Today we are going to talk about the most recent events relating to the elections in the United States. I'm sure you are all familiar with the events that took place on the 6th of January. We will describe the events and then examine what are the implications of what happened on the 6th. This was indeed a historic moment for the United States. It was the biggest challenge to the democracy of the United States that happened. But of course this was not unexpected. It was right from the beginning, soon after the elections. And it became clear that the present president, Mr. Donald Trump, is not likely to be elected. He started saying that there is a lot of irregularity in the election process. And therefore he will not accept the results, even though the race was close in the beginning. And on a few occasions, Mr. Trump was leaving. But at the end, Mr. Joe Biden had a landslide victory. As you know, the American election system is very different from the system that we know. This is a direct election of the president, not through the parliament as it happens in our case. In the United States, for the Senate and the House of Representatives, the two Houses of the Parliament, elections are held separately for the Senate as well as for the House of Representatives. Only a part of the Senate is elected at the time of the presidential election. But these are not interconnected. You don't have to have a majority in parliament to be the president. The president has to get the majority of the electoral votes and also, of course, the popular votes. There are two ways of counting. That is all the votes that a candidate gets is counted. But that is not enough to win the elections. In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but Donald Trump won the electoral vote. The electoral vote, as you may know, is based on the number of electoral votes in each state that one candidate gets. Depending on the size of the states, the number of seats are allotted. And if you win a majority in a particular state, you get all the electoral votes of that state. So what happens is there are some states which are considered battleground states as it were. Because there it is not clear who has the majority, whether the Democrats or the Republicans. So every time an election is held, it is predictable to know who will win New York, who will win California, etc. Because these are clearly unchangeable most of the time. But some of these small states where people keep swinging, that's why these are called the swing states, where you get the electoral votes in the swing states, they are the ones who normally win. So in this case, Mr. Biden got about 5 million votes more than President Trump. And he also got the required majority of the electoral votes. So it was very clear that Mr. Biden had won. And when he won the required number of electoral votes, normally what happens is the other candidate simply accepts defeat. And congratulate the newly elected president. And the process of transfer of power takes place. Normally the two of them, the outgoing president and the incoming president, spend time together, talk to each other about the responsibilities and things are handed over. And in America unlike in India, there is a specific period of time between the election and when the president takes over. Normally the election is in November and the handing over, taking over takes place on the 20th of January. These are all prescribed. But President Donald Trump, since you all know that he was very unpredictable and he was not willing to accept the defeat. And he started raising legal issues. This time the elections were held somewhat differently from the previous years because of the COVID, because of the coronavirus. A large number of people were allowed to vote by postal ballots and also early voting. So what Mr. Trump alleged was that in the process of this change of vote and larger number of ballots by post, somebody has cheated the elections. And therefore he claims that his victory has been stolen by the Democrats. And since Mr. Trump also got a large number of votes or the popular votes, something like 73 million, the race was close. So he claims that all these are being counted wrongly. All the votes have not been counted. There has been a lot of irregularities. And therefore he said, I will fight till the finish. So initially he took up these issues at the various state levels. In America unlike in India, the elections are conducted state by state. There is no central election commission. These are held in the states concerned. And the majority is declared by the governor of the state. So there is an election process in each state. And wherever the race was closed, Mr. Trump and his friends and supporters raised the issue of the majority in each of these states. And each of these states, they considered recounted where necessary and took a long time. And finally declared that Mr. Biden was the next president. And Kamala Harris would be the next vice president. So at that point in time, instead of declaring or accepting defeat, President Trump exorted his supporters, many of them extremists and people who are willing to do anything for President Trump. We told them that we must now be ready to fight. When he said we should be ready to fight, he meant fight, physical fight. And everybody hoped that he will not do that. And at the appropriate time, he will be dropped. But even today, when there are only 10 more days for him to continue as president, he has not conceded. He has not accepted defeat. So at each stage of the preparation and the declaration of the elections, he tried to block the declaration. And constitutionally, the US Congress that's a joint session of the Senate as well as the House of Representatives are supposed to meet on 6th of January. This is prescribed date and receive reports from all the states, verify that these are accurate and then finally make a declaration. So 6th of January is very crucial in every election. So having failed to get his point accepted by various other levels, Mr. Trump said he will prevent the meeting of the US Congress and thus disrupt the process. So if the Congress cannot meet, how can the results be declared? So, but even when all this was happening and he was saying all these people just did not believe that a president will do anything of that kind. But sure enough, on the 6th, when the Congress was about to meet, thousands of his supporters went to what is called the Capitol Hill. You know, what is Capitol Hill? It is the center of the other parliament, both the Senate and the Congress have separate halls in parliament in the Capitol Hill. And sometimes they have joint sessions. So joint session is supposed to be presented over by the vice president. And the vice president of course was President Trump's closest official. So four years, Mr. Pence, Mike Pence was the closest supporter and associate of the president. So first, the president tried to persuade the vice president not to hold this meeting or to say that if there is disturbance, he will not hold the meeting. And therefore, the results cannot be held. So President Trump put pressure on Mr. Pence, but Mr. Pence being a fairly decent gentleman, he said that he had to fulfill his constitutional responsibility, which is to ascertain the voting pattern in various states and then declare the elections. And then these thousands of people, many of them armed with guns and various other bombs and various other things, and they came for battle. And they even managed to get into the Congress halls. And obviously the law enforcement authorities did not expect that. And they did not have enough forces to block them. So before the law enforcement authorities could get closer, a section of the demonstrators, there was supposed to be demonstrators. In fact, many people went there to demonstrate not to disrupt, not to attack. But a section of these people were ready to attack. And President Trump kept on telling them to go and attack on Twitter and Facebook and various other forms. And social media, in fact, had to close down because the president was asking for a rebellion, insurrection is the word. So they got into the parliament building and threatened to even kill the congressmen and the senators. So particularly they were removed to safety while these people, you know, wildly clothed and looking very disturbing. Figures, you must have all seen it on television. They went as much as into the Speaker's Chamber and wherever they could get. And it took them a lot of time to clear the mark of the Congress. Meanwhile, three people had died because of various health problems. One lady was shot by the police and the police officer was killed. So a rough estimate about five people got killed. We don't know the exact figures, but according to the police, five people have been killed and these people were cleared out of the parliament house. At that point, Mr. Pence, the vice president, if he wanted to cooperate with the president, he could have said, this is too much of disturbance and now it is late night, so I'm not going to do anything and if he could have gone home, but he did not do that. He decided to stay and then complete the process with the protection of the armed forces. And it took him the whole night. The whole process ended only by about 4 a.m. of the 7th of January. And clearly, of course, the victory was that of Biden and Kamala Harris. At this point, there was so much of criticism of what President Trump had done, not only in the United States but also all around the world. All of them wondered what was happening to American democracy and there was a lot of criticism in America itself and outside. And somehow Mr. Trump realized that his days are over and then he made this statement saying that though I do not accept the election results and he kept repeating that this was stolen by me, from me. I am the winner of the presidency but in the circumstance in which all these happened, I'll be agreeable to have a peaceful transfer of power on the 20th. So which meant that from January 7th to 20th, the 13 days, it was uncertain as to what he would do. Interestingly, even now people don't know what he would do because he continues to be president till the afternoon of 20th January. In the morning, the new president will be sworn in, the vice president will be sworn in and they are supposed to go to the White House and meet the outgoing president, say goodbye. Till then the authority is with the president, though he is called a lame duck president in the sense that he cannot take new orders, he cannot declare war, he cannot change policy but he is supposed to maintain the law and order and keep the machinery going. And during this whole period from November 3rd to January 20th, there's a transition process. Mr. Biden has already appointed his Secretary of State and other cabinet members. He has appointed various senior officials but he has to appoint altogether a political appointees about 5000 to 6000 appointments he have to make at the highest levels. And that process is continuing. Initially, the White House that is the president did not cooperate. He did not even sign the bill approving the expenditure for the country. At a time when coronavirus has been aggravated, the vaccine is to be distributed. So the time of great crisis because even today each day the number of deaths in the United States is going up each day higher than before and there is complete panic in certain states where the hospitals are overflowing. It is true that a vaccine has been developed or several vaccines have been developed but there is lot of work reaching it to the people and he had no money because the Treasury was not allowed to be operated. But fortunately on 27th December he signed that bill and in my previous lecture I talked about it because it was in that bill that the support for the Tibetans bill was also included and a new budget was provided for the Tibetans which was actually a policy change. And similarly now the outgoing president has taken another policy decision which he should not have done is to establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan. United States like India believes only in one China and Taiwan the relationship was only commercial. But for the first time in history the American president that is outgoing president has declared that we will have diplomatic relations with Taiwan and Taiwan also in the sense it is virtually declaring war against China because China believes that Taiwan is part of China and by declaring that we have diplomatic relations with Taiwan it is a very major development. But unless this is finalized this is cleared by the new president it may not be effective and therefore that is why we don't hear much about it but such a declaration has been made. So anything can happen between now and the 20th and that is what is the anxiety about the American election process. What is it that he can do? He can open a nuclear war if he wants. He can do since he is so derailed, his mind is so disturbed. He could do various things. He has sacked several people. Many people have abandoned him. So now what's going on in the US is everybody is wondering what to do with this gentleman till the 20th and he should not be allowed to do the kind of things he did on the 6th. Peace of course keeping quiet. The process is on. There are two ways in which you can remove a president by force. The easiest way is what is called the amendment, 25th amendment to the American constitution which was enacted after the murder of the assassination of Kennedy because when Kennedy was assassinated people thought suppose he had not died and he was badly injured but incapable of looking after his job, then what would you do with him? And therefore a new act was passed by the Congress saying that such a case when a president is incapable of handling his job he can be removed by the vice president with the support of 50% of the cabinet. So the vice president calls a meeting of the cabinet and says that I feel that President Trump has gone off his mind and therefore whatever he does we cannot accept and so we physically remove him. For that you need a vice president's authority as well as half of the cabinet. That is one option. The other option is to you all know another way to remove a president is to impeach him. Impeach him means the first the U.S. Congress that is a House of Representatives has to vote on impeachment and if it is passed it goes to the Senate and if Senate also passes it the president leaves. But in the history of the U.S. no impeachment has been effective because if the Congress, the president has a majority in the Congress then it won't go over but in the case of Trump it was there was an impeachment by the Congress but he had a majority in the Senate and therefore it did not pass. So the idea was that either to do the 25th amendment for which you need the initiative of the vice president or the Congress initiates an impeachment process. So for the sake of these 10 days mind you they are planning to take one of these actions and we hear that the vice president is not willing to use the 25th amendment. He says let us not use it let us keep it till if he goes mad or something and then we may have to do it. Otherwise you go via the impeachment process. Therefore today that is the Monday is just opening up in the U.S. a bill will be presented to the U.S. Congress and if it passes it goes to the Senate but unfortunately the Senate is not in session. The Senate will be in session only on the 19th. So till 19th they have to wait for the Senate to consider the impeachment process and the 20th is the presidential form of installation of the new president. But according to the law the impeachment process can go on even after the new president has been sworn in against strange regulations. So they say that maybe we are not able to remove him before the 20th but even after the 20th he can be declared disabled and then he cannot become president again because now President Trump thinks that he can come back in 2024 and win the elections because he has 73 million supporters. And so this is this very strange situation in the U.S. today. So you need to follow this minutes by minutes as to what is happening because what happens in these 10 days is going to be crucial for the United States because he can do anything which will harm the reputation of the United States. But so far nothing has happened and in my view the U.S. election process has overcome the problem. If the vice president had surrendered or the parliament could not adopt the resolution then there would have been total chaos. But even though the law enforcement authorities were not able to control what has happened, the attack but now things are normal and it is only a matter of completing these 10 days. So if nothing happens, if the impeachment process does not go forward and the Article 25 is not used, Amendment 25 is not used, the president will cease to be president in the afternoon 21st and if he doesn't leave like an ordinary citizen who has got into the White House he will be escorted out, virtually dragged out of the White House. That would be a great disgrace to an American president. But this is the situation that this has come about. The whole world has condemned this action. One of the first ones to criticize it was our own Prime Minister who is supposed to be a friend of President Trump. But that is all, it is a matter of two heads of government doing business. I don't think there was any emotional attachment between the two and therefore our Prime Minister openly said that what had happened was unacceptable and the president should accept the verdict of the elections. And similarly most other countries have also said that I believe UK and France are the only two countries have not said anything much. China is of course ridiculing the system of elections in the United States and they are enjoying the fact that a man like Trump whom they hated was being defeated and beaten by the people. So things will be alright once the new president takes over and he will declare his policies. Much of it is already known. He has taken action on the Paris Agreement. He has appointed a special representative for climate change. But the first priority is coronavirus and he has set up a machinery and mechanism but still he has not been able to control the deaths and hospitalizations in many states. So his first priority will be to reach the vaccine to all the people. And that will take time. So the priority has to be established. First they will be given to health workers and will be given to aged people perhaps and that line is being established and we are hoping that by the end of January things may be under control in the United States. But as you all know there is a second wave of infections which started in the UK. The UK is now under complete lockdown. Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, all these countries are in deep trouble. Lots of deaths are taking place and therefore this is not the time that we can engage in this luxury of these political battles. But that is really what has happened. One more thing, two things additional. In one case you must have heard of a gentleman, an Indian, Indian origin American from Kerala. He was found with the Indian flag in this particular demonstration. I know him personally, he is a very nice, decent gentleman. He is not the one who will go and attack because he was conference. But he believed that he believes even now that Trump had won the elections and therefore he decided to join the protest. That is fine. But what he did was he carried not only the American flag but also an Indian flag as he walked into this. And he also handed that Indian flag to various other Indians, all of them wave this flag and so on. And this was caught on camera because in America it doesn't mean anything. Anybody can fly any flag in America. Like us, there is no flag code. Ordinary people can fly their flags wherever they want. In the villages if you go you will see in many places people have raised the national flag on top of their houses. There is no restriction as such. And other nationalities who have become American citizens, they also come and wave their flag. So nobody cares. But the fact that this was caught on camera and shown on Indian media, there was a big uproar here that the Indian national flag was used in this protest. And people were very angry. But this gentleman was quite willing to explain his position. So he went to the, you must have seen him on many Indian channels. And he said two things. He said, first of all, I thought this was a peaceful protest. And that is not true. He should have known as an intelligent man. He knew this was not a peaceful protest. And he did not go into the US Congress. He was outside. When he saw there was violence, he left. So he said, I went there thinking that this is a peaceful protest. Unfortunately it turned violent and it should not have turned violent and therefore I have come back. But why the Indian flag? He said, because I wanted to show to the world that people of Indian origin, American citizens of Indian origin are also supporting some of them are supporting Mr. Trump. This is true. 27% of the Indian Americans voted for President Trump. And many of them probably were there in that demonstration. But in our situation, our national flag cannot be used in such occasions. So he was using the national flag of India simply as an identification of the Indian Americans who were supportive of President Trump. But actually he has not violated any law. There is no law in the United States that the foreign flag cannot be filmed. So they are not going to arrest him or they are not going to do anything. Because there are so many flags of Vietnam and Cambodia and Greece and Italy were all flown. But we have taken this very seriously and there is even a case has been filed by a private party in Delhi. And maybe my friend may not be able to come back to India very easily because of this. So it was an unnecessary complication in which we have got involved. We should have also ignored it, but a lot of sentiment about the national flag. That's a side story. Otherwise India is not involved. This is an internal process in the United States and we don't need to be concerned about that. But like the rest of the world, we are concerned about what is going to happen. And I'm seeing news on the CNN that the House of Representatives has already started the process of impeachment. Because the Vice President is not agreeing to using the 25th Amendment. So this is it. But in a way I would say that American democracy has not been affected by all this because the results are legitimate results in an election. But this is not the first time that in American history that fighting has taken place after elections. I do not know the exact dates, but there are several times this has happened. And as you know Abraham Lincoln himself fought a war, a civil war in order to preserve democracy on account of the question of slavery. So violence in exercising democratic rights or democratic privileges is not new in the United States. But many people are saying, how can this happen in the United States? This happens in third world countries. This happens in poor countries, underdeveloped countries etc. That's not true. It has happened everywhere. In our country it has happened. We have seen legislators fighting inside the parliament throwing chairs at each other. We have seen it in other countries in Japan, we have seen it in Taiwan, we have seen it. So it's nothing exceptional. But we are shocked when you see it happening in the oldest democracy in the world. But as long as it comes back to the process, no process is disturbed, there is no reason for anxiety. So this is what I wanted to tell you today for you. And of course by the time you take your examination situation may have changed, new situation may have developed, but this is a historical process about which you should know what the reasons were, what exactly happened, what are the consequences and it is not over yet. Next week also you will have to follow what is happening and you must have in your notebook or whatever record we have, you must have the reasons for it, the results of it and the implications for it. Whether it is at the preliminary stage, preliminary exam stage or the main stage or interview stage, these developments can come up because this is one of the most significant events of history, not only this year maybe for several years to come. Thank you very much. We'll see you next week with a new subject and then we'll discuss. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.


The concept of perfection has ever bedeviled the human mind. To the ancient Greekans, it stood for completeness. With the Romanii, it would define that which has been brought to its own end. The concepts may seem to be opposed, but it does not have to be so. For many, perfection has been a final state of being to aspire to, when one has improved either a thing or the self, to the point where it could no longer be improved. It could be one's art, one's learning, one's athletic skill, one's mastery of the blade. We have, all of us at some point in our lives, endeavored to be better at something than we currently are, to improve upon what we are given for reasons as diverse as we are. Some of us strive to be more. It strives for a completeness the Greek and dramaturgers and philosophers spoke of. It has been a state of existence so many have chased across the vastness of time, yearning for that faultless actuality. There are many within our species that argue it is impossible for humanity to attain perfection, for we, by our very nature, are imperfect, and that perfection is a realm only the divine can inhabit. Others dissent. The subjects of this chronicle chased such a state, striving to embody the flawlessness of humanity in all aspects of being, be it artistic, intellectual, physical, or martial. They held themselves to standards unparalleled, ever reaching for loftier and loftier heights. It would be this ceaseless pathological quest for improvement, this psychotic fixation on a reality unattainable, that would ultimately cast them into the deepest pits of depravity and damnation. No, then, that this is a record of the master of mankind's personally cherished sons, once the exemplars of humanity, now the damned and forever lost. The third legion, emperor's children. The initial recruitment waves for the third legion were drawn from the courtly warriors of the long since pacified European hives on terra, during the closing days of the unification wars. As part of their supplication to the emperor, the nobility of Europa, whose bloodlines were often almost impossibly ancient, offered the finest examples of their youth for service in the armies of unity. Having been humbled by the imperial thunder warriors on numerous occasions, the nobility of the subcontinent desired no such return to conflict and groomed their offspring for imperial service from birth. This was not done exactly voluntarily, at least initially. Accounts spoke of the begrudgment of nobles that were held towards this tithe, seeing their youth as little more than hostages for the golden despot. But as the years went on, cooperation with the imperium was increasingly accepted, and some noble houses became zealous converts to the cause. As the decades passed, legions recruitment ground expanded beyond Europa, as other noble families planet-wide, not wishing to be left in the dust of Terran history, began to to render their sons for Astarty's conversion. During its initial combat operations, the third legion differed markedly from their fellows, but the sheer nature of their deployments, which often saw them fighting closely with the nascent imperial army, often in a leadership capacity. While other Astarty's forces were deployed en masse as dedicated shock troops, the third often led unaugmented human troops, either as individuals or in squads, operating as a sub-regiment command Khandra. While most Astartys would have looked down upon service alongside mortal warriors as belittling to their talents and military role, the third actively took pride in it, perhaps seeing the obvious parallels between it and the battlefield roles of those ancient members of their own noble bloodlines. Pleasing similarities aside, the legion displayed marked skill in the understanding and utilization of the strengths and weaknesses of the bizarre array of regiments under Unity's banner, drawing upon their heritage's long-standing traditions to execute their command roles with admirable efficiency. Numerous campaigns in the closing days of the wars bear their hallmark, if not their name, including the Antarctic clearance by army group Antilles, and the seizure of Nodarin by the bronze host. It was, however, not until the Proximan betrayal that the third legion's name began truly to be uttered with respect and admiration. Proxima, a world astrologically close to Terra, had survived the fires of the Age of Strife with its civilization intact, although it proved no match for the first expeditionary fleets of the Great Crusade. With the Emperor himself present, a great ceremony had been planned to mark Proxima's compliance, and the third legion's 16th cohort was granted the honor of bearing the Palatine Aquila standard of the Master of Mankind, his personal iconography. The ceremony was disastrously revealed to be a trap, an attempt by Proximan insurgents to assassinate the Lord of the Imperium himself. Under torrents of vortex weapon fire, the third legion fought to the last man, alongside the Ligio Custodis, to extract the wounded Emperor from the field, and only by their sacrifice was he able to fight his way back to freedom. Owing to this, the Master of Mankind decreed that, through the blood of their own, the third legion had earned the singular honor amongst his 20 legion as a startys, to bear the Palatine Aquila itself upon their armor and upon their heraldry, while the Aquila, in its variations, denoted both the Imperium and loyalty to the Emperor as its Master, and there was much allegory bound up into its form. For the third, this became a mark of the honor with which they had comported themselves, and a level to continually aspire to as the Crusade marched ever on. While it may seem commonplace to us of today's Imperium, these were altogether different times, and to bear the mark of the Emperor's own sigil was an honor quite literally unheard of by any outside the Imperial household itself, and by one simple declaration would ever mark the third out from their peers. The act came with another honor, the advent of the legion's own name. In keeping with their now special place within the legion as a startys, the third were dubbed the Emperor's Children, and their panoply of war redecorated in a lacquer of rich Imperial purple and gold. So too did their role in the Crusade shift. While they were always maintained as a combat force, the origin and mien of their recruits still almost exclusively drawn from terror nobility made them now well suited to serve as protection details for Imperial diplomatic missions, or even as diplomats themselves, a role aided by the sheer fact they bore the symbol of the Emperor himself upon their breastplates. The character of the evolving legion meant they would carry out any and all orders with an exacting precision far above even the post-human dedication of other a startys, and in doing so became effectively the Emperor's own voice, often carrying Imperial orders on his behalf to far flung elements of the Crusade. There was, however, one great tragedy that would mark the early days of the legion, an event that almost brought doom upon the third in its entirety. It was one that built upon an earlier and, in isolation, not crippling loss. As the great Crusade dusted off from Terra and expanded outwards from the Sol system, the Emperor's first extraplanetary conquest had, naturally, been Terra's one natural satellite, Luna, home of the famed, if degenerate, lunar gene cults. While immediately, and stunningly brutally pacified by the 16th Legion Luna Wolves in one of their most lauded early actions, the lunar cults were brought into compliance due to their genetic craft, as the needs of the Crusade demanded the Emperor expand his Imperium's ability to produce a startys. As the bio-forges of Luna ramped up to full production, shipments of legion gene seed were dispatched from the Emperor's own laboratories within the Imperial Palace to serve as strategic reserves should the need arise. When the shuttle carrying the Third Legion's reserve approached, however, disaster struck. It is not entirely clear whether the loss of the craft was accidental or deliberate. Some postulate the pilot simply lost control or that mechanical failure was to blame, causing the shuttle to crash upon arrival. Others point the blame at recidivist elements within the lunar cults, and the Selenar specifically, questioning the loyalty to the new Imperial regime, the geneticists professed. Whatever the reason, the loss of so much priceless genetic material was a huge blow to the initial expansion of the Third Legion, but not one that was inherently threatening to its very survival. Were it not? For what followed. One solar year after the Legion's triumphant action on Proxima, a single night of horror befell the Legion's only surviving gene seed reserve, this time upon Terra itself. It was discovered to the horror of the Magi Biologist supervising the gene vaults that an unknown and appallingly effective viral blight was tearing through the gene seed of every Astartes Legion. What had taken the Emperor a Terran century to build was being threatened with extinction in a matter of hours, and the Magi sought desperately to check the virus's spread. It defied all treatment, leading to furious binaric speculation as to a possibly artificial, perhaps Xenos origin. The Mechanicum adepts, unable to halt the progress of the blight, informed the Emperor himself, and only through the master of mankind's peerless genius was the virus purged. While each of the Legion's Astartes had been affected, it emerged in the aftermath that the Third Legion's entire gene seed reserve had been reduced to black, toxic sludge. As of this night, an indreadful concert with the earlier reserve loss on Luna, the Third Legion began to die. The nature of Astartes' gene seed allows a fully grown Astartes to replicate genetic data within themselves, as their gene seed matures within their progenoid lands, to be harvested upon their death in battle. However, the very nature of combat makes this process inexact, dangerous, and far from efficient, especially in the early days of the Great Crusade, when demands for mature Astartes were at their highest, as were their combat losses. While other legions had access to stocks of gene seed upon Terra and Luna, the Third now had none. Astartes could only be created from seed harvested upon the battlefield and shipped back to the home system, where the Emperor and his geneticists could only rebuild the reserves at a crawling pace. By simple and terrible mathematics, the Third Legion was doomed to simply expire. It was only a matter of time. But then, everything changed.  Kemos had been settled by humanity millennia before, during the Dark Age of Technology. Its role had been a mining world, and it had borne the long dark of the Age of Strife through enforced, exacting austerity. The resources of the planet, strained even during those thousands of years, were reaching their limit. The people were barely producing enough food to feed themselves. The entirety of the Kemosian people toiled every hour of every day, maintaining the vapor mines and synthesizers, struggling to meet quotas they knew were simply to fill their bellies with the most meagre of nutritional scraps. Recreation was unknown, a frivolous thing sacrificed upon the altar of necessary survival. As a simple mining colony, the loss of the great human stellar rel millennia before had condemned the planet to a slow and painful starvation. Fulgrim's capsule was discovered by the caretakers, the planetary regime's police force, who'd observed the fiery trail the pod tore across the sky from the fortress factory of Calax. Recovering the infant, they were so stunned by his angelic beauty, they begged the executives of Calax to spare his life, as orphans of Kemos were quickly put to death and recycled, deemed an undue strain upon planetary resources. The executives relented, charging one of the caretakers who had discovered him to take Fulgrim as his ward. The child's growth, like all of his brothers, was rapid and his effect upon his adopted home profound.  With his quotas easily filled, Fulgrim turned his mind to the workings of Kemos' technology. Improving all the systems of Calax incrementally, until, at age 15, he had become one of the executives himself, and the fortress factory's output had skyrocketed. Not in these days a jealous being, Fulgrim dispatched emissaries to the remaining commotion holdouts, seeing solidarity and adversity as the only solution to the world's ills. His men brought with him all the knowledge Calax could now offer, asking only in return an exchange of data to better help those across the entire world. Long thought lost mining settlements were rediscovered, repaired, and reopened. The slow death of the world was arrested and, for the first time in centuries, Kemos began to produce a surplus. Fulgrim, now universally acknowledged as the planet's ruler, fostered the return of things long thought lost, leisure, art, and culture. Music now began to echo through the rusted hallways of the mining cities. Galleries were opened to display paintings and works of sculpture. Fulgrim himself penned some of the first dramatic theater to be put before the public in millennia. It was not long after this ascendancy that light plied the skies of Kemos for the first time since Fulgrim's arrival. To the shock of the citizens of Calax, a flight of stormbird dropships in stunning purple bearing the golden emblem of an ancient avian landed before the fortress factory. Fulgrim himself, deep genetic memories stirred by the site, met with the head of the city's caretakers in an emergency meeting. Emerging at the end of an honor guard of Third Legion Astartes was the Emperor himself, come to reunite his lost son with his Legion. Fulgrim needed no bidding, no compulsion. He immediately dropped to his knees before his father. Travelling with his gene sire to Terra, Fulgrim was presented to his own assembled sons. It was, however, a Legion in name only. Barely 200 of the Third Legion remained, standing unbroken but so terribly diminished before their Primarch. Undeterred, Fulgrim reaffirmed what his sons always knew they were, that despite their tragedies they remained the Emperor's chosen, his heralds, his warriors, his children. It was this latter title that, as is well known, would remain. The Third Legion were ever the Emperor's children. Fulgrim, despite being eager to begin active military service, was nonetheless pragmatic, knowing that only his own genetic stock would be used to rebuild his Legion. He also was aware that 200 warriors was barely an efficacious force in its own right, Astartes or not. Seeing the need to nurture the Emperor's children's recovery while still utilizing them and their newfound Primarch, the Emperor requested that the Primarch Horus Lupercal mentor his brother Fulgrim. Over a standard Terran decade, the Third Legion and 16th Legion Lunawolves fought at each other's side, and the bonds forged in battle between the two Primarchs, contradictory though they may have been in nature and demeanor, became unbreakable. Indeed, as unalike as their respective Primarchs were in character, but both equal in skill, both legions complimented each other to a perfect degree. While the 16th were brutally direct, the Third were subtle in life. By the time the Emperor's children had replenished their numbers to an acceptable degree, the bonds they had forged with the Lunawolves had become nigh unbreakable, even in the face of direst, darkest treachery, as would be demonstrated in the darker years to come. Over the course of this time with the 16th, Fulgrim, through his exposure to the works of the Imperium, and in keeping with his own personality and that of his Legion, began to become ever more possessed with the desire to embody the perfection he felt the Emperor's honor of his Legion demanded. While initially taking the form of wishing to embody the best that humanity could offer to become shining Paragon's worthy of the Palatine Aquila, over time this striving for perfection became unto an obsession for the Fianetian, as the Primarch came to be known. The Third Legion pursued all things with a total commitment and single-mindedness. They would never accept that their skills could be exceeded, and, when this was demonstrated otherwise, would apply themselves to mastery of said skill with utter focus, allowing the desire for perfection to consume them completely until their goal was achieved. This obsession extended beyond military concerns into all aspects of human existence. The Third Primarch himself was said to have been a being of stunning beauty, on par with the beatific splendor of his angelic brother Sanguinius of the Ninth Legion Blood Angels. Those of Fulgrim's Legion sought to emulate their Primarch in all things, commissioning or crafting only the finest decorations on their power armor and weapons. Aesthetic affectations, such as lacquered paintings and fine fur cloaks, were common amongst those of the Third, from line astarties up to the Legion's elite Phoenix Guard Terminator squads, again seeking to emulate the fashion of their gene sire. As the Crusade progressed, the obsessions of the Third slowly transformed from what could be seen as admirable efforts itself improvement and development into something cancerous, warped. Ultimately, the import the Legion placed upon the skills of others led them to believe that the only true way to measure personal achievement was by comparing oneself against another. Personal pride was no longer enough for many within the Third. One's virtues could only be seen as superior if they exceeded those of everyone else. Accolades won by cousins from other legions became personal slights, insults against those of the Third. Relentless need for validation bred twisted jealousies and worse, disdain for those they believed they excelled. No victory, no achievement, no artistic expression could be enough for them. All that had come before was base competence, another metric for them to measure themselves by. Exactly when the Emperor's children fell to the malign influences of the arch enemy is unclear. Like their fellow damnable kin, it is likely that the process was simply a usurpation of their already degenerating character. For, as the ancient Terran Maxim states, pride cometh before the fall and there were none more prideful than the Phoenician and his sons. There are numerous and fragmentary records that, when combined, speak to the dark truth of the matter. The cleansing of the reptilian lair by the Third Legion, the matter of no small amount of pride for them, is one such example. The ocean worlds of the Lahrensteller volume were rich prizes for the crusade and the Emperor's children saw the technologically advanced Xenos as a credible adversary to test their metal upon. For the War Council had deemed their extermination a high-risk venture best avoided in light of the Imperium's previous losses during the Rangdan Xenosides. Fulgrim would not countenance such a thing, both in terms of permitting the continued existence of Xenos within the Imperium's borders, nor the implied slight that his legion could be bested upon the field of battle. A full account of the campaign will be detailed in a later record, but it should be noted that here in the aftermath of the Purge, Fulgrim emerged from the Lahren homeworld in possession of a sword of clearly Xenos provenance, a weapon which he seemed to favor consistently from that point until the Istvan atrocity, while each of the Emperor's sons were permitted certain eccentricities by virtue of their position. This was marked in that not only was the Phoenician wielding a Xenos weapon, but he did so in favor of the mighty weapon Fireblade, crafted by the hand of none other than Ferris Manus, Primark of the Tenth Legion Iron Hands and Fulgrim's closest brother beyond Horus Lupercal. In light of what has since transpired, it is all but certain given the degenerate serpentine nature of the lair, and material recovered from their worlds by Mechanicum Xenobiologists that these aliens were corrupted subjects of the powers of the warp, and the weapon, born by one of the Emperor's own sons, was in fact infused with the essence of one of those warp creatures themselves. It would appear, at this point, that the fate of the Third Legion was all but sealed, as in seemingly all cases in those years of the Great Heresy, a Primark's face is inextricably linked to those of their gene coding. Other factors are likely significant in this regard, such as the closeness the Emperor's children shared with the now renamed Sons of Horus, allowing for the propagation of that Legion's perfidious warrior lodges within the body of the Third. Certainly, Horus Lupercal was quick to leverage his closeness with Fulgrim in order to sway the already corrupted Phoenician to his side, pitting him against his brother Ferris in doing so. Alas, a full account of all this must wait until a later date. Suffice it to say, as the days of the Great Betrayal grew closer, the Emperor's children began to spiral ever downwards. Their worst excesses of pride and hubris writ large upon their perfect purple armor, their sins barely hidden and striving to emerge. Once they were Paragons, soon they would be antithetical, the very antonym of all that had been good and righteous in humanity. Until such a time, as I am bidden to commit the full atrocity of their fall to Imperial record, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel are made possible through the incredibly kind contributions of my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com forward slash oculus imperia. 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