Ever since he had returned from death, Roboute Guilliman had been exerting his authority in a way that Calgar had never truly considered before. As Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, Calgar was no stranger to power, and had on occasion had need for the application of coercion and subterfuge to ensure smooth running of the realm. But it was not his realm any more, and he felt a modicum of disappointment that Roboute Guilliman had to use such tricks, that the primarch seemed so… autocratic.

Of course, Calgar was an autocrat too, a minor emperor in all but name. That he accepted, though it was a burden to have to be so. He had hoped for better from the primarch. Although in his genius Roboute Guilliman excelled at everything Calgar could imagine, in other ways he was a world away from the idealised figure Calgar had imagined all his life.

Autocracy was the natural order of human society. There was a leader, and the rest followed. So it had always been. The Imperium was predicated on the preservation of this natural hierarchy. The disappointment, then, stemmed not from the fact that Guilliman was capable of such behaviour, and indeed seemed completely at ease with it, but that it was necessary he should have to exert his right to his power.

Calgar had run the theoreticals and practicals of the primarch’s awakening through his head many times before Guilliman had come back to them for real. It was indulgent, wishful thinking – daydreaming, even. But who did not wish for a saviour in times of need? Marneus Calgar, who was looked to as a saviour by billions of people, had needed his own idols to put faith in. When he had formulated his own versions of Guilliman’s miraculous return, as he was sure every Ultramarines Chapter Master since the first had also done, he had not conceived of events playing out as they actually had. He had not foreseen the resistance to the primarch’s rule. He had naively expected a primarch to be able to overcome the sheer inertia of Imperial government by dint of his presence. The primarch would return, and all men would fall into line, and obey him unquestioningly. They would march together to conquer the galaxy, putting the old enemy to the sword and driving out the xenos.

It had not worked so simply. There was dissension, different interpretations of the primarch’s edicts – sometimes wilful – and there was disbelief and suspicion. Guilliman’s rebirth had caused great rejoicing among the populace, but less so among those leaders who risked losing their influence to his rule. Calgar had relied a great deal on the civilian leaders of Ultramar and beyond. Roboute Guilliman should not need to.