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Another Primarch people don't like is Ferrus Manus because he's a dick and his stupidity in charging ahead to even the score with Fulgrim (even though the latter was holding back in the previous duel) lets him get killed very early on during Horus Heresy. But as bad as Ferrus Manus is, he is a one-note character.

This Primarch, however, shows up a lot and I feel like has been constantly done dirty by everyone who writes him. That's Angron. Let's take a nosedive at his journey of crappiness:

+ Angron was so unimpressive that the High-Riders saw him as a wimp to be expended in the arena rather than someone who could be adopted to become like them. Fulgrim and Sanguinis almost got killed by their adopters because the former couldn't be spared any resources to raise while the latter was a mutant, yet their adopters eventually realized how godly they were and let them live. Mortarion, likewise, could have been killed or lobotomized by his alien father, but he was so badass that his father spared his life and even trained him to become an enforcer within the ruling class. No such thing for Angron, though.

+ Angron's special power is taking people's pain away. Yeah, thanks Pops for giving me this very useful ability which I will just stop using and everyone would forget I can even do that. Why is Angron a healer again? The Warhounds were already berzerkers before reuniting with him.

+ Angron didn't conquer his planet. Not only that, he is the only Primarch to be fully humiliated and defeated by his homeworld. Mortarion got 99% of the conquest done before he had to be rescued by the Emperor from an absolutely OP final boss. Angron completely failed to win over the High-Riders. In his eyes, he was a champion, but the reality is that he never won his freedom through participating in gladiatorial combat. Roman gladiators could and many did get released by performing well. When he rebelled, he also had like 2000 warriors for most of his campaign, instead of the millions who were oppressed by the High-Riders. It's clear that Angron rebelled so he could kill whoever he wished rather than whoever his master wished. Killing is still killing and no sane average people would flock to the banner of this mindless killer. Pretty much every other Primarchs would have been able to convince the High-Riders to adopt them, rise through the ranks to become part of the ruling class through displays of strength or organize a better revolt to overthrow the High-Riders.

+ Angron is a bitch to his sons. He killed a bunch of them for even trying to approach him. Only when Kharn managed to calm him down did he agree to lead the World Eater Legion. The daddy issue became so bad that his Legion started reverse-engineering the Butcher's Nail to appease him. When the Legion underperformed under an impossible task, Angron demanded decimation. When the order was refused, he threw a fit and killed a bunch of his sons, only stopped by the Librarians. Perturabo did a lot of decimation as well, but that was to make a point and motivate his sons. Meanwhile, Angron is just devoid of any tactical understanding, basically zerg-rushing everyone to mortal danger.

+ During the Isstvaan Atrocity, when the first orbital bombardment didn't wipe out the loyalist elements, it was Angron who made planetfall. This was A blunder for Horus and cost him a lot of time and manpower to hunt down the Loyalists instead of bombing the planet into oblivion.

+ Angron isn't a good fighter either. He won against Russ, but he let himself get surrounded. If Russ had given the order, Angron would have been at a serious disadvantage getting shot from all directions while fending off Russ's attacks. He won Guilliman, but Gulliman wasn't even a good fighter. Plus, it was 2 on 1 and Angron still let Lorgar get beaten the crap out of by Guilliman. Angron got spanked by Perturabo and then contained. He was so unstable that the Traitors used him basically as a tactical nuke. During the Siege of Terra, he got hammered by Sanguinuis.

If I were the Emperor, I would just mercy kill Angron, dismantle the Warhounds and assign them to the Ultramarines instead. If I were Horus, I would have bombarded Istvaan 3 with Angron on it. Angron is so bad he is an embarrassment to himself, the High-Riders, his slave friends, the Warhounds, the Emperor, Horus, pretty much any person he is associated with.

Angron got a rough hand in things.

Raised as a slave gladiator, then his “Real Dad” shows up, considers him too broken, and is once again used as a Point And Click tool of utter ruin.

It’s arguable the only time he knew true freedom were those scant months between going rogue, and turning Daemon Prince. And if memory serves, his Daemonhood was actively foisted upon him.

At that point, he just once again changed who his master was, and became forever damned, and forever refused the peace of the grave.


We also can’t discount the Butcher’s Nails affecting judgement and skewing his priorities. He was essentially an addict, and over Istvaan saw a chance to get his fix.

Now I of course don’t know if you’ve ever battled with addiction. I’m a nicotine addict, and have smoked since the age of 16. Couple of years back I switched to the less destructive, but still fundamentally stupid, Vaping. Can I kick the habit? No I can’t. Because an addiction is a subtle thing, shaping my decision making process.

Angron is a tragic figure. Always has been, always will be. A Demi-God denied his true purpose, and always used as someone else’ tool and property.

Firstly, Angron's whole story is someone so damaged that they literally can't be fixed. They've never been in control of their life and every single opportunity has been taken from them so all they have left is hatred. Hatred for their enemies, hatred for their friends, and most of all hatred for themselves.

But lets break down each of your points:

1 - Angron being powerful pegged him as excellent sport for the High Rider's amusement. They didn't need nor want this beast as an adopted child because he wasn't royalty, therefore he was a slave and they wanted some quality entertainment. Curze wasn't adopted by anyone either so why is this a slight against Angron?
Fulgrim wasn't in any danger when he was found when two of the three who discovered him wanted to keep him alive. Sanguinius wasn't threatened with death because he was angelic and "The Blood" believed he was a saviour.

2 - The Warhounds weren't berzerkers prior to reuiniting with Angron. They were hardcore killers but they were perfectly lucid. Angron's ability was added to his background in Slave of Nuceria as by that point he was the only Primarch not to have one and it was taken away by the Nails which messed up his brain so much the psychic gift he had was suppressed completely. Considering what happened with XIIth Legion Librarians when they tried, he got off lucky with manic rage.

3 - Angron's rebellion wasn't about planetary revolution like some of his siblings, it was a desperate act to save the people he cared about from meaningless deaths in the fighting pits. The fact that he was the only Primarch not to conquer his homeworld is part of his tragedy. He alone among his siblings was a "failure".

4 - Yeah, Angron is a terrible person because he has literally never had anything but hate and he has an implant that causes him physical pain unless he's angry or killing. He's always being tortured by his implants and by the time the Emperor had discovered Angron, his brain was ruined. Forcing the Nails on the XIIth as an act of sadistic torture is because Angron is a broken person who only has the capacity for pain and suffering.

5/6/7 - Good god have you actually read any of the books featuring Angron? Like any of them? He wants to die. That's it. He literally doesn't care about anyone or anything and just wants to die so that he can be with his family again. Everything he does serves the purpose of his suicide by combat because he can't actually end his own life. It's a goal he never gets to have because Lorgar forces him into another form of slavery so that Angron won't die.

Angron would've been a better character had the Butchers Nails been retconed. Every fanon has him without the Butchers Nails. It's one of the most stupidest concepts to exist. But this is a problem within GW, who can't write consistent books because of multiple writers.

The WE had it better before Angron, they were the only legion who negatively benefited after their reunion with their Primarch. They also inherited the only Primarch who couldn't conquer his planet.

Well at least in his state of raging state he's always done something, and that's killing, something that even Ferrus Manus couldn't do.

You’re so close to understanding why the Butcher’s Nails are such an interesting narrative tool.

 F.E.A.R. wrote:
The WE had it better before Angron, they were the only legion who negatively benefited after their reunion with their Primarch. They also inherited the only Primarch who couldn't conquer his planet.

Congrats, you have discovered "The Point".

Seriously feels like the reading comprehension among Warhammer fans is non-existent recently that they can't understand basic concepts like "tragic character who hates the world".

I suspect reading comprehension is fine, but why bother delving into Interesting Things when Hot Takes get you immediate attention?

r/40klore is not a replacement for reading the books.

But did Angron stole 40 cakes?

Because that would also be terrible.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
You’re so close to understanding why the Butcher’s Nails are such an interesting narrative tool.

 Gert wrote:

 F.E.A.R. wrote:
The WE had it better before Angron, they were the only legion who negatively benefited after their reunion with their Primarch. They also inherited the only Primarch who couldn't conquer his planet.

Congrats, you have discovered "The Point".

Seriously feels like the reading comprehension among Warhammer fans is non-existent recently that they can't understand basic concepts like "tragic character who hates the world".

Right?

Everything being critiqued here (as well as identical critiques by others) come so close to getting it but still somehow miss it entirely. It's maddening. The very thing that people use to hate on Angron and the WE is what makes them tragic and interesting and defines the nature of their character and narrative arc, etc.

 Gert wrote:

Congrats, you have discovered "The Point".

Seriously feels like the reading comprehension among Warhammer fans is non-existent recently that they can't understand basic concepts like "tragic character who hates the world".

I said what I had to say. I never accepted it, and never will. There's nothing tragic about Angron.

Angron's a solid tragedy. He's got the perfect mixture of unstoppable powerhouse and abject failure which makes a really solid character story.

The issue is that Angron's a large-scale player in the Heresy, rather than his own side story. As a result the interesting part of Angron's story are minimal, and then his "end state" is highly present after that. And while that 'end state' has some enjoyable moments, it has no development to offer and therefor gets tedious.

TLDR that someone's said before: Angron's an excellent story, but a fairly boring character.

Well, remember 1) It's GW- "Subtlety, what is that?" 2) He was made in the angst-ridden, oh-so-loving the dystopian gritty dark future late 80's and lastly 3rd) THIS was his original '92 model:

Nothing there to difference him from any other Bloodthirster... except, he doesn't have a whip.. laa di daa!
His character never went beyond "angry all the time", and yeah, the Slave of Nuceria book left me a bit more sympathetic to him; but there's a lot that could've been done with the character that would've made sense.
For instance, he could've used an ounce of social perception and just out and out told his legion "Look, I don't seek my father's approval, so you should stop trying to seek mine. In fact, you're not even my real family, so stop calling me father". If apothecary Surlak weren't so gung-ho to replicate and implant the nails into the legion, Centurion Mago's plan to take Angron back to Emps would've worked and we could see what he'd have done without the nails in his head. The first would've stopped the second, as the legion had the major daddy issues and need to please thier primarch.
In a greater sense, Khorne's aspect/ daemons/ M.O. is very simplistic, so his corrupted Daemon Primarch suffers that same problem. I mean, all the daemons are the same red-skinned, horned, hooved ones we've seen in Christian art going back hundreds of years- plus that 80's metal album cover vibe I'd mentioned. At least Nurgle (My least favorite Chaos god, since I pledge Tzeentch- or do I? What is pledging worth to one anyways? Confused? All is going to plan! he he hee...) has the interesting openness of being almost any color of rot and promotes kitbashing. You don't get that with Khorne.
I'm pretty sure you can go on Chat GPT and have it make any better story for Angron than GW's. That's because I think the human mind keeps that simplistic additude of "This guy is angry all the time".

 F.E.A.R. wrote:

 Gert wrote:

Congrats, you have discovered "The Point".

Seriously feels like the reading comprehension among Warhammer fans is non-existent recently that they can't understand basic concepts like "tragic character who hates the world".

I said what I had to say. I never accepted it, and never will. There's nothing tragic about Angron.

Who do you consider a tragic character? Got any examples?

Who do you consider a tragic character? Got any examples?

Kurze- he knew what was coming but chose to help the worst possible result vs. Sanguinus who used it to his advantage. There is a good reason I always refer to his assassination as "Assisted Suicide".

 TheChrispyOne wrote:

Who do you consider a tragic character? Got any examples?

Kurze- he knew what was coming but chose to help the worst possible result vs. Sanguinus who used it to his advantage. There is a good reason I always refer to his assassination as "Assisted Suicide".

Kurze is a complete idiot for:

+ Believing in some stupid future vision. Look at Horus and Alpharius and how they ended up. I just hate this sort of plot point. It makes character dumb, unlikable, and ruins their development.

+ Neglecting his homeworld while not training his sons to become men. Both Nostromo and the Night Lords go into decline after he took up generalship.

I think Kurze is more interesting because of his dichotomy: he wanted to stop the rampant crime on Nostromo, but was going about it in an immoral way. Likewise, he saved millions of lives by having his legion so terrifying that even word of them coming to a system made the un-compliant stand down. So it's an quandary of "right" and "wrong" when you skin a family and wear their stretched faces on your armor while presenting the populace with their still moving bodies in agony- but you've stopped a protracted war by doing so.
Kurze also didn't seek Chaos, he was only with Horus because the rest of the primarchs looked down on his ways. (That and his legion just wanted to murder a whole bunch). I say he's tragic because at his death he realizes that his misaligned sense of justice had gone away and he was the thing he'd hunted as Night Haunter:

Because your mission and the act you are about to commit proves the truth of all I have ever said or done. I merely punished those who had wronged, just as your false Emperor now seeks to punish me. Death is nothing compared to vindication.

bibotot wrote:

 TheChrispyOne wrote:

Who do you consider a tragic character? Got any examples?

Kurze- he knew what was coming but chose to help the worst possible result vs. Sanguinus who used it to his advantage. There is a good reason I always refer to his assassination as "Assisted Suicide".

Kurze is a complete idiot for:

+ Believing in some stupid future vision. Look at Horus and Alpharius and how they ended up. I just hate this sort of plot point. It makes character dumb, unlikable, and ruins their development.

To a modern reader unable to get inside the heads of people with decidedly not modern attitudes, perhaps. Even in the early modern era, there were outbreaks of superstitious hysteria such as the witch trials of Europe and British colonial holdings in America and the 'vampire craze'.

40k is written by modern people, it is going to be judged by modern standards.

That non-modern argument only really works when the author was actually non-modern.

That Curze argument would hold water if not for the fact that every single one of Curze's visions were true. He had exactly one moment of fear when it seemed like Sanguinius wasn't going to die on Terra which then didn't happen and then Sanguinius shot him into space.
Curze saw what the Imperium would become and knew that nothing he did could change that which drove him insane.

And yet again, yeah Nostramo got worse when Curze left because that's The Point. Nostramo was kept in line out of fear of the Night Haunter, and the Night Haunter was gone.
So the gangs resurfaced and crime returned. Instead of the best and brightest that had been recruited when the Imperium first came to Nostramo, now the prisons were emptied and sent to the VIIIth as the tithe of flesh. These criminals thrived in a Legion dedicated to causing fear and eventually fear was replaced by cruelty.

None of these things are hidden secrets of lore for crying out loud. It's literally right in front of your face in the books.

Night Lords started off with silly helmets, and ended up by far the most interesting legion. Possibly due to the writers assigned. But also a thoroughly self knowing bunch. enough of the high command understand what they are and curse their Primarch, and each other, but at the same time can't help but be drawn to him and to each other. They display a lot of comradery ironically that virtually every other traitor legion, and yet unarguably hate each other while holding dreams of their glory days and of showing others up. I think its a type of damnation that is the easiest to understand.

A fair bit in the characters they get and ADB's stories, indeed I still think my favourite BL scene is where the Night Lords are advancing using red corsairs for cover and letting them take the hits, while being cursed and told to attack, and laughing to each other other the comms.

 Tyran wrote:
40k is written by modern people, it is going to be judged by modern standards.

That non-modern argument only really works when the author was actually non-modern.

I think what he means by "Modern people" really refers to people under the age of 30. Most of 40ks authors are well above that and are of prior generations.

There is a massive disconnect between people today and those who are sometimes less than a decade older than them.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Night Lords started off with silly helmets, and ended up by far the most interesting legion.

The fact that any of the CSM legions have a detailed background now and can be played separately is amazing to me. Back in the day, each "Legion" was just part of a larger force.

Night Lords= Raptors/ jump packs
Black legion= Troops
Iron Warriors= Heavy weapons
Alpha Legion= "scouts"/ stealth units

And of course the 4 main chaos god's chosen legions filling in with their specialties- IE: Your Sorcerer was 1k Sons. And on an even larger scale picture, remember the original HH background was the one paragraph that heavily ripped off from the Book of Revelation.

IMO you described the world Eaters in that sentence, not the night lords.

Speaking of Kurze and Sanguinius, I wonder if Angron could have been made more engaging if they made an effort to mirror him in another loyalist primarch? It might have required a bit of a retcon, but if another primarch were forced to recon with some kind of crippling injury in their past then they could compare the two. Although, that sounds like Sanguinius too...

Over all I think the WE are most interesting when the writer focuses on what could have been. All that lost identity and humanity buried under their berserker rage. Kind of difficult to squeeze that into our wargame.

If you really dislike the bad guy they have written a good bad guy.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Who do you consider a tragic character? Got any examples?

40K; Saul Tarvitz; Loken; Torgaddon

Aside from 40K, Arthas the Lich King, Illidan Stormrage (Warcraft); Anakin Skywalker (Star Wars); LOTR Boromir.

Don't write tragedies when you can't. I can't do mathematics, thus I cannot be a maths teacher. Same problem with GW's 40K, don't have multiple writers write the same thing.

And so….a genecrafted Demi-God being enslaved through a technology so crude it couldn’t be removed without at best lobotomising him, purely for the entertainment and profit for others somehow isn’t a tragic life?

Or that his “Father” just repurposed his broken son for his own ends isn’t a tragic life?

Or that he had Daemonhood and some kind of eternal life, utterly enslaved to a mad god, also isn’t a tragic life?


A being of such staggering potential entirely denied any kind of true self agency.

I think the real complaint is that Angron and the World Eaters are fairly one-dimensional. There isn't much beneath the surface of "woes is me, we are forced to be mindless killing machines! what a tragedy!"

Is that true? Yes. Is that a problem? No. If you want a more nuanced chaos faction with a tragic backstory do Thousand Sons. Angron and the World Eaters are one dimensional because they are supposed to be one dimensional.

Chaos in general is cartoon super villian levels of one dimensional evil, and the World Eaters are the most one dimensionally evil of them all. They're just angry and kill stuff because they are lobotomized murder hobos. No more nuance and depth is required. If you want that that is ok, just don't complain that it can't be found in the World Eaters and their Primarch.

Thing is?

There’s a reason why they’re One Dimensional Murder Hobos. It’s….not a choice. Not really. That is their entire tragedy. The removal of self determination for Father, entirely against his will. And for his son’s? To make their Father think better of them.

A waste of potential.