A lot of this makes sense when compared and contrasted with the 30k books. The thing about Guilliman is that the 40k Ultramarines see him as a myth of a greater age when he is anything but. He makes mistakes, makes dumb decisions, isn't particularly creative (dude copied a whole lot of shit from the other Primarchs), is extremely autocratic to a fault, and can get extremely emotional. If there's one Primarch and Chapter that got rehabilitated hard by the fiction, it's the Ultramarines.
Calgar is basically going through the never meet your heroes phase. Guilliman might be a hyper competent bureaucrat but it is clear that he isn't completely infallible like everyone liked to imagine. Having a legendary myth of legend who created your whole Empire's system of government and the general Space Marines mode of operation only to immediately come around and say "welp I fucked up lol my bad just listen to me, implement my changes to the entire governance system, and go accept some random extra huge Space Marines that don't know that much about your culture or secrets because I say so" is a pretty big shock and pretty hard to swallow.
It'd be like if the Founding Fathers came back to life and said the Constitution was a mistake AND that the US should implement their proposed changes.
There's two problems with this. One, there's so much culture surrounding the Constitution that you literally can't do this without making a lot of people upset. Second, why should people listen to you when you fucked up in the first place? Guilliman is basically doing this and sort of believes he can ram these changes through without much meaningful resistance. He's probably right, because he is the Primarch of the Ultramarines and the closest thing to a physically moving Emperor of the Imperium, but it does highlight someone who is flawed in his methods. If he was Horus...he would probably find a method that wasn't the political equivalent of a sledgehammer but that isn't Guilliman's style.
Edit: From memory, the Imperial Fists see Guilliman's aggressive crusading as vindication that Dorn was right and that his changes knee capped the Imperium for 10k years. His attitude and method of governance has always bothered a lot of people, even his allies.
Calgar is basically going through the never meet your heroes phase. Guilliman might be a hyper competent bureaucrat but it is clear that he isn't completely infallible like everyone liked to imagine. Having a legendary myth of legend who created your whole Empire's system of government and the general Space Marines mode of operation only to immediately come around and say "welp I fucked up lol my bad just listen to me, implement my changes to the entire governance system, and go accept some random extra huge Space Marines that don't know that much about your culture or secrets because I say so" is a pretty big shock and pretty hard to swallow.
It'd be like if the Founding Fathers came back to life and said the Constitution was a mistake AND that the US should implement their proposed changes.
There's two problems with this. One, there's so much culture surrounding the Constitution that you literally can't do this without making a lot of people upset. Second, why should people listen to you when you fucked up in the first place? Guilliman is basically doing this and sort of believes he can ram these changes through without much meaningful resistance. He's probably right, because he is the Primarch of the Ultramarines and the closest thing to a physically moving Emperor of the Imperium, but it does highlight someone who is flawed in his methods. If he was Horus...he would probably find a method that wasn't the political equivalent of a sledgehammer but that isn't Guilliman's style.
Edit: From memory, the Imperial Fists see Guilliman's aggressive crusading as vindication that Dorn was right and that his changes knee capped the Imperium for 10k years. His attitude and method of governance has always bothered a lot of people, even his allies.
Last edited:
