YMMV / Ciaphas Cain

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Amberley: she can be seen as enjoying Cain for his abilities and occasional company, but some lines (particularly those that reference Cain's decades of philandering) make her look like a Clingy Jealous Girl, notably when she mentions she'd have found out if Cain was really trying to seduce women he met.
  • Similarly, it is possible to interpret Cain's monogamy after getting involved with Amberley as simply his self-defense instincts kicking in: "When dating an Inquisitor, it ain't over till she says it's over!" (His comment about only having room in his life for one lethally dangerous woman comes to mind.)
  • Cain: There's four main schools of thought when it comes to Cain - is he a Dirty Coward, a Lovable Coward, The So-Called Coward, or did he go through those steps in that order along the way towards his retirement? Even the author doesn't know. His chronological first action seems like a clear-cut act of cowardice, but subsequent actions become far harder to chalk up to that.
  • Jurgen: Despite his seemingly low intelligence, he may very well share Cain's (potential) tendency for downplaying himself. Cain frequently wonders if Jurgen's life-saving feats are part of a calculated well-hidden genius or if he operates on gut instinct, being unaware that his actions are extremely improbable. Both Cain and Amberly have also mentioned that they aren't sure if he's the bravest man they've ever met, or just doesn't fully understand how dangerous his many adventures with Cain actually are. Or, like Cain, the answer could be in somewhere between - The short stories from his perspective do nothing to clear it up; he doesn't perceive the enemies he faces there as a serious threat, but then he beats them so handily that they clearly aren't.
  • In The Greater Good the Tau Empire might have been acting in good faith in their alliance or, as Cain suspects, they might have been trying to arrange events so the tyranids would take Fecundia and destroy a considerable portion of Battlefleet Damocles, which would have left the tau able to expand far more easily.
• Discredited Meme: For many fans, typing HERO OF THE IMPERIUM after every instance of Cain's name has gone from funny to simply annoying repetitivness.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: See here.
• Genius Bonus: Overlaps a lot with the Shout Outs on the main page.
• Harsher in Hindsight: If you read in continuity order; a Call-Forward in publication order. In Death or Glory, Jurgen is mostly uninjured by a blow to the head, and Cain says, "It would probably take a bolter shell to crack that thick skull of his." In For the Emperor, Jurgen's skull is fractured near-fatally by... a bolter shell that glances off his helmet.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the novel "Caves of Ice," Cain makes reference to a myth going around that at the dawn of the forty-second millenium, the Emperor would get up off his throne and resume command of the Imperium. This was released in 2004. 13 years later, Eighth Edition has just been released and while the Emperor did not get off the Throne, His son, Roboute Guilliman, has.
  • "Commissar Donal sends his regards."
  • Pyrovores, mocked for their uselessness in The Last Ditch, as mentioned below, have been fixed in 8E by giving them better melee stats and making their explosions only hurt ENEMY models. Apparently, the hivemind has learned from that incident...
• Iron Woobie: Issues of self-esteem are the least of humanity's worries in the Warhammer 40K universe and so it's never emphasized in the books, but Cain has enough trust issues and paranoia to disturb Harry Dresden, and a self-esteem so low that it should be measured in the negative. He goes through his entire life convinced that no one could or should care for him personally, unable to connect with people on any meaningful level, unable to ever credit that he's a remotely decent person or so much as pat himself on the back for the billions of lives he saves, and terrified to trust anyone with his thoughts, lest he be shot for cowardice and deceit. The closest this ever gets to a Lampshade Hanging is when, at their second meeting, Amberley gently implies that she isn't fooled by his facade and suggests that he could try being himself. He practically shits his pants thinking that she's a psyker and is going to have him killed, and he never actually takes her into his confidence even after a century of romance. That's sad.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: While their similarity in tone is part of what makes the series appreciated, many readers have noted that Cain being more or less a Static Character and very similar plot beats (especially the "secret third enemy") make every novel come across as nearly identical.
• Memetic Mutation: One of the few memes originating from TV Tropes: it has become tradition to write HERO OF THE IMPERIUM after Cain's name whenever he appears on another page.
• Squick: The Mechanicus genestealer-breeding experiments in The Greater Good (where convicts are implied to have been forcibly impregnated by infected test subjects) are squicky enough to visibly disturb a visiting Tau.
• Take That, Scrappy!: In The Last Ditch the Tyranids deploy a number of Pyrovores, a notoriously badly designed unit which is more likely to blow up itself (and a huge chunk of its allies) than anything useful. Cain exploits this fact by killing them when they're near the Hive Tyrant, and they end up winning the deciding battle of the war for the Imperium.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Fairly early in The Greater Good, Tau ambassador El'hassai suggests an exchange of observers between the allied Imperial and Tau forces and suggests Cain to be the human representative in the Tau fleet. Instead of agreeing and the book being about Cain fighting alongside the Tau, he nominates ambassador Donali to go instead and sticks with the Imperial force for the rest of the book. As a result, the scene on the cover of Cai back-to-back with a Fire Warrior facing down a swarm of Tyranids never happens and the Tau go on to play almost no part in the rest of the story.
  • In Death or Glory, only one chapter includes an excerpt from Sergeant Tayber's memoirs to supplement Cain's account when it could have been fascinating seeing his account recur throughout the story (whether or not he lacked a Purple Prose comparable to Sulla's) and see his perspective on events like the rescue of his sister and the other civilians, the beginnings and logistics of their ragtag convoy, and the tragic losses of several various comrades.

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