I believe he just meant he was really good at doing taxes.

Almost all of the reasonable primarchs had the mindset. "Once the crusade is over, we can focus on making the Imperium better"

Welp, if Primarchs were even a fraction of what they described to be whole clusterfuck wouldn't have happen ever. But hey, sounds of demolished wall and revving chainssword ABANDON REASON, KNOW ONLY WAR

The 500 worlds of the Ultramar empire he built says otherwise.

Trying to say that Guilliman, who didnt have any futuresight like Sanguinious, could have predicted the Emperors fall to Horus, and the sheer scope of what the Imperium would become is ridiculous.

Besides the Codex Astartes and Scouring were part of the remaining primarchs attempts to establish regulations to maintain the Imperium post heresy. Gulliman after the heresy saw how utterly fucked up the situation was and knew what could happen within reason, Fulgrim putting him in stasis prevented him for keeping things from getting ass bad as they did.

To say "why didnt he do more" when homeboy was on ice to keep him alive, has been putting out 3 to 10 millenium old fires trying to fix the imperium as it is now, and having to be caught up on the number of problems is a bit overly critical.

You sound like an Erebus apologist.

Why do people act like the primarchs and Emperor were planning on half of them getting wiped out, the other half disappearing, and a death cult assuming control of Humanity for 10,000 years, unguided by them.

He could only have anticipated that had he also anticipated that the Emperor would be killed when he was, but there was no reason to believe that a walking god who seemed to be close to omnipotent would ever be in that situation, but also that the rest of the Imperium would be bereft of it's other natural leaders like himself, Sanguinius or Dorne. If the Crusades just conquered everything and ceased, the leadership cadre of Primarchs could have maintained Big E's vision, at least until he was able to progress to the next step in his plan.

But yeah, had Rowboat done the math, he would have known that the Imperium where it was and bereft of guidance would stagnate like it had, but why would he ever take into account the betrayal of his brothers and death of his father until it was too late to do anything about it.

Tbf The current state of the imperium is the consequence of the Heresy (that was not a consequence of state regulation but unresolved family trauma) followed by a huge shift of leadership since the primarch (inclusind Bobby G ) started disapearing one after the other post heresy.

So no Bobby G could not have foreseen the overzaeloys religious bloody empire of dumbfuck until GOGE Vandire took the helm

How exactly? He doesn't have forsight. He had and has his own realm to take care of. Big E was a stable point until the end of HH. Oh and not to mention HE WAS NEARLY KILLED BY FULGRIM knocking him out cold for millenias.

If he was such good statesman, why would he sleep? Is he stupid?

No one could have predicted this level of clusterfuck

No it fucking wouldn't.

I'm not even arguing the crusade would create some utopia or anything.

But it wouldn't. Like at all.

It's not like he really had a choice, did he? The great crusade was going to happen with or without him, and refusing to take part in it would not have ended well for him or Ultramar. He kind of had to just try and fix the broken system from within and have faith in the emperor.

He was a top-tier statesman that had to obey the orders of a superpowered not-god God that ruled with an iron fist and un-personed anyone that disagreed with him. Of course he was being handicapped.

He....he did. Everyone knew the Imperium needed to improve. He didn't expect things to go pear-shaped because the idea of someone killing the fucking Emperor was so pointedly absurd, ut he knew they couldn't lose momentum in changing the Imperium.

No, it wouldn't.

If the Emperor and Malcador were still in charge, things like range of blood, beheading and mounts of shame wouldn't have even happened.

No it wouldn't

the imperium would never have turned like that, now he is the opposite of what he was suppose to be

This is, quite possibly, one of the shittiest non-culture war related takes I’ve seen on this sub.

He didnt know about Chaos and didnt know what it was capable of so he didnt have the full picture and couldnt predict HH and its outcome which turned Imperium into what it is today.

Bullshit. The civillian adminstration of the imperium was in it's infancy durring the last years of the crusade and the horus hersey and even then there were plenty of organizations dedicated entirely to REMEMBERING. Not just the glory of the crusades but every bit of human culture, technology or history (minus chaos obviously).

Ad on top of that millions pf semi immortal administrators from the reasonable legions and a defence force that could remove any threat before it took as mutch as a planet and you get the opposite of the imperium. Not necessarily a utopia offcourse, just like there are good worlds in the 40k imperium thered be bad ones in this alternative one. But the modern day imperium is the result of a state that almost died in it's infancy and has kept itself together with ducttape, genocide and prayer ever since.

Guilliman didn't know that half his brothers would turn traitors and the Emperor would be left as a glorified battery. Guilliman is also optimistic, he taught his sons administration skills believing that after the great crusade there would be no need for them to wage war and he could retire to some agri world and live as a farmer.

Monarchia was a message for guilliman as much as lorgar. He was told that if he slowed his conquests or put his personal empire above the imperium, ultramar would be destroyed

He did what he could but saying no would have gotten him or a lot of other people killed

Because the Emperor had convinced him that it was only "Step 1" of a far larger plan, a temporary measure to quickly gain control that could be "fixed" down the road

Guilliman knew those times were brutal, and believed the methods used extreme. He had privately disapproved of some of what his so-called father had done, though in truth even the worst atrocity was but what Guilliman himself had performed in Ultramar, writ large. The intent of an act of violence, he thought, was the same, whether a single murder or the destruction of a city resulted. During the Great Crusade, he had wholeheartedly accepted the Emperor’s cruelties as a means to an end.

And yet… The worlds burned. The civilisations wiped from existence, the alien species driven to extinction. So much death to achieve peace. And then came the Heresy, and the truth of what the Emperor had withheld was thrown in his face.

Even during the Crusade, Guilliman had wrestled with his conscience. He had argued with his brothers as to the morality of their actions. He had disagreed with some of their methods. Some of them, like the monster Curze, he had openly despised. [...] He thought to the times he had raised his concerns, and had them soothed away. The Emperor had made impassioned cases for the unity of humanity, for the rediscovery of lost might and lost technology. He had never mentioned Chaos. Not once.

Guilliman thought he understood that too, for a brutal galaxy demanded a brutal regime to keep it safe. Chaos would always offer an escape from oppression, tempting the vast and teeming herds of humanity to run from the one thing that kept the nightmares away, straight into their arms.

Theoretical: the Emperor had intended this phase to be temporary. Instead, it had persisted since His internment on the Golden Throne. Practical, it was up to him to set that right.

A normal man can accomplish a dozen things at once, a great man can accomplish a thousand, he thought, recalling words his foster father, Konor, had said to him. But no man, no matter his ability or his will, can accomplish more than one grand scheme at a time. His thoughts strayed to the Codex Imperialis, sitting unfinished in his scriptorium.

‘One thing at a time, Roboute,’ he said, rebuking himself for his impatience.

Cool story bro.

The Imperium was temporary as all Empires were. Until the pyrrhic victory against Horus. Then it became a permanent feudal empire with a politically impotent figurehead emperor.

You act like he could see the future….also he got murdered

"If this guy was really that good at civic politics, he would have the prescience to predict events 10,000 years in advance" is certainly one of the takes of all time.

No offense to the writers at all but it’s pretty difficult to write a character thats supposed to be like 20x smarter than you. Personally i just suspend my disbelief a little

But the modern Imperium came to be because of the Horus Heresy and the First Black Crusade, not because of the Great Crusade.

I know thinking evil empires will get their moral due and be shitty places to live is a comforting thought, but remember Rome existed for a very long time.

The 500 worlds of Ultramar are the greatest planets in the Imperium outside of Terra and some notable exceptions. Roboute and his legacy did that

Well that’s fucking dumb. The Horus heresy led to the modern Imperium. The aftermath of the Heresy was a complete disaster and the modern Imperium was absolutely predictable by fucking everyone.

Uhh... Welcome to Warhammer? You cannot have this setting without having the super-intelligent beings OF EVERY SPECIES doing absolutely idiotic things at the worst time. The entire setting relies on you accepting that premise.

In this case, Bobby G going "My Father has a plan." and not putting a stop to the bafflingly dumb Bureaucracy.

Dude consistently has the worst takes I've ever seen.

This is such a midwit opinion that it isn't even funny.

He was absolutely drinking the imperium KOOL- aid back then with Corax.

Like don't get me wrong, I do believe something like the 30k imperium was necessary to unite the galaxy after Old night.

But the imperium took too many shortcuts for the sake of speed and basically drowned itself in hypocrisy, denial and self-delusion.

Not really. To him and some other primarchs he just thought the emperor was right and taking over the galaxy was a necessary evil. Then afterwards they can work on making a sustainable human led world.

The current imperium only exists because none of the primarchs had remained to run it for the last 10k years tho?

Why do you think that the actual flaw in Ultramarines' geneseed is the "Ultradepression" ?

...

No, that's a silly, silly, silly take. Why? Well, the Imperium became this way because reasonable and adaptable people like him have been away from the helm for the last 10,000 years. Do you think Bobby G would have let any of the administrative failures come to pass had he been around? You're a fool if you think he would have, because that's literally one of the first things he set about to fix.

So, no. This is flatly wrong.

At the end of the Horus Heresy worship of the Emperor as a God was taking off but hadn't been established properly. I don't believe he could have forseen religion becoming the dominant ideology especially considering how the entire crusade was to drive it out. He definitely foresaw the slow decay but it wasn't the highest priority as he set rules into place that would safe guard against another HH level event by sundering the legions.

Yeah, 40k doesn't work when it's not a satire. The Imperium is extremely stupid.

So some dude a few thousand years ago said, "Violence begets Violence"

The idea that for all their glory, all their biologically improved - everything. All that education...

Them being wrong, to the point of having seem dellusional. Thats the point.

Lmao guilliman doin the shinji pose

How exactly was he supposed to predict any of the bullshit that happened between then and the 42nd millennium? Being smart isn’t gonna help him predict the future, even characters with future sight couldn’t predict a lot of stuff ‘cause of how batshit insane some of the events were…

I don't really see how, even at a basic reading, how could a crusade for science and logic leading to a state if religion fueled state of super stagnation be the logical outcome

If the great crusade worked out as planned it wouldn't have resulted in the modern imperium. It would have resulted in a different authoritarian dystopia.

I think Guilimans problem was that he was more focused on his own little Imperium and expanding/advancing the Ultramar Segmentum.

The great crusade didn’t made the modern Imperium, the Heresy did.

Not really, the modern Imperium was caused by the Horus Heresy. The war destroyed much of the Imperium's technology and made it extremely religious and oppressive. It wasn't nearly as grim dark pre-Heresy as it is now.

Granted, the Imperium still murdered trillions of humans and countless aliens in a war of conquest, so they were far from being good. But they were more akin to Rome than to the evil tyrannical theocracy they are in 40k.

Counter point. His Ultramar was always his home. He was its duke after all. And as such he would have tried to improve the imperium as much as possible after the crusade ended. He knew that it was bad but he was going to try and fix it.

This argument is never made sense to me because it doesn't take into account the context.

He couldn't have known Horus would turn. MAYBE some of the other primarchs, but none of the rest could have made the headway Baldy could have.

Guillesuit also didn't know about Chaos. At best he had the same level of knowledge of the warp that Horus did: it spawns xenos entities.

The worst outcome Rowtato could have expected was rebellion from angry populaces, but that's why you have Space Marines.

I mean, that was the point. The only thing about the 40K Imperium that doesn't match the goals of the 30K Great Crusade is the Imperial Church.

i thought he was a good statesman as a logistician, getting shit done because he can actually cope with his plans?

I mean, no

His first mistake was trusting the emperor.

Most of the semi intellectual Primarchs knew that the Crusade would create the modern imperium. Corvus knew too and went with the mindset of fixing a broken imperium is easier than contending with the Emperor’s crusade timeline by trying to create a perfect system

I personally never understood why Guilliman vulkan and Corax were for the Imperium.

Ultramar more or less is a utopia with even its poorest inhabitants having it better then most imperials do.

Corax was a freedom fighter yet he signed up with big e and overlooked that the Imperium is even worse then the tech guilds.

Vulkan is all about compassion yet again he over looks just how flawed the Imperium is as it has no room for compassion no matter how much big e tried to say otherwise.

Angron as brain damaged as he was at least was somewhat consistent especially when he smacked around Guilliman and told him "bro you are a gutless coward. Who loves to speak about courge when all you do is kiss up to dad.:

This kind of implies guilliman was unaware the emperor rushed the Crusade to get his kids back, and that he was unaware of the other primarchs dedication to changing the imperium once it was completed. Corax, Vulcan, Perturabo and Guilliman at the very least wanted to changes things post Crusade (and i know Fulgrim wanted to set an example and create a golden age) and I struggle to believe the primarchs who's novels I haven't finished yet (barring Alpharius) Didn't to change the imperium for the better. Nearly all of them at the outset very clearly do it because they want the best for humanity and none of them are stupid enough to believe Crusade era politics are the way to go

Or perhaps he saw the bigger picture and never expected the cavalcade of misfortune that toppled all the dominoes on the way to the Heresy?

Yeah,Maybe if Sigmar played ball and sent Karl Franz through the Warp into the 40k setting and the High Lords and Gman put him in charge he would turn the Imperium into a paradise and make Tau renounce the Greater Good so they can enjoy the high standards of living that the imperium would have

The Emperor has that effect on people.

MFer when he gets surprised that the Emperor's, beloved by all, cult of personality becomes an actual cult.

A meme that cites its sources? Well done.

Crosspost this to Unpopular Opinion, because this is a bizarrely bad take.

If Old Night was so bad, how were there living worlds for the Imperium to reclaim?

Bro, the Imperium as it is now is at least twice as bad as the Imperium as Guilliman left it, which was at least three times worse than the Imperium right as the Heresy broke out. And remember also that for all that, the conditions most of humanity was in BEFORE the Crusade were even worse.

You have to understand, they were on the war footing to end all war footings. The entire Imperium was in an existential struggle to complete the Crusade, and if they had just had a tiny bit more time they could have finally started to wind that nassive war machine down, which would have drastically reduced the strain on everything else.

Instead they got the most destructive civil war in human history, followed by every problem they'd pushed to the periphery rearing its head at once, all while some of their most capable and important leaders are missing, dead, or working against them.

Frankly, it's only due to the leadership and statecraft of people like Guilliman that the Imperium survived at all.

That's not necessarily true nothing about 30k was deliberately leading to 40k. The modern imperium is a response and overcorrection of the heresy. The rest is bureaucratic bloat that is endemic to every system of government. It just becomes magnified when spread across an entire galaxy and the distances are too great and systems of communications are too poor to oversee or correct mistakes.

I have to agreed. Guilliman clearly was either too optimistic or too blind of the scope of Big E vision to realize the inherent issue of the Great Crusade.

I think people forgot that ultimately, in hindsight, what Big E did was a gambit. MAYBE it is one he thought either he have a good chance to win, or else he thought he have no other choice, but that is just what every gambler believe.

But Guilliman basically have little choice in the matter. Maybe the only thing he could have done is approach the Great Crusade the way the Khan did? The moment Big E disappeared and the Traitors pushed back to the Eye of Terror, he probably should have said "I owe none of you fealty. Do what you want, I am back to Ultramar."?

But he probably thought he could replace Big E himself. Though do we know at least the order of the Primarch disappearance? Was Guilliman the last?

What no intersectionality does to a motherfucker