In the years Myanmar was cowed by a military junta, people would tuck away secret photos of Aung San Suu Kyi, talismans of the heroine of democracy who would save her country from a fearsome army even though she was under house arrest.

But after she and her party won historic elections in 2015 and again last year by a landslide – cementing civilian government and her own popularity within Myanmar – Suu Kyi came to be viewed by the outside world as something altogether different: a fallen patron saint who had made a Faustian pact with the generals and no longer deserved her Nobel Peace Prize.