Editing The God-Emperor of Mankind (section)

===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.".