With the recent release of the third Ciaphas Cain omnibus, which I just finished and is still quite entertaining to read, I decided to go back and re-read all the other ones as well. While reading the editorial note by Inquisitor Vail I stopped at this line: "It is for this reason that I preserved the archive and have spent a considerable amount of leisure time in the years since its discovery editing and annotating it..." This stopped me for a moment and really made me think.

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In the note she has said that many would be shocked to read the "real" side of a celebrated hero. We all know that Cain's motivations were more selfish than altruistic and through luck and the Emperor he did more good than harm. Yet he cultivated this public persona that no doubt inspired thousands to act like his positive image. Amberley even continues to say that she edited the Cain archive to let her fellow Inquisitors peruse it if they wanted, it wouldn't be common reading or be passed around to others. With the way the Imperium works, lots and lots of propaganda, why would she risk doing something that could 'taint' Cain's image as well as call into question all of his achievements? Why would she spend so much of her leisure time, which as an Inquisitor, she can't have much of?

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She loved him. It has been said in books that they met socially many times and that Cain really enjoyed his moments with her, and she reciprocated the feeling. Yet imagine having to sift through memoirs and documents that were poorly organized to form any kind of coherent story or direction. She went through all of them, editing, organizing, having to go back into her memories and records as well. Not many people would do that as a job, much less as a task she took upon herself. Because of the way she refers to him, I think he has passed so he won't be helping her either, nor did he ask her to do it.

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That just made me appreciate the stories more. Sure, there are some very good things that will help bring perspective to the other readers, as well as others who do want to learn how the Great Hero Cain thought. Yet to me this seems like a sweet sad idea that Amberley really loved him and misses him, and by doing the Archive she can remember him fondly.