deities, the Emperor can make people do exactly that, and unlike Belisarius Cawl who needs to upload the specific personality in his databanks for the specific situation the Emperor's glamour can make most people see what they wish from him. Simultaneously, back to Guilliman's pointing out what's going on, Emps is simply trying to be cool with everyone, even if that means falling to each specific group's personal antipathies and prejudices, since he has to be the god... like ruler of mankind of course he had to do this, he is playing the politician, the manager, the candidate, the family guy, the not-priest of the congregation and while he may still have some personal preferences and quirks TTS-style back in 30k he had to put them aside (loves no man) and by 40k it seems there is barely anything left of his original personality when occupied with his main task (loves mankind, and mankind needs him to be their god), it may be that even back during the Great Crusade this attitude is what ended up allowing the followers of the Lectitio Divinitatus to pull the miracles they did. He just provided the psychic equivalent of earthing for mankind to start creating a real god out of him and ultimately it may be he ended up running along with not really many options left. But then this leads us down the theological and philosophical debate that's raged in the Dark Imperium series, what makes a god a god? Is worship all that's required? Is power and worship? Is it just power? Is it results, power, and worship? Is it none of it? When the man says he isn't a god, is he still a god? If Mankind has forgotten that he is just a man and has worshipped him for longer than civilization has existed in real life, does that make him a god nonetheless? If he is a god, he's an incredibly flawed god, hardly benevolent, arrogant and cruel that couldn't make a divine plan to save himself. If he's not a god, then he's a tragically complicated almost unknowable person that had plans that exceeded his considerable ability, and a man of such vast power and near incalculable knowledge as to be far removed from anything remotely human. Is he a god or is he not a god? That decision is ultimately yours to decide.

tl;dr He was a horribly flawed but still well-meaning OCD workaholic with a "The needs of the many" outlook on life meaning he couldn't afford to show trust, love or compassion to anything but mankind as a whole (and even that in only the most abstract sense), not even his "sons". Ultimately his inhuman perspective prevented him from understanding the human condition, and his inhumanity was a large contributor to the Horus Heresy being as terrible as it was. If you have experience in pedagogy, he is your typical working dad who can't spare time to raise sons and makes *very* bad, fatigue influenced decisions, and after they grow up, wonders why they grow to hate him/be distant. Add the lack of a loving mother figure for the kids, and [[Horus Heresy|well...]]

====Planning for the Horus Heresy====

To throw a spanner into the works when considering whatever the Emperor's "goals" might have been: A very interesting claim was made by Malcador himself to his dying confidante Sibel Niasta that the Heresy was all [[Just as planned|part of the plan]], that the Primarchs were designed as "conquering tools and nothing more", set on course to fight for dominance and eventually turn on each other and challenge the Emperor directly. This is corroborated by what we already "knew" from ''Master of Mankind'' and the Emperor's own attitudes towards the Primarchs ''(which admittedly has constantly been shown to be shifting. As has been frequently pointed out the final confrontation between Horus and the Emperor - as we currently know it - would not make any sense if he merely considered them to be disposable tools anyway. Why "hold back" then to start out with?)''. The Primarchs were manipulated against each other with [[Rogal Dorn|unequal]] [[Perturabo|favour]], jealousies stoked in order to achieve this, and he also claims that those who [[Magnus|would not be manipulated]] [[Primarch#Two Missing Primarchs|would never reach the end game.]] What is not certain is whether he was speaking the ''whole'' truth since he does later admit privately just after the conversation that he had to lie to mortals to spare their sorrow, so what parts he "lied" about are uncertain ''(he could've made the whole "just as planned" story up, it could've all been true and he was regretting manipulating the Primarchs and their legions, it could even refer to a single sentence where he implies that the Emperor will save her soul after death)''; he also admits that the outcome had been altered by the [[Chaos Gods|great enemy]] who had emboldened their champions and started the battle early so he did not know with absolute certainty how it was going to turn out. Also, if all of the above Malcadors statemenent "if we could have saved just one of them I wish it would have been Lorgar" makes even less sense.

However, as shown from ''"The Board is Set"'' or the novel "The Outcast dead" Malcador and the Emperor were certainly shown to have considerable amounts of foreknowledge regarding the Horus Heresy and certainly ''did'' play the Primarchs against each other in order to attempt to counter the manipulations of Chaos. However in the Board is Set, Malcador is shown that the Primarchs' destinies were not necessarily fixed and could have been played in different ways; some [[Ferrus Manus|Primarchs]] were [[Sanguinius|sacrificed]] for greater goals, like you would remove a figure from the board to give you a better edge. Whilst the Emperor had the knowledge that certain [[Roboute Guilliman|others]] were crucial to final victory. Malcador is also shown to not have been aware of the full plan or the flow of destinies; he is unaware of how certain seeming "winning" strategies are left unplayed because they have unexpected knock-on effects, or that certain moves played early or late could have had disastrous consequences.
*Such as why the [[Rogal Dorn|"Invincible Bastion"]] is not used to take the [[Horus|"Lord of Hearts"]] [[Battle of Phall|early on in the war]], since it would force both of the [[Alpharius|"Twin"]] pieces to switch sides to the Warmaster and be able move on the Emperor's home space and cause the game to be lost. This is also significant because it shows that whichever side the Primarch had joined could have been variable, and did not automatically mean that it was working towards the same goal as its leaders.
*Malcador was also surprised to find out that the game could be changed by factors they might be unaware of, such as the "Corruption" of the [[Mortarion|Lord of Clouds]] in the mid-game when they had expected him to resist like he had in their previous playthroughs. The Emperor appeared genuinely saddened by this change, hinting that he either still cared about them even when they had already turned against him, or that some Primarchs could have potentially been recovered and returned to the fold after the conflict had ended. Malcador was also shocked to think that the Emperor could be blind-sided by such an alteration; with Malcador only beginning to see the game for what it truly might have been, rather than simply a means of testing strategy.
*It is important to note that from the beginning of the game, the "Primarch" pieces were essentially blank slates, and only gained their unique shapes and identities as part of their first activations after the Scattering, possibly indicating that the Primarchs could have potentially switched roles with one another depending on the first few moves. ''(Perhaps Sanguinius could have become the Lord of Hearts? or Perturabo become the Invincible Bastion?)''
*Before the first move takes place, the pieces were arranged <u>ten per side</u>, which was more than available Primarchs at the time. The Emperor had his own golden piece but the "Lord of Hearts" began the game in blue and became switched in the first move ''(giving the Warmaster eleven pieces after the first move)'' while the "Twins" would not be divided until the second move, providing twenty-one pieces on the board. Ignoring the additional piece ''"the Fool"'' that Malcador had never seen before, means that there must have been one other significant player somewhere that we are not aware about. That and the division of units under the control of the "Emperor" and [[Chaos|"Warmaster"]] in the game would have been very different from the apparent division of Loyalist/Traitor Primarchs in the actual conflict, meaning that the roles they played and were expected to play '''did''' change drastically as the game progressed.

Taking several factors into account, it is absolutely certain that Malcador and the Emperor had enough foreknowledge to know that the Horus Heresy was going to happen from the point of the '''Scattering''' onward. To say that it was all part of his "Grand Plan" would be a stretch, that many of the Primarchs had municipal gifts ''(Perturabo's architectural mastery, Fulgrim's artistry etc)'', came with purposes suited to the Emperor's grand plan for a post-human society ''(Magnus' and the Webway, Mortarion as a witchseeker)'' and he definitely [[Vulkan|created one of them]] [[Perpetual|"different"]] from the rest with the explicit purpose of teaching the others how to settle down after a lifetime of war shows that the Emperor probably <u>did</u> have a plan for his Primarchs that didn't involve losing half of them and then chaining himself to the Golden Throne. Otherwise why make twenty Primarchs with gifts related to your post-battle plans in the first place if you knew you were going to lose half of them? People who claim that this outcome was all part of the Emperor's plan have either missed or forgotten the fact that his opponent in the "game" was Chaos, and not Malcador ''(Malcador and Emps switched places several times in their playthroughs which Malcador thought was just a means of testing strategy until it finally dawned on him that there was more to it)'' and that the Chaos Gods had their own plans for the Primarchs too and were fully capable of changing the rules whenever it suited them. Not to mention the [[Cabal]]s of alien psykers manipulating humanity for their own outcome, [[Perpetual|immortal humans]] that interfere with predictions of the future, and [[Watchers in the Dark|extradimensional beings]] trying to stop the primordial annihilator from manifesting all by making their own moves and causing more complications.

If anything; ''The Board is Set'' goes a long way in explaining why the Emperor <u>couldn't</u> do any more with his advanced notice of impending conflict as any wrong move he made could have immediately spelled disaster for humanity. Plus the Emperor's foresight was not perfect and it did not necessarily marry up with his practical knowledge; even though the game he played with Malcador showed the "[[Lion El'Jonson|Double Edged Sword]], [[Roboute Guilliman|The Uncrowned Monarch]] and [[Sanguinius|The Angel]] spending most of the game off to the side, the Emperor had no idea [[Imperium Secundus|what they were <u>actually</u> doing]] until Malcador relayed the message from [[Leman Russ]]. His psychic foresight seems to have been shrouded in allegory and symbolism, rather than concrete certainty.

Also note that "destiny" is different from what the Primarchs were "designed" for ''(case in point: Magnus being designed to operate the Golden Throne, but also being destined to damage it)''. While the Emperor had designed all of his Primarchs for specific tasks, he would not have been able to identify the destined role that each Primarch was meant to play until events had already been set into motion and pulled them onto certain paths. He might been able to guess that Magnus was "the Library" or that Dorn was the "Invincible Bastion" but could not have been certain until the first moves of the game had been made. So until then he could only treat the Primarchs according to their gifts; hailing them as heroes, building them statues and trying to steer them away from obvious sources of corruption such as [[Magnus|sorcery]] or [[Lorgar|religion]]. Even if the Emperor ''had'' suspected which ones would turn against him and tried to eliminate them before they became problems, their destinies could have unfolded in a completely different way, potentially causing a similar conflict to happen albeit with a different combination of playing pieces on the board, or alternatively sacrificing any control he might have actually had over the Primarchs and still have ended up with a disaster on his hands. Also bearing in mind that he still needed to complete the Great Crusade and his Webway project; to put those plans on hold until the issue with Primarchs had sorted themselves out would probably have done him no good either because like the Emperor himself, [[Chaos]] is capable of playing the long game.

[[Lorgar]] is an interesting issue: Malcador once claimed that if he could have saved just one of the traitor Primarchs, it would have been Lorgar. However, from ''The Board is Set'', the Emperor points out that game doesn't start with any piece other than the "Chosen", strongly hinted to represent Lorgar with his initial swaying of Horus and thus beginning the Heresy. This implies that no matter what moves are planned for, or what Primarchs ended up on either side; Chaos will '''always''' have a "Chosen" piece to start the game with. If Horus had been protected, Lorgar might have simply started the conflict with someone else, making Chosen/Lorgar perhaps the more crucial piece. Though keep in mind that Malcador speaks with the benefit of hindsight, and as mentioned previously, the Emperor was not omniscient, it is possible that neither of them were to fully realise that Lorgar was the Chosen until the first move of the game had already been made. What is most tragic is that Lorgar ''really'' wanted the love and approval of his father and was probably the most fanatically loyal to him in the early days, so turning him into Chaos' most pivotal piece is a cruel irony. If it were possible to have actually saved Lorgar before the conflict started, it would have probably unbalanced the game as Chaos would have been forced to find a different Primarch to fill the role of "Chosen", potentially upending the game altogether.

Until the end of the Heresy, Malcador was not actually aware of how the final conflict actually played out; having seen himself only as an advisor, he was ignorant of his own role. The Emperor showed him in the final days that his piece, "The Fool", would switch places with the Emperor to snatch victory and allow the [[Roboute Guilliman|"Uncrowned Monarch"]] to play his "Salvation" strategy and win the game against Chaos by tearing the throat out of the serpent. Malcador's "lie" to his servant was most likely to provide the illusion of control; when in fact the Emperor and Malcador were desperately seeking to find an alternate solution that would not doom everyone. But pretty much like the Emperor stated in ''The Outcast Dead'': "Sometimes the only victory possible is to keep [[Chaos|your opponent]] from winning.".

===But what does all that mean for The Duel?===
Yeah...about that. Regarding the Emperor's duel with Horus, we're all reasonably sure we know the old story. The Emperor faces down Horus, and had the power to roflstomp him, but his love for his favorite son prevented him from going all out, and Emps gets his ass kicked. It takes an extraordinarily callous killing by Horus, traditionally Olianius but that character has changed a couple times, to finally convince the Emperor that Horus is completely beyond saving, and Emps blasts him full power to put an end to the Horus Heresy. The rising problem here is that this version of events heavily relies on the Emperor's compassion (particularly towards his sons), compassion that the Horus Heresy books and Dark Imperium repeatedly assert that he ''never had'', either then or in the 41st millennium. For example, the Emperor put down his Thunder Warriors as soon as they served their purpose, and he didn't even pretend to care about Angron and his Butchers nails, asserting that he would keep him as long as he had a use for him, and so on. Anyway, without compassion, the duel scene in its current form simply does not work. After all Horus had done in the years before, in a room with the maimed corpse of Sanguinius, a loyal and beloved (as far as it goes with Big E, at least) son of his, there is really no way he would have gone all fatherly love on Horus and not just blasted him, or at least tried to. (Maybe the current form is Imperial propaganda trying to conceal the fact that Horus simply kicked his shiny golden ass for some reason?) So what the hell actually happened? A very good question, at this point. [[Laurie Goulding]] has implied that when the Heresy books finally get to it, the final duel may play out ''very'' differently from how we think we know it. It certainly wouldn't be the [[Ollanius Pius|first time it's been retconned]].

One possible explanation for why Emps' couldn't immediately obliterate Horus is perhaps due to divided attention and strength. During the fight, Malcador was being taxed to the core and maybe the Emps was lending his power to buy Malcador some more time and thus was not able to actually unleash his full strength on Horus. However, Malcador had already received the same speech about being used as a disposable pawn by the Emperor for the sake of the overall goal, and knew he was going to die anyway as the Throne-switcharoo had been planned before the traitors had even arrived at Terra, so the Emperor would have no reason to stall just to save one man, even if they were genuinely friends. The Emperor also knew in advance that the outcome would be his entombment on the Throne; when he found out about this he claimed that it was more than he expected but went so far as to tell his Custodians that his dream for the future of humanity was pretty much dead. Without the support of Magnus ''(who was always intended to sit on the Throne)'' unless someone came around with the knowledge to fix the Throne he would be trapped there until it it failed but according to his discussions with Malcador there was room for "[[Roboute Guilliman|Salvation]]" to come later. One other possible suggestion for why the Emperor might have stalled is perhaps his prescience glimpsed some preferable alternative to simply pasting Horus then and there, but until that gets resolved it can only be speculation. The meeting between Alpharius Omegon and The Cabal in the novel "Legion" implies that if either side decisively won the Horus Heresy, then humanity would die out shortly after; either murder-fucked to extinction by Horus, or doomed to follow the Eldar's fate after a few millennia under the Emperor's rule. This reveal gives the possibility that Emps purposefully drew out the duel to clear the board for Guilliman to be able to swoop in for the win later. The scariest option might be that Horus really was a match for the Emperor after being supercharged by the Chaos gods and it was only the intervention, however small, of Ollanius or someone else to give the Emperor just enough of a lead to defeat Horus. This is implied in ''The First Wall'' and onwards with several speeches about small forces making the difference at a key moment. It's relevant to the moment at hand but could easily be foreshadowing for the final showdown.

On a rather related note, one can assume E-Money knew the tragic cases of Magnus, Curze & Angron and all of his sons through premonitions. Given that the future can be changed (as in the case of the Lion who feared the future of Curze) though not necessarily changed for the better or come without consequences ''(such as knowing that Rogal Dorn could have defeated Horus early in the war, but Alpharius would have assaulted Terra and resulted in a Chaos win anyway)'' the only options available to E-Money were to salvage the best he could from a shit situation.

Anyway, he is now stuck on the Throne guiding his subjects in the few ways available to him in his current state as an all-powerful vegetable.

Perhaps, or perhaps not, to have hesitated out of love for a son, the final weakness during the last test to save mankind, that would have shown why the Emperor couldn't afford to love anyone, not even his own sons, and turned him into what he is now. Though more recent fluff shows him to have always been more pragmatic than that. While he did seemingly care for his "sons", his foresight had shown him that half of them would turn to Chaos and move against him ''(whether or not you believe Malcador's statement that it was planned from the start)''. Perhaps he even saw that there would always be half the Primarchs turning to Chaos and all the Emperor could do was choose which ones and try to plan for them (which would explain why he was such a massive prick to some of his sons and somewhat decent to others). Maybe the two missing Primarchs were dealt with just to try and reduce the number of Primarchs and Legions involved without crippling the Great Crusade. (As of ''The Chamber at the End of Memory'' we now know that the Two Unknown Primarchs were erased because whatever they did was somehow worse than the Heresy.) Though even with this foreknowledge, the Emperor was on the back foot and many of the actions of the Horus Heresy involved playing the Primarchs against each other to prevent an overall Chaos victory rather than achieving an Imperial win.

However, recent lore has revealed that the Emperor alone would have never defeated Horus and that the intervention and sacrifice of Oll Persson/Ollanius is the only thing standing between victory or defeat. This gives a lot of credence to the speculation that Horus was indeed much more powerful that Emps by the time of the duel, oh shit.

It is implied that Euphrati Keeler, Amon the Custodian, and a virus designed to kill Horus would all play a part in his defeat further cementing Ascended Horus being more powerful than the Emperor.