Mischaracterisation of Fulgrim's character will be bane of my existence now that I learned more about him (pre-heresy, I still have to read novels and crack that snek up) I see how people misunderstand him.
Fulgrim represents himself as high class sure, his looks matter to him a whole lot and he knows he is beautiful and he knows his looks have an effect on other people. Fulgrim knows looks matter and he uses that to his advantage, as well as for his personal enjoyment, he enjoys all things beautiful after all.
But at the same time, Fulgrim deep down is very insecure. He constantly thinks he is not enough, especially in comparison with his brothers and Emperor, to whom Fulgrim feels he has to achieve impossible to be seen as worthy of the love. That leads to his quest to achieve perfection, even if in truth real perfection is not really possible to anyone, not even to someone as Primarch.
I also see a whole lot of mischaracterisation on Fulgrim's personality too: he is seen as glamorious, white handed, and pretty silly boy while in truth Fulgrim is exceptionally down to earth and someone who does not shy from dirty work. Fulgrim takes pride in his past, in years he spent working in the mines, in all the machinery he had fixed and all the labour he did to reform Chemos from dying mine world into a prosperous paradise world. On other hand, Fulgrim too feels sorrow for all he had to do to tranform Chemos from warying tribes and Overseer castes into united society. He does take pride in his work, but not always in the methods used to achieve that.
A whole lot of Fulgrim's character is a facade he wants to showcase, because that is useful to him to be seen as beautiful, majestic, teatralic and hardly approachable, but under that shining exterior hides simple, extremely talented and hardworking man, who feels deeply insecure and thinks despite all the work he did, he will never be perfect enough and that in return breeds his utter need of control, to be in control, because his self-worth is so damaged, he feels he constantly needs to strive to prove he is no worse than his brethren by putting goals to surpass them, no matter how much he will have to sacrifice for those.
