Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-4851119-20140118095944/@comment-24383134-20140214012043

There's only one thing I can think of that would justify the removal of records on the II and XI legions/primarchs, but allow Horus to remain.

At the start of the Great Crusade, and for a while during it, none but the Emperor really knew what the machinations of Chaos could do. If the two lost Primarchs were found upon worlds that had been conquered by Chaos, or the two Primarchs had been influenced by Chaos, then in then perhaps the Emperor ordered the records expunged as an attempt to continue his crusade for reason. So the Crusade forces make landfall, and are immediately assaulted by the hordes of corrupted Chaos forces. At their head is not a Daemon Prince, but a corrupted Primarch. The psyker forces of the Crusaders are able to sense the stamp of corruption upon the Primarch's soul, and are forced to destroy it. It is shown in the HH novel Legion that the Crusade forces had discovered Chaos, but it was marked down as a Xenos threat, not for the terrible reality it was.

But then why were records of Horus and the Heresy allowed to perpetuate? The Emperor decided to allow those records to exist after he had been installed on the Golden Throne, as a reminder to all as to the threats of the machinations of Chaos. In all the books that I've read in the 40k universe, everyone knows that Horus was the first heretic, that he's the boogey man that lurks in the shadows. But as far as I'm aware, no one ever goes into the details about the Heresy. So how much of the records are really known?