I think a big part of the anger was about the fact that it was a hard retcon. It used to be official in the lore that “all space marines are male,” but Games Workshop changed it to “there have always been female space marines”.
Isn’t there a ton of “retconning*” in 40k lore, sort of on purpose? Like I always thought 40k lore was made up of bits and scraps from all different perspectives from different races and groups all throughout the 40k universe. It’s justifiable, even expected, to have inconsistencies when your history is being written by so many varied authors.
I think a big part of the anger was about the fact that it was a hard retcon. It used to be official in the lore that “all space marines are male,” but Games Workshop changed it to “there have always been female space marines”.
There were female space marines in the original Rogue Trader. Male-only is already a retcon.
And marines were just normal people, the Primarchs just generals and orks used bolters
Isn’t there a ton of “retconning*” in 40k lore, sort of on purpose? Like I always thought 40k lore was made up of bits and scraps from all different perspectives from different races and groups all throughout the 40k universe. It’s justifiable, even expected, to have inconsistencies when your history is being written by so many varied authors.