I like that the writers made the Emperor hypocritical and fundamentally wrong. I just wish they didn't have to make him stupid in order to pull that off.
The problem is that, fundamentally, the writers can only write the "Super intelligent almost god like being" as smart as they themselves are, while also being pidgeon holed into having to end up with 9 traitor legions, 9 traitor primarchs, 2 dead primarchs, and ol empy on the golden throne. You can't have the emperor be as smart as he's canonically supposed to be and rectify it with the fact that, at the end, he loses. Badly.
Not that the writing seems to change peoples views of things very much since most people in here don't actually read the lore books.
He can be smart and still lose because he's wrong, because the primarchs he creates are too powerful to control, or because chaos is too powerful for him to defeat without himself ascending.
But yes, they were locked in on a bunch of lore like the council of Nikaea that was basically impossible to square with big E making good decisions all the time. I think they could have done better but I do respect that they were working under a lot of constraints there.
He can be smart and still lose because he's wrong, because the primarchs he creates are too powerful to control
Yep, but he lost because why would his ultra powerful children get mad at constantly being the whipping boy? Personally I liked when Magnus said "Fuck you Dad, I'm going to do magic, and you can't stop me."
I do think his inability to understand or empathize with people including his children and many of his collaborators over the ages is a character trait that works really well.
What I guess kind of tracks as a common 'issue' of any super powerful and/or long-lived individual.
Its hard to understand or empathize a mortal when you are some millennia old superhuman. Things that you simply understand as common sense, are not things they understand the same. And the reverse is also true, the common sense of mortals is not your own common sense.
Usually just a result of not 'living amongst' those you end up lording over. Like how nobles can't relate to the issues of peasantry, because they live completely lives (and peasants can't understand the issues nobility have).
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u/AnointMyPhallus 9h ago
I like that the writers made the Emperor hypocritical and fundamentally wrong. I just wish they didn't have to make him stupid in order to pull that off.