Lion El'Jonson | The Knight With a Flaw

He disarmed his own brother in a duel and stopped, because honour does not permit you to cut down a man who has lost his sword. A few minutes later he knocked that same brother unconscious for laughing. He kept another man's deepest shame through a rage that would have justified spending it. He also burned his own world, with billions of people on it who had never heard the Warmaster's name. He is not two men. He is one man. And the second thing follows from the first. This is the first lecture of a new cycle, and the cycle is the primarchs. We begin with the First — who was not first. Horus was found first. The Lion knew it, and never got over it, and said so out loud to Perturabo's face. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WRITTEN WITH Alexey "Daymonri" Frolov    / @daymonri   The material this lecture grew out of is his vision. If you know Russian and you care about this setting, go and watch him. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT THIS LECTURE COVERS ▸ Why the Lion exiled the man who raised him — and why it was not for the bomb ▸ Dulan: who actually swung first, and what Russ was really laughing at ▸ Diamat: the most secretive primarch alive hands the siege guns for Terra to Perturabo, on a handshake ▸ Alma Mons, and the oath the Lord Protector broke in secret ▸ Why Guilliman broke the Lion Sword — it is not the reason you have been told ▸ The Fall of Caliban: Luther did not win that duel ▸ The Return, and the one man the Lion did not pardon ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS 00:00 The First, Who Was Not First 03:26 Caliban 08:07 Sarosh, and the Pause 11:57 Dulan, and the Duel With the Wolf 18:10 Diamat, and the Conversation With Perturabo 23:55 The Thramas Crusade 26:49 Perditus, and the Machine That Thinks 32:12 Imperium Secundus 38:08 The Trial 41:20 The Fall of Caliban 46:02 The Return 49:22 The Character 58:02 The Knight With a Flaw ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE ARGUMENT Everyone measures this man against a knightly standard and he does not survive it. Not because he fails to be a knight — because he succeeds, and the honour is load-bearing for the atrocity. He sent Luther away not for the bomb, but because Luther hesitated for one second before saving his life. He gave Perturabo the guns that were fired at his father's walls, because he trusted a brother exactly once. He burned Caliban to be certain of the traitors, and his own bombardment is why the planet came apart. And he stayed his hand over the man who raised him, and it killed him. Superb strategist, magnificent duellist, poor soldier. Noble and impulsive. All of it true at once. That is the whole difficulty of him. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CORRECTIONS I have told parts of this wrong before, and so has most of the Russian-speaking fandom. Where I have, I say so out loud and correct it on air. Among them: the Saroshi worshipped the Melachim, not the Elohim. The world is Perditus, not Perdita. A Dark Angel saved the Lion at Tsagualsa, not a Night Lord. Alma Mons is a mountain, not a city. Where the sources contradict each other, I say so instead of picking the tidy answer. Where I am guessing, I tell you I am guessing. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES USED Descent of Angels — Mitchel Scanlon Fallen Angels — Mike Lee The Lion — Gav Thorpe (in The Primarchs) Savage Weapons — Aaron Dembski-Bowden Prince of Crows — Aaron Dembski-Bowden Leman Russ: The Great Wolf — Chris Wraight The Unremembered Empire — Dan Abnett Pharos — Guy Haley Angels of Caliban — Gav Thorpe Ruinstorm — David Annandale Luther: First of the Fallen — Gav Thorpe The Lion: Son of the Forest — Mike Brooks Codex: Dark Angels · Arks of Omen: The Lion Got something wrong? Put the book and the chapter in the comments. I would rather be corrected than comfortable. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SCOPE Mostly Warhammer 30,000, the Horus Heresy. The 40k setting contradicts 30k often, as does the wargame. Where I step outside the 30k frame, I say so. The ending is current as of the Arks of Omen. The version most of us learned — the Lion asleep beneath the Rock, waiting for the appointed hour — is dead canon. He has already risen. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE PRIMARCHS CYCLE Twenty sons. Twenty arguments that never end. One at a time, with the books open. Next: a brother who did get found first. New lore lecture every fortnight. No tier lists, no power scaling, no reaction bait. Just the books, read closely, and an argument worth having. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Unofficial fan work, made by one person. Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer: The Horus Heresy and all associated names, characters and imagery are the property of Games Workshop Limited. No affiliation or endorsement is claimed or implied. No official artwork is used anywhere in this video. All imagery is public domain or created for this channel. The narration is synthesised. The script is written from the novels. #Warhammer40k #HorusHeresy #Warhammer30k #DarkAngels #LionElJonson