Robert Evans

Right.

That's not the only way space Marines were depicted, but they were often depicted as that as like cops and bullies.

They were nearly always thugs.

They were not, you know, they weren't like they looked cool, but like their personalities were not cool.

Right.

They weren't meant to be.

That's right, yeah.

Yeah, strong Sully vibes in these guys.

So again, even though after this point, there's no more whole campaign settings created to mock like union busting and the like, the designers behind 40K were always pretty direct about the fact that the Imperium are not the good guys and the Emperor is not a great leader.

In fact, here's how the first ever Warhammer 40,000 rule book opened.

For more than a hundred centuries, the emperor has sat immobile on the golden throne of earth.

He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies.

He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the dark age of technology.

He is the carrion lord of the imperium to whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day and for whom blood is drunk and flesh eaten, human blood and human flesh, the stuff of which the imperium is made.

Yeah, yeah.

And there's, you know, there's still that bit, that intro goes on to include some of the text that they have at the start of every game book now.

And they always do make the point that like, this is a bad, this is the worst possible regime, right?

They've been very consistent about that.

But I love that bit at the start, right?

Which you pointed out where they're like, the Imperium runs on the blood and flesh of human beings.