Spiritual liege

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Yeah, it's kind of like this.

A "liege" is a sovereign to whom one owes fealty. Therefore, a "spiritual liege" would be a person to whom one is ideologically loyal, like a thinker whose philosophy one followed.

This phrase has come to be widely used among fans of Warhammer 40,000 after Matt Ward gave an interview explaining why Codex: Space Marines had so many Ultramarines characters in them: "[t]he Ultramarines are undoubtedly the best Space Marines ever. Yes, really! Thanks to the heritage of Guilliman and their myriad heroic deeds, the Ultramarines are the exemplars of the Space Marines. With a few fringe exceptions... all Space Marine chapters want to be like the Ultramarines and recognize Marneus Calgar as their Spiritual Liege." (The real reason was it was going to be Codex: Ultramarines until at last second GW change there minds)

Apparently the heresy of acknowledging someone other than The Emperor as their liege, be it physically or spiritually, is lost on the Wardian Space Marines.

Because it makes total sense why they'd venerate the Ultramarines and not their own Chaptermasters and Primarchs.

Since then, "spiritual liege" has been used as an insulting way to refer to Roboute Guilliman, Marneus Calgar, or Matt Ward. It is also used ironically, to make the point that one's spiritual liege is not one of those three. It might also have to do something with the fact that directly speaking the name of Matt Ward within 4chan as a whole is forbidden (If you should ever type "Mat Ward" or "Matthew Ward" in the text box, it'll count your entire post as spam). Thus, /tg/ normally refers to him as their "Spiritual Liege" as a way to talk about Matt Ward.

In the Horus Hersey novels its heavily hinted that what's left of the two lost legions were absorbed into the Ultramarines, meaning that a large number of their successor chapters aren't really Ultramarine but venerate Guilliman over their original primarch. On the other hand, if your alternative is facing down the Space Wolves, you'd pledge anyone, even Abbaddon, as your liege.

Funny enough Abbadon is in fact the chaos Spiritual Liege, as many renegaded chaos marines do renounce their primarchs and venerate him when they join.

Why this isn't QUITE as dumb as you think

Other than the fact that technically Ultramarines were always viewed by non-space marines as the prime example of what it means to be a space marine and if it wasn't for Guilliman the chapter wouldn't be around...

Ward's work is poorly worded but there's some truth in it. There is a rather large number of Chapters that don't know who there primarch is, either due to Imperuim poor records or it was covered up, often due to the gene-seed used comes form a traitor legion. While some can guess base on command traits, many can't. The Soul Drinkers thought they were Imperial Fist successors, and the Blood Ravens are probably also Sons of Guilliman assuming the "loyalist Thousand Sons" theory doesn't pan out. Since its a common fact that Ultramarines are the prime source gene-seed its a safe bet to assume the chapter is one of their Successors; Dark Angels successors are irrevocably inducted into "the Unforgiven" without exception, Blood Angels successors all have Red Thirst, and neither the Salamanders nor the Space Wolves have any real habit of forming successor chapters, so it kinda narrows down the list of who your Primarch could be.

And if none of that calms you down, just pretend that Ward's codex is just propaganda collected from Macragge that the 'smurfs stick up to make their citizens feel better.