God-King of the Eternal Iroquois Caliphate
Back in the day, I played a lot of Civilization II, IV, and V. If you don't know the video game series, players take the role of a leader of a great historical empire starting at the stone age and play through an alternate history to the modern age. The fun of it is playing out emergent alternate histories where crazy things happen like the Comanche dropping the first atomic weapon on Greece, Vikings achieving the first moon landing, and Korean prophets founding the religions of Taoism and Judaism. It is a very fun, highly addictive game and one game takes all day to play, which is why I never play it anymore.
In Civ games, I don't like war. It was expensive. It distracts me from more important things like building the Library of Alexandria in my capital of Beijing. War requires too much micromanagement. And winning a war can make you a pariah, even if it was in self-defense. I'd just rather not deal with it.
For those reasons, I never started a war. But I always finished them. I never attacked first. I never provoked them by militarizing a common border or trying to absorb them culturally. I was a model neighbor. But if anyone confused my courtesy for weakness, it would be the worst mistake they ever made.
If another nation instigated even the mildest skirmish, I completely reorganized into a total war economy. When that switch got flipped, we went from 1998 Japan to 1938 Japan instantly. My peace-loving, gentle people were activated like Manchurian Candidates into my bloodthirsty cult of personality, begging their dear leader for the privilege to die fighting Emmanuel Goldstein. I made it my civilization's entire purpose to fuck up the person who attacked us. Some bronze-age dumbfuck from a backwater country called "France" attacks me with spear cavalry? My superior culture is so far up the tech tree, our maxim machine guns instagib these savages. My futuristic Mongolian weapons deliver Christianity chambered in 7x57mm Mauser to these French pagans.
When I captured a city, I renamed it to humiliate the ruler who crossed me. If it was that genocidal monster, Mahatma Gandhi, I might rename a city "Gandhi rapes kids" or "Ghandi is a fairweather pacifist" or "Ghandi latched onto a political movement that was already happening and winning without him." Every city I conquered became a monument to celebrate the failure of my enemy.
Inevitably, they'd sue for peace. At first, they were willing to accept an apology from me, and always demanded I give them back the cities I conquered. As an anabolic-abusing muscle ninja once said, "Do you feel in charge?" They got nothing from me. After another 100 years of war, they'd see the walls closing in, their economy suffocating, and their people desperate for better leadership. They tried to bribe me. No. Then begged me to stop. No. The international community would get involved, and beg me to stop. No. They'd call me a warmonger. "STFU Bismarck or you're next," and Bismarck would cower like a little bitch, and I'd tell Teddy Roosevelt to start massaging my other foot.
The cities I conquered were never treated poorly. It wasn't the people's fault that they were burdened with an aggressive tyrant like Genghis Khan or Abraham Lincoln. The people of conquered lands were accepted into the fold as equals. They always flourished under my tenure. My superior skills of management gave them the better life that they deserved, enjoying the relative luxury of modern cities like Tokugawa Sucks Balls and Julius Caesar Has Genital Warts. The people ultimately came to accept me as their rightful king, and respect the mandate of heaven that gave them the gift of my fine leadership.
I was generous to the people I conquered, but from my enemy, I took everything. Piece by piece, his empire turned black and crumbled, like a leper watching helplessly as parts fell off his body. He learned slowly and painfully that everything that was his was mine. I conquered every city save one.
The global community always went fucking crazy when you wipe a country off the map, even a nation of belligerent lunatics like the Zulu. Let it be known that yes, I am cruel, but I am also fair.
One city was permitted to stay. It served as a reminder. I allowed the ruler who wronged me to remain in power, for whatever that was worth. I surrounded the city and placed my troops on every valuable tile, and completely annihilated their economy, ensuring they'd never rise up and dare challenge me again.
Destroyed civilizations fade from memory. But the desiccated, humiliated husk of former greatness can't be forgotten while it still lives on. Never execute them. Never finish them. It is better to mutilate them and send them home so my terror lives and breathes and gurgles when it speaks, a half-dead, ghostly wounded warning: do not fuck with the glorious god-king of the eternal Iroquois Caliphate.
Forever after, people avoid making eye contact with my victims as though politely pretending not to notice a terrible disfigurement. As though failure and shame were contagious. I placed my enemies inside a pretty little cage at my expense, because 1,000 years of dynastic humiliation is not nearly enough to satisfy my vengeance. I made them and their children and their grandchildren into prisoners in powdered wigs, a dozen generations of them, royalty in name only, presiding over a favela kingdom.
Anyway, the point is, that's basically how I feel about the British Royal Family in real life.