Color is very important in 40K, being a hobby centered around the painting of models. Color is also one of the most controversial aspects of the Emperor’s Children. The official color of the Emperor’s Children is pink; there is even a citadel layer paint named after them.

Pink is not considered a particularly masculine color. It has been traditionally associated with conservative notions of femininity and baby girls.

In fact in late 1979 a professor named Alexander G. Schauss published a study in the pages of Orthomolecular Psychiatry announcing that the he had found a way to use colors to make people less aggressive. Over the course of a year Schauss had conducted numerous tests. First he measured the strength of 153 young men, half of whom had stared at a blue piece of cardboard for a minute prior and the other half of which had stared at a pink piece. All but two of the men shown pink were weaker than the average. Second, he confirmed his experiment with a dynamometer with 38 additional men, all of which apparently became less strong after looking at the shade.

On March 1, 1979, two commanding officers at the US Naval Correctional Center in Seattle, Washington named Baker and Miller were inspired to turn one of their holding cells pink to see if it would have an effect on their prisoners. It seemed to have an immediate result, as there was not a single incident of violence over the next 156 days.

Subsequent studies were inconclusive but this did not stop pink becoming something of a pop phenomenon in America, as pink was used in places like drunk tanks and visitors’ locker rooms to supposedly sap the strength of troublemakers or opponents.

Being a male dominated hobby set in a futuristic martial setting, it is perhaps not surprising that Emperor’s Children citadel layer paint is hardly a popular primary color scheme for many marine armies. As a whole, the vast majority of space marine models are painted what are seen as safer and more socially acceptable shades, such as black / grey, white, blue or red. Most of the original 18 legions of the Emperor in 30K are those colors, with the only exceptions being the Imperial Fists (yellow), the death guard and Salamanders (green) and the Emperor’s Children.

Even Emperor’s Children lore seems to express misgivings regarding pink. Their original color is purple in the lore. They are also described in the current setting as wearing magenta, which is seen as being more masculine than pink is. They have also been described as wearing mirror like armor, or a vast and dazzling array of bright colors. In any case what is inerrantly described is a color scheme far more sensational and creative than any other legion, making the Emperor’s Children unique among the astartes.

Not that pink itself really has to be considered somehow inappropriate in the first place. That is a construct of modern advertising. Pink has proven on occasion to be quite appropriate for war. In 1940 the Royal British Navy was suffering tremendous losses in WWII. Captains had been testing different kinds of camouflage in the hopes of evading German attackers. The most dangerous time for attacks were at dawn and dusk. Aware of this window of vulnerability, Lord Mountbatten decided to paint the destroyers of his flotilla a particular shade of medium grey with a dash of venetian red, a tone that quickly become known as Mountbatten pink. Other captains followed Mountbatten’s lead and the color became popular for the next two years of the war, only ending when the navy decided to adopt different official camouflage colors.

While Mountbatten pink did not last for a long time, nevertheless it appears than many were convinced of its effectiveness. In the final months of 1941 the HMS Kenya aka the Pink Lady came under heavy fire just off Vaagso Island near the Norwegian coast. Although strafed by two large guns repeatedly, she escaped with only cosmetic damage and no casualties.