Dark Angels - Legion Command Hierarchy: Given the multitude of layers of structure to be found in the organisation of the Dark Angels, the Legion's command hierarchy can seem impossibly confused to outsiders. The three strands of authority woven into the form of the Legion, that of wing, chapter and order, would seem to compete to claim each warrior's allegiance and attention upon the field of battle, as well as presenting complex schemes of heraldry that defy easy identification by those unfamiliar with their intricacies.However, for the warriors of the Ist Legion it has proven to be not only effective but also capable of quickly adapting to the flow of battle and the ever-changing vicissitudes of war, allowing it to not only overcome the challenges of the Great Crusade but to thrive as one of the most dangerous of all the Legiones Astartes.Taken separately, each of these chains of command is actually quite traditional in form, based upon the precepts of the Principia Bellicosa which the Ist Legion helped define, with authority invested in a single chain of command, from the highest ranks down to each individual of the companies, orders and wings that made up the Legion. This allowed commanders to efficiently maintain control of large bodies of troops by dividing the responsibility among a multitude of lesser officers while staying true to the vision and strategy of a single general.What complicated this arrangement was that to outsiders it seemed that the three different strands of authority within the Legion were not linked, and left no standing and fixed method by which one could tell when the authority of one commander outstripped that of another. To the warriors of the Dark Angels it came down to a simple matter of battlefield context and a deep-seated trust and respect for the abilities of the warriors that stood alongside them.In battle, authority was seeded to the warriors of the highest rank in whichever branch of the Legion was best suited to exploit the situation around them. Where the specialised knowledge and skills of a given wing or order officer would provide the Legion an advantage, their authority superseded that of the more traditional commanders, with both the rank-and-file and the line officers implicitly trusting them to lead the fight. When the veterans of wing and order moved to implement the overall strategies of the chapter commanders, the warriors around them followed.Such a disregard for strict and unchanging lines of command and control frustrated some Legions and primarchs, with Roboute Guilliman in particular making many attempts to convince the Lion to reform his Legion along the lines of his own Codex Astartes. Some attempts by other Legions were made to emulate the success of the Dark Angels pattern, with the Raven Guard applying a similar structure to separate certain strata of their Legion; however, none of the other Legions retained the solid core of long-standing veterans required to fully implement the complex organisational doctrines of the Ist Legion.Just as it had been intended, they took from the example of the First those elements of their tactics that meshed with the direction of their own Legion and adapted them to their own purposes. It was only the superb skills and long-term indoctrination and familiarity of the warriors of the Dark Angels that could fully utilise such a complex organisational arrangement to its fullest potential. It allowed them to adapt and evolve from moment to moment on the battlefield, claiming victory without the grinding attrition that marked the conquests of other, more inflexible, Legions.Outside of the battlefield authority of individual knight-praetors or order preceptors, there were three bodies that exerted control over the strategic deployment of the Legion. Foremost among these was the Primarch Lion El'Jonson, who held the ranks of Lord of the Ist Legion, Grandmaster of the Hexagrammaton and High Preceptor of the Hekatonystika. He held absolute and final authority over the entire Legion, and when he took the field, his orders superseded all others regardless of position or knowledge.Given the known tendency of the Lion to engage in frontline control of smaller battle forces and leave the widely-flung elements of his Legion to complete their objectives as they saw fit, much scope existed within the Legion for secondary forms of control to handle the more mundane administration of the massed forces of the Legion. Fortunately, the Dark Angels were both more than capable of operating without direct oversight, having proved their mettle in standard centuries of independent operation, and already possessed additional bodies of authority well-suited to directing the arduous task of seeing the far-flung fleets of the Dark Angels supplied.The Council of Masters, comprised of the heads of the wings of the Hexagrammaton or their appointed agents, had long overseen the strategic operation of the Legion. The assembled masters or voted-lieutenants were often integral in the process of assigning Ist Legion forces to the various fleets and warzones of the Great Crusade, and there was often much lively debate within the council halls as to which wings should provide troops and commanders to which deployments.As some of the most experienced and veteran warriors of the Legion, the wing masters and their marshals were ideally suited to such high level planning and the primarch granted them the honour of his implicit trust, freeing him to undertake a more active role in the Legion. The Conclave of Preceptors of the Hekatonystika rarely took on a similar role, for although it consisted of warriors of equal skill and experience, it was convened in full on only a few ceremonial occasions. The preceptors of the orders took on strategic leadership roles largely only when their specialist skills were demanded by the conflict at hand, but still served as a reserve of talented officers should the Legion ever stand in need of  direction.This layered system of leadership, from primarch, to the Council of Masters, to the Conclave of Preceptors and then individual officers of the line, was flexible enough to support the Legion's preference for a multitude of simultaneous deployments rather than massing in a single warzone. It played to the strengths of their primarch, who had little interest in the micromanagement of his Legion's strategies and excelled in direct battlefield command. That the Lion made few changes to this existing structure after taking over command of the Legion speaks of his approval of it, and that he granted such autonomy to his warriors shows the trust he had for the veterans of the Ist Legion.