#barely...

*gestures vaguely at Angron and Sanguinius* I know this is probably the most surface level of surface level of observations, but the ways the War Hounds & Revenant Legion, World Eaters & Blood Angels, and their primarchs mirror each other are endlessly fascinating to me.

The War Hounds, before Angron, were a force of controlled and disciplined violence directed through the eye of a needle. They were THE shock troops in a way none of the other Legions really were despite that being the whole point of Astartes.

The Revenant Legion, before Sanguinius, were a cavalcade of monsters bereft of anything but a hunger for carnage, blood, and death. They were the power, brutality, and death the Adeptus Astartes would come to symbolize to both ally and enemy alike.

The World Eaters, after Angron, was still a force of power, violence, and discipline… but that discipline was being eroded and chipped away at by their Primarch. Not just through Angron’s own actions, but also due to the love they had for their gene sire and the hurt it caused them to see not just a demi-god, but the one they were connected to through their gene-seed in such a horrible state. One that still let fragments of who might have been if fate was kinder shine through. The tragedy of Angron and his sons comes not just from their fall, but also from how love, honor, discipline, and empathy were taken and twisted into never ending, uncontrollable fury.

The Blood Angels, after Sanguinius, were brought back from the brink of self-destruction. Many of them became something different from what they were, directing their hunger for carnage and destruction into something beautiful. Those who changed became artists, poets, and scholars of the Imperium that brought death to their foes and wonder to their friends with blood drenched hands. Yet even those who held onto their past of ceaseless carnage and slaughter, The Fifth Company, were not the same as they were. Tearers Of Flesh they might have been, but the hope and stability Sanguinius brought to them shifted their path from one of destruction and rage for the sake of it to destruction and rage for the sake of those who they now fought for. Either way, the love and hope for them to be better Sanguinius held for his sons forever changed their course and allowed them to stand in the sun and strive to be more than what they were.

The Eater Of Cities, The Lord Of Red Sands, The Red Angel, Primarch Of The 12th Legion, Son Of The Emperor, Daemon Of Khorne, Angron. All titles Angron holds. All titles tied to tragedy and the legacy of rage he left to his sons. The mutilation of The Butchers Nails, the shattering of his heart upon seeing his family die, the eternal states of rage or pain he was always forced to switch between, the mind he was losing to the nails, the mind he lost to Khorne’s rage, the self-destruction of his existence as a person, the re-birth as a beast… all places where Angron’s mind, body, and soul were shattered by fate’s cruel hand.

The Great Angel, The Lord Of Baal, The Brightest One, The Greatest Of His Kin, Primarch Of The 9th Legion, Son Of The Emperor, The Self-Sacrificing Lamb, The Martyr, Sanguinius. All titles that fit him, all titles that reflect his eternal self-mutilation and the twin curses that this mutilation passed down to his sons. The first is The Red Thirst, the desire to throw away nobility, throw away honor, throw off expectations, reject the bonds of humanity and consume until that bottomless, empty void in the soul was filled with blood. The second is Black Rage, the crystallization of not just The Angels’ final moments, but his life as a whole. A life of perfection, a life that shattered him, a life that drenched once pure wings in the blood of brethren, sons, nephews, humans, Xenos, and daemons, staining them black and leading directly to his body laying broken and defiled at the hands of someone he loved and called brother. A life that led to his soul screaming and weeping across the universe and across time itself. A life that left his sons their true legacy. A legacy of rage.