Compensation doesn't always have to be a bad thing, you know. If you understand your weaknesses, you can work to strengthen them, or at least offset them. It can be a way of knowing yourself and trying to be better.

[Gee, that doesn't sound familiar at all. Wanting to prove yourself? Wanting to make people believe in you? He knows how much it hurts to be looked down on and swept aside. Have a sigh.]

I wonder when you let go of that determination to do it all with your own two hands..... What did greatness really mean to you, back then? What kind of country would you have been proud of?

[Maybe, maybe he could have justified it as still being accomplished by his own hand and hard work if he'd done all the extortion and assassination and such himself. But he hadn't, had he? When had the ends started justifying the means? When had he stopped feeling like the process reflected on who he was and what he was capable of?]