What is "Grimdark"?
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war . . .
We've read these words a hundred, a thousand times - the first time we read them was perhaps when we first cracked open the first rulebook we owned (they've been a staple of the introductory paragraphs since the earliest editions). Now, perhaps we just gloss over them, or only see the phrase "grim darkness" as a parody when something in 40K is ridiculous or just "too much".
Many people have tried to define - have defined, really - what "grimdark" means for Warhammer 40,000. They have succeeded because, after all, this is a game of personal creation, a game where we define our own reality and setting and meaning and narrative. True, we do it cooperatively, in conjunction with those we play the game with, but our slice of the 41st millennium is our slice of it.
Other people have defined it. Here is how I define it.
First off, I think it's important to point out that "grimdark is not 40K". 40K is grimdark - in that it has that quality - but 40K is also something much more than just grimdark. One of those things is the aesthetic of 40K - and it's important to note that grimdark isn't an aesthetic. "Cathedrals and skulls" is the prevailing aesthetic of the Imperium, a kind of thanocentric, baroque gothic - but that isn't grimdark. The oppressive grandeur and beyond-monumental scale of Imperial architecture and warfare certainly supports it by making individual humans seem insignificant, but grimdark is something beyond the aesthetic. And, of course, it is only the Imperium which has this particular aesthetic - other races have a look-and-feel quite different from the Imperium, yet "grimdark" pervades the entire setting.
So what is "grimdark"? I break it into its two components - "grim" and "dark". For a story, setting, army background, anything to "be 40K" it needs to have both of these things.
"Grim" refers to the "fighting the long defeat", a concept not unknown in literature and even in the real world. Tolkien popularized it, but it is very common throughout our fiction. It is defined by themes of gradual loss, of inevitable defeat. "Victory" always comes at a very real cost, or is only a holding back of the darkness, or is a partial return to the status quo not an improvement. For Tolkien, it was the gradual abandonment of Middle Earth by the Elves and the passing of all that was wonderful, the destruction of the Rings of Power in order to defeat Sauron, even the personal losses experienced by Frodo and Sam.
In 40K, we see this very clearly once it has been pointed out - the moment Magnus breaches the psychic wards of the Imperial dungeon success or failure balances on a knife's edge, and once the Impossible City is lost it is only a matter of time. That is it - everything else is just the playing out of the endgame; mankind will never free itself of the Warp. When the Emperor falls defeating Horus, it sets into motion an inevitable progression of events - piece by piece, bit by bit he fails and falls into madness and decrepitude and his moribund empire fails and falls with him.
Those are the larger examples of the theme, but it is found all the way through the setting - the forgetting of technology and the inferiority of newer-manufactured items compared to relics is the long defeat of knowledge. The obsession with ritual is the long defeat of culture, of rationality. And the meat-grinder tactics of the Imperium are the long defeat of basic humanity.
(It is, of course, this "grim" aspect that made the Primaris so disliked - even if people didn't explicitly realize it. Yes, they were seemingly shoe-horned into the narrative just as an excuse to release models, but that sort of thing has been done before. They had good potential narrative tension in the disagreements between them and the First Born - they are good vehicles for storytelling. Even the commonest objection - "how could Cawl better the Emperor's work?" - fails to really address the core of it. In all honesty, anyone who thinks that the Emperor's work - for which he had to obtain the help of the genewrights of Luna to achieve - couldn't be improved has been more-powerfully influenced by Imperial propaganda than most actual Imperial citizens . . . but that's by-the-by. No, the reason the Primaris are instinctively and even viscerally disliked by 40K fans is that their appearance in the narrative - as better, faster, stronger, with superior technology - goes directly against the idea of the long defeat. They aren't "grim".)
Of course, much of the long defeat remains purely theoretical - because the setting cannot really change all that much and continue to sell models. The Imperium is perpetually besieged, perpetually on the brink of destruction . . . yet always endures. The Emperor is failing and fading, but he will never vanish. The Eldar are a dying race . . . who will be dying for as long as there are new editions to print. But even if the long defeat does not advance because the setting does not meaningfully advance (the Great Rift is no real change to the galaxy; the situation can be summed up as "humanity stands on the brink of destruction, besieged within and without" which is exactly how it was before) its flavor is an essential part of 40K.
"Dark" refers to "hypocrisy all the way down". Everyone is a hypocrite - everyone. Too-many people say of 40K "there are no good guys" and leave it at that - but that misses the mark. Does that mean everyone is a bad guy, or that there are no good guys or bad guys? One can easily get distracted into "but they think they are justified in what they do!" arguments which, again, miss the mark - of course they think they are justified. Everyone who did anything he didn't turn around and try to undo thinks he was justified in doing it - that's why he did it! He had a very good, particular reason for doing that thing, at that time, to that person.
It's not that there are no good guys which makes 40K "dark" - there are good guys (who they are depends on your point of view . . .) but they are all hypocrites.
Hypocrisy isn't simply doing something bad. It is doing something - honestly, it could be something good or bad if you want to make the binary distinction - that you said shouldn't be done or that you disapprove of doing.
Everyone in 40K needs to be a hypocrite, even just in some insignificant way that doesn't influence the wider narrative, just for the feel of the thing. We see it in the Imperium making use of alien technology, of aliens themselves, of mutants and psykers, of Chaotic tomes of lore and cursed artifacts. The very foundation of the Imperium - the Emperor himself - is a hypocrite; once disdaining religion but now relying on it to support him in his broken state. He is a hypocrite when he consumes the souls of sacrificed psykers, surviving because of their death when he wanted to let humanity survive through his sacrifice.
It is not simply enough for 40K characters to be cruel, greedy, cowardly, generally immoral - they have to be so in a way which sits in direct opposition to something they hold dear. They must be "bad guys" not only in the eyes of others, but in their own eyes - if they turned their judgment inwards, I suppose. Many of them do not, but we can see it.
I like to focus on the "dark" aspect, the hypocrisy, in my narratives - and it is writ large and small. The hypocrisy of the Daughters of Verity venerating not only an Abominable Intelligence but a xenos Abominable Intelligence is the main theme for the Ophelia VII 'Dust Zone setting but minor themes play out elsewhere. Danforth Laertes is a pious son of the Ecclesiarchy, requiring strict observance to its moral teachings . . . and is a lothario and lady's man. A rigid Puritan in terms of his dealing with Chaos and heretics and xenos - except Verity, of course! - he does not apply that to his private life. In love with one woman he nevertheless brings countless others into his bed. A child of rape who saw what the trauma did to his mother he nevertheless cruelly abandons them afterwards (even before breakfast!) and it is implied he might be using his psychic powers to manipulate them . . . a type of rape in itself. Even minor characters like Rebecca are hypocrites - a medical professional, devoted to saving lives, she poisons herself with recreational narcotics. The rulers of Outremer are hypocrites in condemning the use of clones . . . while using clones of the same person and for much the same ends themselves.
There is probably more to be said about what makes something "grimdark" - I've barely touched on the insignificance of a single human, of the awful cruelties bestowed on them in the name of terrible pragmatism. But think these things are, when looked at on a foundational level, simply examples of the long defeat and hypocrisy all the way down. These two things play out in a myriad of ways but, for me, they are the two foundation stones of the entirety of Warhammer 40,000's "grimdark" edifice.
