Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-58.179.157.107-20140511083958/@comment-26516936-20160304232635

Horus was the most experienced & was the 2nd best strategist behind the Lion, the 2nd best organizer behind Guilliman & the 2nd best leader of men behind Sanguinious. As such Horus had the best combination of skills on paper to be the Warmaster but the Emperor overlooked two fatal flaws in choosing him.

The first flaw was that while Horus was respected by a good many of the primarchs he was heartily disliked by at least as many & had a tendency to treat them as his "little" brothers which made many of the primarchs resentful. The second fatal flaw was that Horus wanted the job, he hungered for to be named above his brothers & hated having others limit him, it was this flaw that the Chaos Gods exploited to turn Horus.

What the Emperor seemingly overlooked was that the office of Warmaster didn't require the best general so much as the primarch who who would best be accepted by the other primarchs & be able to get them to do his will with the least problems. And also a primarch who didn't WANT the job & thusly wouldn't be corrupted by it's power, after all an old saying goes that the last person who should be given power is someone who actually wants it. Now going by that criteria then Sanguinious would have been the best choice as he got on with well with most of the other primarchs & was hated by none of them, even Curze & Angron. And Sanguinious didn't want the job or the power that went with it and while it's true that he had a deep flaw in his make up, Sanguinious was AWARE of that flaw & so was always on guard against it. And also because he knew he was flawed it made Sanguinious more understanding of the flaws & limitations of others including his own brothers. All in all Sanguinious would have been the best choice for Warmaster, and while it's true that Chaos would have used Horus resentment of being overlooked as Warmaster to turn him more easily, not having the power of Warmaster would have made Horus rebellion much harder to accomplish.