” The cause?In 40K, the Custodes (the chosen army of occasional actor and full time Warhammer fan Henry Cavill) are a specific branch of the Imperium of Man’s martial forces dedicated to the protection of the God-Emperor, the desiccated husk that maintains the religiofascist domination of Humanity and its territories across the stars from atop a golden throne that has kept him alive for thousands of years through the daily sacrifice of legions of people. Clad in golden, red-plumed armor, they are even above the mighty Space Marine chapters of the Imperium’s forces, and the direct right hand of the Emperor’s will. Kesh does not have a dedicated model in the Adeptus Custodes line, nor does she appear elsewhere in the new edition of Codex: AdeptusWhat was once a biting satire of Britain’s conservative government in the late ‘80s has, in iteration after iteration of lore and retcons, become a messy extrapolation of the fascism and its imagery, and what it means to present that from a marketable perspective—and what that in turn means for cultivating elements of a fandom that interprets those ideas in a very different manner. The first is the very existence of female characters within elements of its fiction. Games Workshop has modernized its models and redeveloped factions over the years, and sometimes that has included presenting more options for female-presenting characters and infantry across the board—whether they’re for alien armies, the forces of Chaos (which in and of itself has a bunch of wild, genderless demons from beyond the constraints of physical space, let alone any perceived constraints of a gender binary), or the forces of theThe new book was only introduced alongside a single new miniature for the Custodes this past weekend—a Shield Captain that can be built with either a masculine head or a non-gendered helmet, as is the case with many of the Custodes models. Although the concept of female Space Marines has never been “canon”—Games Workshop went as far in the 2022 updated rulebook for its prequel-spinoff game, Horus Heresy: The Age of Darkness, to state that Space Marines are raised from genetic stock described as the “biological makeup of the human male,” drawing ire from audiences who perceived the language as adjacent to gender-critical ideas around sex—it has long existed as an idea among fans who have developed their own lore and ideas for custom chapters and factions, and has been debated over almost as long. ”The statement, and ensuing backlash from people eager to paint the decision as an example of “woke” ideas in entertainment, marks an inflection point of several issues Games Workshop has had to struggle with in its fanbase in recent years. The Custodes themselves received something of a sort with the introduction of the Sisters of Silence in Warhammer 40K’s 7th edition in 2017, an all-female allied faction that, in the lore, became the left hand of the God-Emperor’s elite armies to the right hand in the Custodes. The Horus Heresy, the interstellar civil war that set the stage for Warhammer 40K’s world as we know it today—and now considered an important, fundamental cornerstone of the fiction—simply didn’t exist in the earliest versions of the setting. Things always change: few Warhammer fans actually familiar with the material could be pressed into saying that the original lore for the Space Marines presented in the original iteration of the game, Rogue Trader—where they’re closer to armored cops on the frontiers of the Imperium, policing gang worlds and punks, rather than the quasi-Roman fundamentalist crusaders of the modern fiction—are one and the same to the idea of the Space Marines as we know them all these decades later. In turn, elements of lore established in years past have likewise endlessly been rewritten and updated as the story of the fiction has expanded, with Warhammer’s concept of what is and what isn’t “canonical” almost always in flux, things changing from one updated supplement to the next. And yet, in spite of all this, Games Workshop finds itself once again having to navigate another struggle with its audience that has increasingly become a problem in recent years: how its portrayal of the fascism at the heart of Warhammer 40,000's biggest faction has invited opportunities for people who align themselves with that ideology in real life to believe that they have a safe space within Warhammer’s community to share and support those The derision is in the setting’s amplification of a tyrannical, genocidal regime, turned up to 11. Warhammer Is Not” reads in part. The Imperium is not an aspirational state, outside of the in-universe perspectives of those who are slaves to its systems. For as much as Games Workshop can state that Warhammer 40K’s satire is clear for all to see, in reality, its clarity of purpose is farIt’s a monstrous civilization, and its monstrousness is plain for all to see. They are the stars of children’s books, they are the face of merchandising efforts beyond the models themselves, they are the protagonists of dozens upon dozens (upon dozens) of video games. Their perspective is presented as heroic and noble, and as the default, in the vast majority of its fiction. For as evil an entity as it is, the Imperium, and its vanguard in the Space Marines, has been romanticized as something that looks cool. Space Marines are giant, brightly colored power-armored soldiers with guns that shoot the equivalent of artillery rounds in a hailstorm of bullets and literal chainsaw swords. And in being something that looks cool, it in turn invites people who see the Imperium’s ideas about hating things that are different, controlling people through vile doctrines, and its terrifying religious dogma as ideologies that are actually worth supporting, and to feel like they and their awful beliefs have a place in Warhammer’s community, regardless of what Games Workshop says. To do so, it has to recognize something many people within and without the company have already noticed: Warhammer has changed since its origins, and it will always continue to do so. Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. If Games Workshop wants a world where it can mention the existence of a diverse array of characters in its fiction without delving its fanbase into arguments and harassment, it can no longer sit back and claim satire as its guiding principal, and instead must actively push back against these bigoted elements and forcefully prove to them that they have no space in its community. Defending it from becoming another front line in the endless culture war requires Games Workshop to adapt or face consequences of its own making. Want more io9 news?
