A closer look
The ultimate irony of creating a brutally oppressive, xenophobic galactic empire is that your fanbase will eventually start unironically worshipping it. The original creators designed the notoriously grimdark tabletop game as a heavy-handed, tongue-in-cheek satire of Thatcher-era politics and over-the-top military fascism. Fast forward a few decades, and the blatant satire has been aggressively lost on half the fanbase, who now aggressively scream 'For the Emperor' with zero trace of irony.
