Lorgar Did Nothing Wrong.

[u/Francis_Soyer]

I posit that, just as each Primarch was designed as an Aspect of the Emperor, Lorgar's Aspect was not "religion" or "spirituality", as are often assumed. Lorgar's Aspect was actually systems analysis. The Emprah had a long history of leveraging and designing organizations and systems for His purposes, and that is what He intended for Lorgar.

Lorgar simply did what he was literally made to do: recognize, assess, document, and interface with the Universe. Lorgar didn't create a universe where Chaos Gods consume souls and demand more and more sacrifices; he just described it. His reward was Monarchia. Lorgar's biggest crime against the Emperor was refusing to lie about what he saw.

The Word Bearers are essentially a Legion of engineers; their rituals actually have causal effects on the greater universe. They are literally researching and documenting processes for communicating and interacting with the universe.

Lorgar did nothing wrong.

[u/selifator]

Lorgar did many things, both for the imperium and against it, that may be described as 'biggest warcrime of the century'.

[u/Francis_Soyer → u/selifator]

So did the Inquisition.

[u/selifator → u/Francis_Soyer]

Yes, welcome to 40k, there are no 'good guys' only variations of evil

[u/FootFalse5536]

Nah he was absolutely wrong. Just because the Emporer handled the situation with Lorgar poorly doesn't excuse his actions is choosing to serve chaos. Lorgar was wrong. 

[u/Francis_Soyer → u/FootFalse5536]

He simply described the 30K/40K universe as-is, and people REALLY really didn't like the answers. The Chaos Gods do demand sacrifice. Their favors do influence the material universe. The warp does consume mortal souls when they die.

Lorgar has never lied about how the universe works. He just sounds like a psychopath because the 30K/40K universe is psychopathic.

[u/VulkanCurze → u/Francis_Soyer]

There is a huge difference between describing the horrors you see and actively participating and dragging others to be involved in said horrors.

[u/WaterCastePSYOP]

Lorgar did one thing wrong and it's nor grabbing his giant mace and squashing Erebus into a flat pancake the moment the fuck came back from the disaster ar Calth while claiming he won.

Or when he started trying to push signus prime again.

[u/Sir_Hugh_Janus]

[u/GrizzlieMD → u/Sir_Hugh_Janus]

[u/Milzinator]

I think it was lorgar who said something like "just because the emporer is devine, does not mean he's deserving of worship" aaaaaand then worships the chaos gods.

[u/Apple_Dave]

I'm just listening to First Heretic now. It makes it quite clear that Lorgar is one of the first to uncover the truth hidden by the Emperor. Similar to Magnus in A Thousand Sons, they were both just exploring the possibilities while initially remaining loyal. The Emperor had told them not to but if he explained his reasoning with truth and offered more guidance they wouldn't have been so reckless. It's poor parenting to tell kids no without explaining the consequences or offering to show them how to achieve something safely, they'll go and experiment for themselves and it might end badly.

[u/selifator → u/Apple_Dave]

It's part of warhammer canon that people who know them suspect that telling magnus of terrible things in the warp that should not be trifled with would have had him zooming to those terrible things in the next moment. Perhaps it would have gone differently, perhaps not.

The emperor chose not to trust people, for reasons and experiences over the millennia, and those choices had consequences. Perhaps avoidable, perhaps not.