Games Workshop has surprisingly confirmed the news of female Space Marines in the Warhammer 40K universe, and a significant number of fans aren’t too happy about it.
Game Workshop promotes its products on a variety of platforms, one of those platforms being the Elon Musk-owned X. In a new X (formerly Twitter) post showing a new Warhammer 40K set, the official Warhammer account left room for comments underneath where fan @idk721252 asked, “Why did you make female custodes?” to which the official account responded, “Since the first of the Ten Thousand were created, there have always been female Custodians.” This back-and-forth can be seen just below.
Technically, this isn’t a direct retcon from Games Workshop or the Warhammer 40K universe; it is just confirmation of new lore introduced in the new 10th Edition Adeptus Custodes Codex, which includes a story about a Custodian Calladayce called Taurovalia Kesh who goes by she/her. Warhammer’s official X account reply was just an attempt to clear up the notion (or backlash of the notion) that GW ‘changed’ the lore, as opposed to just never directly saying in the past that Custodes were only male.
However, there are lore beats in the Warhammer 40K universe that allude to Space Marine conversion only happening on male children, so Games Workshop has their work cut out for them to sell the new fact that Custodes can be either gender while having to explain why for the past 30 years of Warhammer 40K lore has their never before been a female Custodes member.
Nevertheless, fans have taken their backlash to Reddit (because, of course) to ask the question “Why do people want female space marines so much?” on a thread titled “Why do people want female space marines so much…” Fans on this particular post insist that instead of female Custodes, they would prefer more Sisters of Battle models and miniatures instead. Fans should note this Reddit thread is far more civil than can be seen elsewhere, as there are a bunch of posts that are using the new Codex as an excuse to gatekeep a gender.
As far as plans regarding future female Custodes goes, new codex releases will likely include more female Custodes as future releases continue.
