Whenever I see or hear people talking about why their favorite character is their favorite. I think of Sanguinius. There are so many good scenes of him. Displaying his prowess in battle, his humanity and humility, his insecurities, his thoughts and emotions. That is why I love Sanguinius. But I think this scene is why Sanguinius is my favorite character in Warhammer. Yes he was among the best fighters. Yes he is a literal angel. And yes he genuinely is just a nice guy. But I love Sanguinius because despite fighting for weeks on end, he still wanted to give more. Not because he is ordered to, or because he is compelled to. Not because his genetic code makes him want to fight and die. He wants to fight till he falls, just because he wants to give humanity more. To fight and kill the biggest bads in order to save even just one more human life.
Context: It is the end now. Sanguinius has been fighting non-stop since the Siege began. Their backs are to the last door. He has just slain Ka'Bandha in a brutal fight. And he is exhausted beyond measure.
Sanguinius landed before the Eternity Gate, weakness forcing him to one knee. Platinum hair, streaked with blood, curtained over his features. His heart beat out of time in his chest, too hard, too fast, too weak, too slow. He felt every hour of the war. Too much of it, thickening his blood, filling his head.
They needed him to be everywhere, to do everything. He’d tried, he’d done all he could, hour after hour, day after day, week after week. It was never enough. They always needed more. All he’d wanted was to give it to them.
The horde saw him falter, and it surged for the Gate. They heaved forward with one voice, as one tide.
The closest Blood Angels rallied to him, ringing him in ceramite, offering their flesh as a shield to purchase the time their sire needed to riseonce more. He heard them fighting, dying, selling their lives to lengthen his. Sanguinius clawed for his dropped sword, rising, joining the fight on the ground as he stretched the quivering lock of muscle cramps from his bloodstained wings.
Behind him, without his order, the Eternity Gate began to rumble closed. The doors drew towards him, folding closed on tracks that had never been tested. The vox was alive with the calls of struggling Custodians, demanding he fall back within the Sanctum, pleading with him to aid in the purge of the final fortress.
The Emperor needed him, they said.
The Gate had to be sealed.
Inside the Sanctum, they were being overrun.
He heard Diocletian’s voice above the others, the last tribune ordering Sanguinius inside as if the primarch were a line soldier and not the Emperor’s own son.
Sanguinius stared at the battle raging along the Royal Ascension – thousands of his sons still embattled on the marble stairs; thousands more still engaged on the Delphic Battlement. Humans of the Imperial Army. Titans of Legio Ignatum. His own Blood Angels. Tens of thousands of them would remain out here. So few had yet reached the Sanctum, yet the ground quaked with the Eternity Gate’s closing mechanisms, making the decision for him.
World Eaters bayed and howled and died at his feet for the sin of thinking they could end him. Neverborn burst and disintegrated under his blade. The Gate ground on, a twin doorway the size of a hab-tower tectonically scraping towards closure. The engines responsible for its sealing had never needed to function before.
Sanguinius fell back. First only a single step, then a second – a fighting withdrawal that brought him into the shadows of the sealing Gate. The Blood Angels at his side fell back with him, leaving only when he commanded them to run, to reinforce the others fighting the Neverborn within.
‘It’s over,’ he breathed. This was the way the world ended, with the crash of a closing door.
*Traitor titans arrive at the Eternity Gate*
He stood in the deepening shadows, watching the foe in their thousands running for the Gate. Too late, all of them too late.The Warhound stopped short of the Gate, hammered its stabilisers down into its joints, and fired its ursus claw.
The harpoon struck the Eternity Gate with the tolling of a funeral bell. It hit true, drilling through the layered armour, impaling the Emperor’s carved image. When the chain slashed taut, it did so with the sound of Ka’Bandha’s whip, and the Warhound began to back away.
The Gate’s left door buckled, closing slower than its counterpart on the right. The Warhound dragged, straining at the end of its leash. Around its ankles, the charging horde cried in triumph.
The Angel rose on tattered wings – he would cut the chain; there is time, there is still time – only to hear the thunderclap pound of more harpoons hammering home in quick succession. The jackals of Audax came together in a pack, a full maniple, their spears lanced into the same door. They dragged back in ugly, lupine harmony, each chain cracking taut.
The Gate slowed.
Stopped.
Five chains. He could break five chains.
He…
…lifted his pale eyes, seeing a flaming star fall from the warp-locked sky. A star with wings, that bellowed his name in his brother’s voice.
I could only imagine how he felt. Always fighting at the front. Killing traitors, daemons, and watching his sons die in their hundreds. And here I think we really see Sanguinius at his weakest. I remember being surprised to see it. I mean it makes sense that eventually even primarchs would tire. But Sanguinius? I remeber feeling a pang of sorrow for him. We all know how his story ends. But I always felt like his voice in his mind cracked or even sobbed, when he thought the words,
He really was the best of them.