Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-94.3.72.36-20131224225315/@comment-68.0.36.117-20150119091911

Returning to the original question of "why didn't the emperor save angron?" it seems relevant to point out the order that the fluff was written in. The 40k endless war, crumbling empire setting was laid out first and the great crusade was explained/fleshed out later. Made up reasons aside, the emperor is/was fated to make MANY mistakes that result in the horus heresy and the decline of the imperium.

I personally view angron leading a legion as one of the more obvious mistakes he made. Primarchs where intended to be generals and I never read any example of angron being as capable as marines w/o the nails with respect to executing a war campaign. Maybe he was more capable of being a general when he reluctantly took leadership of his legion, and by the time he had degraded to the point of being a useless commander his legion was already modified and on it's way to being a blunt instrument of war, rather than the finely honed tool many other legions were. I think the better decision would be to forbid the implantation of the nails in the legion and have a marine act as legion master for the world eaters, retaining angron more as a legion champion to be directed by his more rational sons.

However, one way or another, angron would've fallen to chaos and the heresy would've happened, because time isn't linear in the 40k universe. The outcome was set before the cause played out.

The emperor's motives will most likely never be known and speculation is troublesome because we can't know the full story, since it's hinted that the emperor has completely erased a legion from history. Only the emperor knows what other key elements were similarly lost to time. It seems possible that he viewed the existing government on angron home world as preferential to the barren/wasted planet that would be left after angron was finally finished exacting his revenge and was willing to join the crusade.

For what it's worth: I used to be a supporter of the imperium, but after reading more of the 30k fluff.. the emperor isn't worthy of worship, but props to him for arming the warp with chaos marine legions.