Were female Primarchs the next step in the Emperor's plan?

[eldargal]

Also, they would be brother and sister and that would be weird.

Circe of the Golden Lions legion.

Homeworld: Philadelphos. Damn I should do this for a HH army.

[Wolfshade]

Nothing like brotherly love...

[bfmusashi]

If he had the ability to create super ladies, why didn't he? At some point he had to have looked around and thought "Man, dating these kids all the time is kind of old, maybe I should make a fellow immortal. Y'know, have someone to talk to and maybe hook up with sometimes." I think it's a pretty problematic window into his character, not his technology, that this was avoided. As to lady Astartes I figured it was because the Marines were disposable, and men are almost always more disposable than women from a propagation standpoint.

[Wolfshade]

Being immortal he knew that teenage girls are too much of a handful even for him.

I think the question of sex is irrelevant, I don't think that they can reproduce sexually.

Or maybe the big E filled in the missing dna strands with frog dna so in the male rich environment they will turn female! When the allfather returns he shall be the allmother!

[bfmusashi]

Sex isn't performed solely for the creation of offspring for most individuals She wouldn't be a teenager forever like the women he supposedly made his babies with and she'd get that joke that was really popular in 500 AD. You can't put a price on that.

[Mr Mystery]

Main point I've been trying (and failing!) to make...

The Primarchs are considered the pinnacle of the Emperor's work, by dint of being the last thing he created, and by far the most powerful.

Yet it's only kind of assumed that there was no further step. We know he was unable or otherwise unwilling to recreate them after their abduction. But what if they were just the next step, and more was planned.

John Grammaticus raises some really cool biological points, and kind of (ish) supports my theory that it would be easier to create male clones, than somehow tinker with genomes to make female Primarchs. But it seems, given the level of tinkering that went on with Primarchs that such a feat may not have been beyond The Emperor's capabilities, had he kept the kids at home.....

As for a family of Angrons? Who knows how Angron should have turned out. He had the Butcher's Nails driven into his skull from a relatively young age, addicting him to rage and punch ups! Ditto many of the traitor Primarchs. It's a gross over simplification, but most of it stemmed from Daddy issues of one kind or another. If they'd been raised on Terra, and able to come to terms with their status under The Emperor's tutelage, instead of largely on their own, who knows what might have happened? Certainly given the abduction, it seems the Chaos Gods didn't want them being raised on Terra!

[CoffeeGrunt]

It's almost like 40K is a setting where great plans are torn asunder by thirsting Gods before they come to their utopian fruition, eh? Given the alluded-to Daemonic influence in creating the Primarchs, Chaos had a hold on them from the beginning. Something, somewhere would have turned against the Imperium, and a family of Primarchs would reap a terrible toll on the galaxy at large. Who's to say that growing up with daddy on Terra would have solved any of their issues anyway? The Emperor was a pretty bad father when he was present, nevermind his absence.

[Mr Mystery]

It is very dystopian. And very post-Imperial Britain, which is another thread in itself!

It's also hard to say whether The Emperor knew the Heresy would happen or not. There's suggestions here and there it was allowed for, but perhaps not the actual outcome.

Was The Emperor even an actual father? Was that his intent? I see him more as a Doctor Manhattan. Only barely, nominally human.

[Anggul]

The Emperor's goal was for humanity to reach full psychic potential and dominate the galaxy. It has nothing to do with gender. As said, the Primarchs were just tools for this goal.

[spagunk]

... the Primarchs were just tools for this goal.

I see what you did there.