History Characters / HorusHeresyTraitorPrimarchs

* DudeWheresMyRespect: He has a bad case of this. His works are not memorialized by any paintings or sculptures, nobody cares for what he'd want, and wherever he cooperates with another Legion, the other Legion gets all the glory while the Iron Warriors' part in victory is relegated to a footnote at best. It's not that he craves attention particularly, as he's ready to accept all kinds of honorless assignments, but he feels cheated of his due respect compared to other legions.
** In ''The Hammer of Olympia'', in Calliphone's climactic TheReasonYouSuckSpeech, she gives him an alternate explanation for why he always got stuck with the worst jobs in the Great Crusade: it wasn't that the Emperor didn't respect him, it was that the Emperor ''trusted'' him to perform all those thankless-but-necessary tasks to perfection. Other Legions might find such drudgery beneath their pride and so do them poorly, but Perturabo is, for all his faults, no slacker.

* FatalFlaw: His martyr complex. Perturabo craves respect and admiration but rebuffs it whenever he gets it. He's happy to spend his troops' lives as part of the grim mathematics of war, only to turn around and lament how no one cares about the Iron Warriors' losses. He hates being relegated solely to siege duties, but never once asks for other assignments. His sister probably puts it best when she accuses him of having "sulked [his] way to damnation."

* DropTheHammer: He often used thunder hammers during the Great Crusade, and receives Ferrus's personal weapon Forgebreaker as a gift from Horus after the Drop Site Massacre.

* DropTheHammer: Worldbreaker, a power maul forged by the Emperor and presented to Horus as a gift.

* KeystoneArmy: He is the keystone in question -- as the Heresy goes on, the diverging interests of the traitors causes their forces to start butting heads, with only Horus' force of will and charisma keeping them in line. When Horus is rendered comatose for the duration of ''Slaves to Darkness'' due to a wound he received on Trisolian reopening, the traitor forces start imploding on themselves. And it's a ForegoneConclusion that Horus' death at the end of the Siege of Terra is what will break the traitor forces' will to fight, though the ''Siege of Terra'' books reveal that they were already startin g to disintegrate beforehand - Horus' death was merely the last straw.

* TheFriendNobodyLikes: Lorgar considers himself a priest and intellectual more than a warrior, and the other Primarchs agree and considered him unworthy of being one of them. The only real friend he had among the Primarchs before the Heresy was Magnus, who shared his intellectual and philosophical pursuits. There was a lot of talk behind Lorgar's back of having him and his legion censured, and possibly even removed.
** This extends to a degree into the Horus Heresy. By this time, Lorgar has become far more confident and self-assured, and his knowledge of Chaos makes him invaluable to the cause. Many of the other primarchs are still very suspicious of him because of his whole-hearted embrace of Chaos.
* TheFundamentalist: First to the Emperor, then to Chaos.

* AmbiguousSituation: If ''Alpharius: Head of the Hydra'' is to be believed then canonically [[MindScrew Alpharius took on the identity of Omegon while Omegon took on the identity of Alpharius and when Alpharius who was Omegon was killed by Rogal Dorn, Omegon who was Alpharius renamed himself Alpharius in honor of Alpharius who was actually Omegon. As the beginning and end chapters show, Omegon's narration and thought process echoes his twin's, which doesn't exactly make the brothers roles more clear.]]

* AmbiguousSituation: If ''Alpharius: Head of the Hydra'' is to be believed then canonically [[MindScrew Alpharius took on the identity of Omegon while Omegon took on the identity of Alpharius and when Alpharius who was Omegon was killed by Rogal Dorn, Omegon who was Alpharius renamed himself Alpharius in honor of Alpharius who was actually Omegon.]]

* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: Prevalent during the end of the Siege of Terra after the Chaos Gods have done a number on him and when readers finally get a first person perspective from him. Combined with SanitySlippage, many of the events he describes do not correspond to actual reality. Horus interprets the ongoing endgame of the Siege as a Great Crusade compliance, along with conversing with dead characters who likely never met in real life. Hints of reality occasionally bleed through but Horus either dimisses them or clumsily adapts his perspective to match what he's being told. Whilst the end of Part 1 of The End and the Death suggests that he was doing it as an act to lure the Emperor to him, Part 2 reasserts many of the same perspective delusions that even he claimed were part of an act before. Most tellingly, he keeps thinking that he is becoming the Dark King, even though he actually isn't.

* SanitySlippage: Drunk on Chaos, Horus becomes more and more insane as time goes on. During ''The End and the Death'', Horus even begins to hallucinate that he's still fighting the Crusade and believes that he's speaking to Mersadie Oliton, Maloghurst, Tarik Torgaddon, Luc Sedirae, and Nero Vipus, all of whom are long dead. [[spoiler: The end of the first volume suggests that it was all an act. The second part adds fresh ambiguity with Horus continuing to believe Maloghurst and Mersadie are alive, as well as the disconnect between his assumption of transcendence (which turns out to not be happening to him at all) and the divergence between his perspective on fighting Sanguinius and what actually occurs]].

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: In ''The Hammer of Olympia'', in Calliphone's climactic TheReasonYouSuckSpeech, she gives him an alternate explanation for why he always got stuck with the worst jobs in the Great Crusade: it wasn't that the Emperor didn't respect him, it was that the Emperor ''trusted'' him to perform all those thankless-but-necessary tasks to perfection. Other Legions might find such drudgery beneath their pride and so do them poorly, but Perturabo is, for all his faults, no slacker.

* SanitySlippage: Drunk on Chaos, Horus becomes more and more insane as time goes on. During ''The End and the Death'', Horus even begins to hallucinate that he's still fighting the Crusade and believes that he's speaking to Mersadie Oliton, Maloghurst, Tarik Torgaddon, Luc Sedirae, and Nero Vipus, all of whom are long dead. [[spoiler: The end of the first volume suggests that it was all an act]].

** Prior to his fall, he was known for being one of the most skilled Primarchs in personal skill as a duelist and as a strategist, he was obsessed with perfection, and he was ''beautiful'' and charismatic, though he lacked the people skills to finesse people other than to overawe them. As a general, he was behind Guilliman and Dorn; as a fighter, he was behind Russ and the Lion; in charisma, he was behind Lorgar; in combination, he was behind Horus and Sanguinius. That's a long list, but among the traitors, Fulgrim's Legion was an excellent generalist legion, holding more finesse and raw skill than the Sons of Horus's direct brutality or the Iron Warriors's or Death Guard's stubborn and attritional approach.

* UnequalRites: He went through all 3 archetypes. He was born with immense psyker power (sorcerer), he was raised o a planet where he developed highly intense study habits (wizard) and ended up under the thumb of a high-powered, diabolic entity (warlock).

* NotSoSimilar: Despite his claims to the contrary, the Bight of the Wolf shows that Angron is a different creature entirely from Russ - while both can be savage, Leman can rein in his violence and be civilized, while Abgron is just a raging berserker. More tellingly, Angron never ascribes to a goal beyond violence (at least partially excused by the fact he actively wants to die to be with his original army), while Russ can plan for the future.

* TheParagonAlwaysRebels: The most charismatic Primarch, the one with the most compliances, the first among equals and the one who turned hall of the legion astartes against the Emperor.