The God-Emperor of Mankind is, as you may have guessed from the name, a pretty important man in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. He’s the closest thing to a real protagonist, but he’s in the unfortunate position of being a corpse chained to a powerful psychic throne. In recent years, the Emperor’s precarious position has become a major plot point in the greater galaxy of 40K. Is it possible he is planning something? He may be a corpse used to plug a hole in reality that would otherwise be full of demons, but according to some recent books in the 40K canon, the Emperor has more presence and agency than we might have originally thought.
The Emperor consists of tropes that Games Workshop borrowed liberally for the early editions of Warhammer 40,000; he clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Dune. Nevertheless, he is crucial to every aspect of man’s empire. He’s the religious figurehead of the galaxy-spanning empire, and it’s so illegal to be an atheist that you’ll be burned at the stake for it. Ten thousand years ago, the Emperor had a bunch of great sons called Primarchs, and half of them rebelled in a massive civil war called the Horus Heresy. The Heresy was developed by the Emperor’s most terrible enemies: the four Chaos Gods and their endless hordes of demons from the extra dimension known as the Warp.
Image: Game workshop
In the final confrontation of the heresy, the emperor was almost killed. In a DIY improvisation for the ages, his sons dragged him onto the powerful psychic channel called the Golden Throne. Battery life isn’t great, but there is a solution: feeding thousands of human souls every day with the big man in the chair.
In earlier versions of the emperor’s lore, it was debated whether he was actually alive, or whether everyone literally worshiped a corpse out of ritual and tradition. But the recent books from the Black Library, Games Workshop publishing house, and other media in the 40K universe make it clear that he is definitely around, awake, and quite angry.
The end and death
Image: Game workshop
The Horus Heresy is too large to cover in one article; the series is literally dozens of books long and culminates in a subseries called the Siege of Terra. The Siege of Terra ends with its own trilogy series, The End and the Death. The third book in this series, and the conclusion of the Heresy, was released in early 2024. The End and the Death tells the story of the Horus Heresy coming to Earth itself, culminating in an epic confrontation between the Emperor and his favorite. son Horus.
The most important thing to know about the Emperor in this trilogy is that he almost ascended to become one of the Chaos Gods. He knew he would have to face Horus, who was swollen with power – kind of like Violet Beauregarde, only instead of lingonberry juice it was corrupting Warp energy. As the emperor prepared for this conflict, he almost fell into an elaborate trap. To defeat Horus, the Emperor would have had to drain his own reservoir of Warp energy – except that doing so would have caused him to ascend to godhood, assume the mantle of the Dark King, and destroy the entire cosmos.
Fortunately, the Emperor received a pep talk from one of his closest confidantes, who convinced him to reject the mantle of the Dark King and its seductive power. In the End and the Death trilogy, we also learn that the Emperor radiated his mercy and compassion and sent it into the Warp so that he could face Horus without hesitation. Will that ever come back in the future? Is it a reference to a 90s plot point about the Emperor’s rebirth via a Star Child? Maybe! But for now, no matter how grim things get, at least we know there is no Dark King among the pantheon of Chaos Gods.
Godblight and Guilliman
Image: Game workshop
One of the Emperor’s sons, Roboute Guilliman, eventually returned to the Warhammer setting after being in stasis for 10,000 years with a mortal wound. He officially returned in the Gathering Storm campaign books in 2007, but the Dark Imperium trilogy of novels – released over the course of 2017 through 2021 – goes into much more detail about how Guilliman feels about the current Imperium, his father and the general status of humanity.
Although Guilliman is the only remaining loyal Primarch, there are still countless treacherous Primarchs active in the setting – and so they have all launched an attack on Guilliman or on the Imperium at large. One of the books about Guilliman, Goddamnitwas released in 2021 – and shows what happens when the emperor decides to support his son in a fight to the death.
Despite a lot of brotherly abuse, Guilliman managed to reach Terra and have an audience with the Emperor. The two managed to have a conversation – but unfortunately on the Emperor’s side it was barely coherent, with dozens of broken voices overlapping each other. We didn’t hear much of a mission statement from the Emperor until much later Goddamnit, when the Primarch Mortarion brought Guilliman to the Warp. There, in the fetid gardens of the Chaos God of Decay, Nurgle, Guilliman was briefly slain. But just when all seemed lost, Big E appears to have grabbed the wheel. This is how it went in the book:
Guilliman looked out over the Garden of Nurgle. He found himself between two worlds. The warp was a variable thing, never constant. The garden was a collection of ideas. It had no true form, and through it he could see a million other worlds that lay beneath it, the dreams of souls living and dead, and beyond them, as if he glimpsed the shores of glittering sea mist evaporating before the morning sun, the battlefield. from Iax.
“Hear me!” Guilliman’s voice echoed through eternity. The sword flamed higher, until its fire threatened to burn out time. ‘I am Roboute Guilliman, the last loyal son of the Emperor of Terra. It is not your destiny to end today, God of Plague, but know that I am coming for you, and I will find you, and you will burn.”
He grabbed the emperor’s sword with both hands and raised it high. Rising waves of fire rushed into the garden. From the great parsonage came a cry of rage, as a wall of flame, hotter than a million suns, devoured everything in its path, finally breaking and retreating within yards of the black walls of Nurgle’s house. The infinite halls trembled. Mossy tiles fell from the roof. Soaked wood steamed.
‘This is a warning. The warp and the material were once in balance. You have tipped the balance for too long. Understand that it’s not just the warp that can push back. This realm is not real. Only the will is real. And no one can surpass my will. Be assured, Lord of the Plagues, and convey this message to your brethren, that I do not speak for myself.
“I speak for the Emperor of Mankind.”
Then he fell, fell, fell forever until his knee hit the ground and he woke back up to reality.
This is quite unprecedented in the entire Warhammer 40,000 setting. Not only did the Imperium of Man manage to bring the battle to the realm of the Chaos Gods, but the Emperor also managed to burn down part of their territory. He may not be the Dark King, but the God-Emperor of humanity seems well on his way to becoming a deity for all humanity.
The Emperor also continues to appear on the sidelines in Warhammer 40,000’s media. In Dark tideIt’s heavily implied that one of the psyker personalities has a hotline straight to the Golden Throne and is talking to the Emperor about it. In The Lion: Son of the Forest, a second loyalist Primarch returns. Lion El’Jonson continually encounters a wounded king as he awakens and explores the Warp; the king is both a clear reference to the Fisher King of Arthurian myth, and to the emperor.
So what is the God-Emperor of humanity actually up to? Nobody knows; you can’t exactly have a scrum meeting with that guy anymore. But in a galaxy on the brink of complete and utter destruction due to Tyranids, Chaos, and other terrible threats, he is likely the last and best hope humanity has in its arsenal.