This *started* as a rant about how I don't get arguing for the Imperium of Man as this wonderful society, since to me part of the *fun* of 40K is that there's no single faction which is obviously The Good Guys, and *especially* not the Britain stand-in. You can have the fun of Necromundan hives and gang wars, clunky cybernetics, servitor skulls, Inquisitors, Adeptes Sororites, and everything else because the Imperium *isn't* good.

It's a great bit of 80s reaction to Thatcher, still relevant today. The idea that the "good guys" can be antiheroes, or heroes who are part of a terrible system, is very much the same Britain that gave us Lobo, Elric and 2000 AD. I don't think Americans with our self-righteousness would ever create a universe like this; the after the fact, conservative idealization of the Imperium suggests it could have easily gone a different direction.

But here's where I get fan-worshippy instead. Pulling on an Arthurian golden age turned to backwards pop medievalism is also very very British - and simply a brilliant way to build a mythological explanation for all the story details which aren't really the far future.

And those story cues as visuals are brilliant too; a "dark future" full of cybernetic putti, censers, huge tomes, and skull-encrusted shields won't raise eyebrows when tanks slightly more modernized than WWI versions are supported by infantry inspired by Rambo movies. Among other things *that* sets up other factions believably having a clunkier design aesthetic (orks, Kroot) or a more futuristic one (Aeldari, Tau).

And all this came into being organically, it's amazing.