Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-25618639-20141119150740/@comment-24944355-20141204224646

The biggest challenge to a returning primarch righting the imperium isn't the high lords or the ecclesiarchy, it's the inquisition who control all the other factions of the empire except the astartes & the mechanicum. The inquisition as a group has long since reached a point of hubris like that which helped corrupt the traitor legions. That being the idea that they are the reason for the empire survival & they & only they deserve to rule it.

This hubris of the inquisition is often seen in how they target anyone who dares question them about anything. The most potent example of this is the inquisitions clandestine war against the Space Wolves who dared oppose the inquisitions will after the 1st war of Armageddon. The conflict following that war, that the inquisition set in motion, almost led to a civil war and the inquisition has been working secretly to destroy the Space Wolves ever since.

Any attempt by a primarch to reign in the inquisition or to reform the empire (which would be the same thing in their eyes) would see the Inquisition turning all their power against the primarch. This would lead to a civil war with the primarch & most of the astartes & some elements of the navy & guard on one side against the inquisition, the bulk of the military, the ecclesiarchy & the high lords on the other with the mechanicum neutral.

That's why the Emperor hasn't brought any of the surviving primarchs back before now in fact the only primarch that could hold the empire together long enough to reform it would be Sanguinious given how he has been deified & he would have to return from the dead to do so (not impossible as I have theorized elseware in the forums).