PowerRankings

One cited deathThe End and the Death · 2023
Does this death move the ranking?

Confirms the ladder

The higher-ranked entity killed the lower-ranked one. Record and ladder agree.

Horus Ascendant vs Sanguinius

The killerHorus AscendantWarhammer 40,000 · rank 2
3 places
The victimSanguiniusWarhammer 40,000 · rank 5

This one agrees too, and it is the only page here where losing earns the victim his position rather than costing it. Fifth place is argued from delay: from making an unwinnable engagement expensive in the one currency that mattered, and buying enough of it to change how the war resolves. Three places of separation measures what that purchase was worth. It does not measure the distance between the two combatants, which the record settles in a single direction and which nobody involved was ever confused about.

The connecting record

shownThe End and the Death · 2023

Horus Ascendant killed Sanguinius in The End and the Death.

who went aboard knowing how it would end

What each of them is ranked on

The killer · Horus Ascendant · rank 2

Everything four gods could fit in one body — heresy

Heresynovelgame

All four powers backed him at once, and briefly he was the strongest thing in the galaxy on that basis. He was not the first — Be'lakor, far below him here, holds that — but he is the one they chose after giving up on a champion they could not steer, and the difference between the two entries is what the gods learned in between. He killed Sanguinius, broke through the Emperor's guard aboard the Vengeful Spirit, and left the Emperor in the state the Imperium has been managing ever since. Second because it did not hold: the same duel ended with his soul annihilated rather than merely his body.

  • shownFalse Gods (RU ed.) · ch. 17

    Turned on Davin in the temple of the Serpent Lodge, and given power by the gods of the warp. — 2006

  • shownThe End and the Death: Volume II · 2023

    Kills Sanguinius aboard the Vengeful Spirit and mortally wounds the Emperor.

  • shownThe End and the Death: Volume III · 2024

    Destroyed utterly by the Emperor, soul included, so that nothing can return.

Horus Ascendant on the Warhammer 40,000 ladder

The victim · Sanguinius · rank 5

The one who lasted longest — heresy

Heresynovelgamecontested

He is the reason the Emperor got there at all. Horus at second on this page is Horus at the height the pantheon built him to, and Sanguinius is the only being who stood in front of that and made it cost time — long enough for his father to reach the throne room, which is why the Heresy ends the way it does instead of the other way. He lost, and the losing is the feat. Before Terra he had already fought a Greater Daemon of Khorne in single combat on Signus Prime and put a sword through its chest, which is the closest anyone here comes to a controlled experiment: the same primarch, against a lesser opponent, wins.

  • shownFear to Tread · ch. 18

    Fights the Greater Daemon Ka'Bandha in single combat on Signus Prime and drives his sword into the daemon's chest. — 2012

  • shownThe End and the Death: Volume II · 7:xliii

    Faces Horus aboard the Vengeful Spirit during the Siege of Terra and is killed there. — 2023

  • statedCodex: Blood Angels (7th ed., RU) · «РЕШАЮЩАЯ СХВАТКА» (The Decisive Duel)

    The one point every version of the duel agrees on: the Emperor could never have beaten Horus had Sanguinius's blade not broken a breach in the Warmaster's armour first.

Sanguinius on the Warhammer 40,000 ladder

What this does not settle

One death in one work. It is the only place the record puts these two in the same room, and it is evidence about that meeting and nothing wider — not a general matchup, not a rematch, and not a ranking of its own.

The ladder above it is argued from everything either of them has been shown doing; this page is argued from one citation.

Where the two disagree, the disagreement is the point, and it stays visible rather than being resolved by whichever of them happens to be on this page.