Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-6078851-20150114163201/@comment-6078851-20150130174728

emps may not have been the worst father in history but we can definitely accuse him of being a bad father: take lorgar - he continued to worship emps as a god for a considerable amount of time after emps tried to convince him that he wasn't a god. however, "someone convinced against their will, is of their own opinion still," and lorgar was already a zealot, being told by his 'god' not to worship him as such. he ignored this, as zealots are want to do when the basis of their faith is removed or proven to be false, and continued to worship, and spread the worship of god-emps when bringing worlds into compliance. now emps knew that lorgar continued to spread worship in emps' name and yet he didn't do anything about it for ages, but when he eventually did he didn't take lorgar aside and give him a stern, fatherly, talking to, but subjected him, and his legion, to possibly the single most humiliating episode any primarch and legion could face - in front of the ultramarines they were held by emps in psychic subjugation and told that they had failed emps, that they were the only primarch and legion to have failed emps. now i agree with emps that they had failed in carrying out emps' wishes, but he could've handled lorgar with considerably more compassion, and in private, and long before it got to the point where emps publicly reprimanded, and humiliated, lorgar and his legion.

there's quite a few instances where it's very clear that emps failed his sons as a father, but then he created them as instruments of war and it's possible that he never even saw them as his sons but simply tools to do his bidding. but he has occasionally displayed parental traits. the one that stands out the most is when he took the side of horus, his favourite son, when magnus, the disobedient son, tried to psychically warn emps about horus.

and again it comes back to the fact that emps is so far removed from the human race that he can't comprehend the nonsensical ideas of lesser folk. 'lesser folks' includes the primarchs, and clearly he had absolutely no clue how to handle lorgar, angron etc. even the rest he failed as he didn't tell them things that it was imperative that they know, and his secret-keeping is partly responsible for the cracks in horus' psyche that led to his corruption.