Henry Cavill busted up his leg real good earlier this month while training for the Highlander reboot nobody asked for, and in fine fashion he’s using his recovery time to remind us all that he really, really loves Warhammer 40,000.
As is the way in our social media obsessed world, Henry posted a picture of himself, his dog, and his busted-up leg on Instagram over the weekend. Instead of writing, “Wow, look at my busted-up leg,” however, he shared a poem:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
He did not write that himself: That’s Invictus, written in 1875 by English poet William Ernest Henley. More on that later, though, because first, clearly visible on the coffee table upon which Henry is resting his leg is a Warhammer: The Horus Heresy rulebook—Liber Hereticus, I’m pretty sure—laid atop several other, presumably also Warhammer books.
It’s much less distinct but in the other photo you can also see, just above Henry’s head on a shelf in the other room, a copy of the Warhammer 40,000: Leviathan box set.
Now, Henry is probably the world’s most famous WH40K nerd, and so it shouldn’t be all that surprising that he’s got lots of WH40K stuff in his house. But IGN sees something possibly deeper: That maybe he’s teasing the backdrop for the Warhammer 40,000 cinematic universe he’s heading up, the setting for which hasn’t been officially revealed yet. (It’s been 40,000 years, there’s a lot to sort through and figure out.)
The Horus Heresy rulebook could possibly point toward a retelling of the foundational historical event of the Warhammer 40,000 setting: The civil war that took place 10,000 years prior to the game’s current era, which essentially set the stage for events as they currently stand.
But that’s complicated and deep, great for committed fans but possibly too dense and arcane for the rest of us. A simpler approach might be hinted at by the Leviathan box set, which features the Ultramarines chapter of the Space Marines, who also happen to be the stars of the very successful (and more mainstream) Space Marine videogame series.
And that brings us back to the poem, which you’ll recall is entitled Invictus. Saul Invictus was the captain of the elite 1st Company of the Ultramarines, until he was killed in the Battle of Macragge during the First Tyranic War. A good role for Henry to play, perhaps?
Perhaps. But now we swerve over to the Poetry Foundation to throw some cold water on the whole thing. Henley, the author of Invictus, had one of his legs amputated just below the knee when he was young, the result of tubercular arthritis; some years later, the other leg was only saved through radical surgical intervention. Henley began writing poems, including Invictus, while recovering from that surgery—basically, the 19th-century equivalent of “Wow, look at my busted-up leg.”
So where does this leave us? Using strategically-placed stuff in the background of photos or livestreams to hint at future goings-on isn’t new—Phil Spencer has a reputation for doing it—but in this case, I don’t think this is a tease so much as a reminder that Henry really, really loves Warhammer 40,000. He talked about it during Covid-19 lockdowns, he talked about it on The Witcher, he talked about it when he was supposed to be hyping extremely expensive watches in Switzerland: The man’s just a fan—a fan who just happens to have a big WH40K thing cooking. Can’t really blame him for being excited about that.
Also, he busted up his leg. But he’s going to be okay.