THE EMPEROR: Warhammer On Trial Ep 1 | Warhammer 40K Lore

I remember once I stated online that the emperor is actually my favorite character in all of Science Fiction because of how much speculation you could do and how much interpretation there is but someone replied with well that doesn't make any sense he just seems like your average the ends justify the means boring character and they actually ratioed me we know nothing about their language their history or what they look like but we can assume this they stand for everything we don't stand for also they told me you guys look like dorks they look like dorks now if you want to talk about putting the emperor on trial there's probably a few things you could go for he's a little bit complicated but I want to zero in on his overarching ideas and his motivation for launching the great Crusade as well as how it was conducted itself this is basically going to be him on trial for the great Crusade you know people will understandably point to things like the Edict of obliteration or monarchia or the Thunder Warriors that's its own thing maybe I'll get to those in another video maybe one for the word Bears or one about Constantin valdor but I just want to zero in on the great Crusade but before we begin I just want to give huge shout outs to the gaming Storyteller and Warhammer wiki for their help in making this Banger thumbnail I appreciate you guys so much and if you guys like this video and want to see more characters put on trial I have Constantin valdor actually planned please consider subscribing and liking this video it really really helps me out especially since I'm going to show the subscriber count of this channel to Future employers when I'm looking for jobs in journalism or media but without further Ado let's get into it and let's start before it even began now we can't really tell when the planning for the great Crusade itself began because we don't know how fluid the emperor's planning has been we know from malcador that he's been planning his great work for about 30 000 years basically since the very beginning but we don't know how much of that has included the Imperium or the great Crusade because it all really starts back during the Neolithic when the emperor realized while watching people paint their hunting plans on caves that Humanity needed unified singular leadership and funny thing about the emperor he's not one to ever change his mind on anything really like erda comments on this custodians comment on it olanius Pearson definitely comments on it the emperor never changes his mind about [ __ ] anything now when you watch a video on my channel there's a bit of an understanding that you have a solid foundation for your knowledge of certain things like the Emperor or the setting in general because I'm gonna sort of gloss over a lot of things like the unification Wars or the fall of Man it's unknown whether or not the emperor foresaw the necessity of the Imperium or if he foresaw the fall of Humanity's First Empire or that sort of thing my personal theory is that the emperor didn't know these things would happen been but had a general idea of what he wanted the future of humanity to be and was willing to lie and wait and take things as they come sort of pouncing on opportunities whenever those opportunities arose and what were his ultimate desires for Humanity well he wanted Humanity to be the preeminent if not only sentient race in the Galaxy as well as the ultimate defeat of chaos as opposed to just sitting by and letting chaos eventually consume all life in the universe by severing Humanity from the warp something he believed to be the eldar's ultimate goal but that they ultimately failed at he wanted to utilize the entire web wave basically conquering it and annexing it as a way to sever Humanity's connection to the warp because he foresaw Humanity growing into a psychic race that would eventually eclipse the Eldar something that is currently happening and that eldrad othran believes will be the death of humanity and the Galaxy itself it's been occurring ever since the opening of the great rift this is known as the psychic Awakening and has seen powerful Alpha plus psychers springing up all over the Galaxy throwing things into chaos the emperor foresaw this tens of thousands of years before it actually happened now does this mean he foresaw the opening of The Great Rift I don't think so I think the Great Rift just sort of accelerated what was already happening the emperor sought to curate this process so that it wouldn't happen wantonly this is something he shows to sanguinius in the end in the death Vol 1. so that's it he wants to spare Humanity the fate of the Eldar as they grew into a psychic race defeat chaos and ensure Humanity's safety as the preeminent race in the Galaxy sounds great right and yeah that's pretty understandable honestly but when you look at his methods things start to get a little muddy especially if you want to consider if he was actually right first and foremost let's talk about the creation of the human-led web wave it wasn't fully creating sections of the web way like some people seem to think in fact he was getting the mechanicum to combine human technology with that of the web Way by melding it psychically and through a lot of research so that Humanity could one day subsume it and be able to navigate it properly but would that really have worked Vulcan has commented on two separate occasions first on his way to Tara through the web way and on his way back in the web way to confront Magnus wherein he has looked upon the fusion of human technology and the web way and stated it was never going to work he said this over and over again and Vulcan is probably the single best artisan and master of artifice out of all the primarks except for maybe per tarabo so maybe the emperor was gonna research it more and was gonna do it better at some point maybe it was just all a prototype but if Vulcan continually says it was never going to work part of me believes that maybe it wasn't gonna work maybe the plan would have to be adapted or redouble but I think one thing we can all agree on is that it wasn't a sure thing by any means and if you're gambling the fate of the entire species and the entire galaxy on that you probably should have some better Assurance that's one thing about the emperor Everything feels rushed the astartes project was rushed the Thunder warriors were rushed the web Way project was rushed the great Crusade said was all rushed even the creation of the primarks was according to the geneticist that made them rushed because the emperor wanted everything done now now now this is something everyone who knew him commented on Amar astardi his lead geneticist Arkin land his lead techno-archaeologist all these people all agree the emperor was absolutely rushing and part of that is because he knew a large conflagration with chaos either the heresy itself or some other backlash was going to occur he was gambling everything on this and that's part of the problem the massive risks he was taking and just how much of the Galaxy and how much of Fate was he was holding in his One Singular hand however I will say something to his credit at least he was willing to try in my video speculating on the potential Return of the interex to the setting I State the reason they sucked is because they knew chaos existed they knew about the gods they knew about damnation however were not prepared to do anything about it they basically stated with their hands up well chaos will one day consume all of creation but it's up to us to I guess just resist for as long as we can the Eldar feel the same way I would rather follow someone who will take the million to one chance at Victory rather than simply losing more slowly and I've stated this before it's not just the simple heat death of the universe here we're talking about the painful damnation and victory of evil chaos is evil over everything you can't really sit idle by and let that happen so even though the emperor's plan was flawed and possibly would have straight up not worked I can at least respect the willingness to try that's something I've stated before and I stand by that there's also the fact that totalitarianism was a very big part of The Emperor's plan now I want to get this out of the way totalitarianism in the Imperium and in fiction is different than in real life in real life we know it's bad we know how destructive it is we've seen it time and time again dictatorship and autocracy do not work in real life but in fiction it's different and should be weighed as such that's why it's okay to like the the Imperium because the threats the Imperium faces are very different from anything that would ever be faced in real life as such the political systems will be different however despite the emperor's efforts to put in things like the high Lords of Terra he alone was unilaterally deciding the fate of the entire galaxy can you really entrust that to one person regardless of how old or how much Insight that person has he was arguably the single smartest living individual in the entire galaxy and if anyone would be able to direct Galactic Affairs and hold it in their Palm it would be him the cabal even stated that if there was ever any one human they would consider letting into their Inner Circle it would be him but just because he's the best candidate does that mean there should be one at all and the truth is for that one I simply don't have an answer I really can't give it to you either way and I think you guys are gonna have to really form your opinions I'd love to hear what you guys think about that in the comments do you think the Galaxy would have been better off with a singular ruler like the Emperor or do you believe more openness and flexibility would have been the way to go for a prosperous Galaxy just considering all the threats that were there and all the threats that were to come that's definitely a discussion to be had and we can even look into some real world politics yeah I'm sorry I'm violating my own rule here with regard to the emperor the first person that comes to mind is a philosopher known as Carl Schmidt who you might know as Hitler's Premier legal theorist um I actually ended up taking a full course on his work in University by complete accident and I found it to be really interesting obviously you know he was a bad guy but his stuff did Shine a really good light on the nature of authoritarianism there's one thing he brought up called the state of exception namely he stated the true Sovereign of a nation is he who decides the state of exception that being a state of emergency or when normally Democratic institutions can be overthrown or even abolished like you can have things like City councils or premieres or other laws or the rule of law but whoever decides when those things go away or need to be put aside is the true Sovereign and I think we can say from Schmidt's point of view the emperor was absolutely Sovereign now you can take away from that what you will does that mean the emperor knew when to really take matters into own hands or does that mean his ideology was dangerously close to Fascism I want to hear what you guys have to think now you have to remember just because his ideology could be considered fascistic doesn't necessarily make him literally Hitler or a demon incarnate it's because the threats the Imperium was facing are patently different from anything that the real world would face one of the biggest Hallmarks of authoritarianism in real life is lies they will manufacture fake enemies and fake ideas in order to justify their hold on power but those threats and problems are very real for of the Imperium there are entire alien races that genuinely would not blink at destroying Humanity or enslaving all of humanity like to drukkari and the Orcs And The harad and many others and there's a lot of internal problems that could very well Doom the Imperium and if the Imperium fell so too might Humanity that's a really good segue into the last point in putting the emperor on trial the xenophobia question because the emperor was a hard-line xenophobe now one little fun tidbit I want to get out of the way now is to recognize the fact that the Imperium in the 41st Millennium is a far more soft place than it was under the emperor ten thousand years earlier with regard to aliens you see in the modern setting the idea that all alien races must be wiped out and only Humanity should be allowed to exist as the only sentient race is actually now a fringe ideology called Mono dominance which exists within the Inquisition where certain inquisitors usually very young ones will have this very fiery gung-ho way of thinking where they want to purge all the xenos and commit exterminatus and Destroy destroy kill everyone who looks at us funny and that scene is an embarrassing Hallmark of a young inexperienced Inquisitor older inquisitors who show this idea have to do so privately there are such things as quote closet mono dominance as said in the eisenhorn books where inquisitors will keep these ideas of theirs Under Wraps because it's seen as embarrassing namely it's seen as weak like you think humanity is so weak that the only way it can exist is by destroying all other sentient life in the Galaxy how paranoid and Twitchy are you that's cowardly Humanity can rise above any challenge it meets that's the general consensus among the Imperium that aliens should be allowed to exist as long as they recognize the Imperium Supremacy it's not basically the genocidal way of thinking it's basically a minimum tolerance way of thinking hence why the craft world eldars still exist in this time because if the Imperium really committed to wiping them out they could and the Imperium actually has some decent relations with the Tau after chemicals meaning they do tolerate alien life to an extent which is ironic because the emperor did not monodominance is an ideology to be embarrassed about in the Inquisition but the emperor absolutely was a mono dominant but one must reasonably ask why where does this Gap come from and why did the emperor think the way he thought well you have to understand the different environments that existed with regards to alien races in both the 41st Millennium and the 30th one because the 41st Millennium is one where humanity is used to being the uncontested master of the Galaxy they're used to being on top and effectively in topplable aside from the non-xeno threat of chaos internal instability and Orcs that one time that we all just kind of collectively ignore for good reason however back in the 31st Millennium and more importantly the preceding age of strife that saw Humanity's first Empire shattered like glass when the warp storms effectively made all faster than light travel impossible leading to the pretty understandable destruction of Galactic Society this left I would say like 80 percent of human domains completely vulnerable especially since Humanity was just recovering from the catastrophic cybernetic Revolt a conflict that we know from first-hand sources to be dwarfing the Horus heresy in its destruction magnitude and shear and comprehensibility humans are far and away one of the weakest species in the Galaxy their only real strengths being their virality you know how much of them they can reproduce it's said to be humans are like a weed race in Canon and their ability to work together in a cohesive way unlike the Orcs for example or other species which sort of just remain divided and don't unite around a core objective you see Humanity's only real strength was in its numbers it especially since Ai and most of the resources were now gone so without that Humanity absolutely became the Galaxy's punching bag in those intervening years so many human planets and I mean so many had to deal with constant alien piracy or were under alien overlords really brutal ones mind you it's even stated that the Eldar had taken control of a lot of human planets exedites drukari even craft worlders had done so and even if you could say oh why didn't the emperor just leave those planets alone you have to understand being under the suzerenti of a race that views themselves as more civilized and more intelligent and all-around better than you as a brown man I can tell you is actually pretty unpleasant Humanity's domain ended up for lack of a better word thoroughly colonized in not the sense of we're gonna take this territory and now live here in we're gonna take this territory and rule over the people there whether we want want to or not those exceptions like the diasporax were very much the exception not the rule most of the time it was other alien races taking control of human space and that's why the great Crusades main function was to fight against aliens it's why so many humans as stated in sanguinius's Primark book went along with it they got this sense of Revenge and satisfaction through quote unquote Justice against the aliens it's closer to what you might consider revolcism which is the mentality that was mainly perpetrated in France after the franco-prussian war of Revenge or taking back your people and your land from an outsider that's what it really was Orcs controlled large swaths of human space and had a very large slave economy dependent on captured humans that is a thing drukari let's not even get into that even exudites and craftworlders the wrongdon who had an entire Interstellar Empire a huge one where the humans under their control started fleeing to Imperial lines on mass when the Imperium came and they were ruthless in their lording over of humans weirdly enough the great Crusade despite what it might seem like was effectively the largest slave Uprising in Galactic history however that's not entirely true for every alien race in fact a lot of them didn't really have anything to do with Humanity there were ones who just were so unlucky as to be in the way of the oncoming break Crusade and just got crushed under the boot of the Imperium this happens quite a bit some would beg for mercy before the Imperials but were still wiped out yes Humanity was Far and Away the single most oppressed and beaten down race in the galaxy but how far does that go we need to ask ourselves you have to remember people went along with the destruction and genocide of so many alien races because it gave them a sense of Revenge for what the species had endured over the past several thousand years but just because something feels right does that really make it correct the emperor wanted a Galaxy where Humanity could never be challenged again that is why he wanted xenos races all wiped out if they ever showed any kind of sentience he wanted Humanity to be safe and secure and it's understandable why he and others would feel that that could only happen if everyone else was gone but you just can't gloss over the fact that this was without a doubt one of the single biggest catastrophes in Galactic history for anything that wasn't human all of a sudden this Force came storming across the Galaxy wiping out species left right and Center sending a lot of them into hiding and destroying so much that they are still bitter about it 10 000 years later I've brought up this species I think twice now but it Bears repeating the talarian dog soldiers are an alien race that has a strong Warrior culture and have an everlasting intense hatred of humanity and the Imperium because some of their planets were virus bombed during the Great Crusade and people often like to joke that the reason aliens are so vicious in the 41st Millennium is because all the nice ones were wiped out during the Great Crusade it does kind of seem to be like that if you think about it if you really read through the Horus heresy that holds a little bit of weight if I'm being honest now I want to clarify your stance on this does not indicate actual real-life political leanings or your personal morals you could say yeah [ __ ] those Enos kill them all wipe them out destroy them but that doesn't actually make you an advocate for genocide because you you gotta understand it's just fiction it is just fiction like there is a statement from argeltal a really beloved word Bearer who says when they were fighting humans man genocide is supposed to be such a glorious undertaking and so honorable but now that we're fighting other humans it just kind of feels sour like that's a joke you know for the reader like it's a tongue-in-cheek joke man they took all the fun out of genocide it's just not the same man like it's not indicative of your real world politics and there's one Theory I also want to float and it's that the emperor's main goal was the ultimate defeat of chaos and a fair few amount of Zeno speed were enthralled to chaos such as the laryn or some of the other ones like the ones that had the necro took and the eisenhorn series it does come up now and again so it would stand to reason why if the emperor wants chaos destroyed and seeks to sever Humanity's connection to the warp to starve the chaos Gods he would also want to get rid of those races he can't control the ones he cannot Lord over or strip the warp connection from as to truly starve the chaos Gods that's a pretty brutal way of thinking however it wouldn't be solely exclusive to him because the cabal thought very much the same thing about Humanity humans were the second most abundant species in the Galaxy next to Orcs yet the cabal was still prepared to see all of them go extinct in a very short period of time in order to starve the chaos Gods so would it be that wrong for the emperor to switch that logic the other way around now before I end this off I also want to touch on those human civilizations who didn't want to join the Imperium but were forced in or were crushed and completely wiped out now one thing that should be noted is in Canon it is stated that the vast majority of human worlds found did join the Imperium peacefully it was a largely peaceful Affair oddly enough when it came to human planets or they would only offer quote resistance to the degree that honor demanded now why not leave some civilizations be though if that's what they wanted the problem with that is it goes back to that revocious French mentality that I mentioned earlier you see if after France had defeated Germany in World War one and retaken alsas Lorraine but a few settlements like east of Strasbourg said actually we want to remain part of Germany we feel like we have more in common with them or better yet we're just going to be microstates like Andorra or Lichtenstein do you think France would have said yeah sure go ahead have fun no they would have taken them back by force as much force as needed to pacify the region even if you can argue that it's not right for them to do so because of the press incident of a free independent microstates like Andorra or Lichtenstein but there's also the caveat of these independent civilizations would be more susceptible to chaos without the Imperial truth well in theory at least and therefore could be the pry bar to get chaos back in because of how Insidious patient and sneaky chaos is when they come to infiltrate a civilization a good example being the planet of nerth which wanted nothing to do with the Imperium and didn't even view them as human they viewed themselves as the only true humans and the problem is they were fully enthralled to the powers of chaos there's also the issue of the planet 2319 such as the one with the whisper Head Mountains you know the one from false gods the thing with that is they just seem like a normal civilization on the surface and they just wanted to be left alone but when you started digging deeper it turns out they were worshiping demons and the ruinous powers and sorcery specifically the demon Samus who would go on to become a huge pain in the ass and is literally being mentioned in the end in the death Vol 1. is that really a risk worth taking now I think it's pretty clear at this point that I do have a stance I am more in favor of the emperor and a big fan of I guess his at least desire to see chaos defeated and his willingness to do something in the face of what everyone else would use as inevitable and I know I end every episode off by saying this but I mean it now more than ever what do you guys think do you believe the emperor actually was right in his desire to secure a future for the most vulnerable race in the galaxy and his plan to defeat chaos and to claim the web way and to take revenge on the zenos or do you believe he was a genocidal lunatic do you believe he had the right idea but the wrong methods and was way too totalitarian do you think maybe he didn't go far enough maybe there are some people who think that I would absolutely love to hear what you guys think in the comments below but until then I will see you in the next video

Channel: Live! From The Black Library

Views: 30,784

Keywords: warhammer40k, 40klore, imperiumofman, horusheresy, spacemarine, the emperor, Majorkill, Adeptus Ridiculous, Chapter Master Valrak, Valrak, luetin09, arthurbones40, weshammer

Id: 8CDjs3U7EJM

Length: 25min 22sec (1522 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2023