She was the poster child of Asean's last frontier, the opposition head turned state leader on whom many had pinned their hopes for Myanmar's democratic transition.

But 2017 would be the year she dramatically fell from grace - and soured relations with many Western organisations that had sustained her during her time as a political prisoner.

Ms Aung San Suu Kyi's job had not been easy from the beginning. Even while she assumed office in 2016 at the age of 70 with a clear majority in Parliament, she was shackled to a military-crafted Constitution that, in practice, reared a two-headed government.

Complaints about the slow pace of economic reform early this year gave way to much greater alarm when simmering conditions in the north-western Rakhine state erupted into a full-scale humanitarian crisis.

It was a crisis years in the making. Accumulated grievances from colonial-era migration had created deep animosity between ethnic Rakhines and Rohingya Muslims - who are labelled "Bengalis" and distrusted by the majority.

But as hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to neighbouring Bangladesh - wounded, raped and tortured under a scorched-earth military campaign that the state claimed was directed at Rohingya militants - the Nobel Peace Prize recipient kept silent for weeks.

While military commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing beat the nationalistic drums by casting the military campaign as one to protect Myanmar's sovereignty, the Lady, as Ms Suu Kyi is known, found herself in the awkward position of having to tackle the effect of mass atrocities without assigning blame.

International goodwill waned. At Oxford University's St Hugh's College - where she earned her degree in politics, philosophy and economics - her portrait was taken down from public display and her name removed from the title of a common room. Oxford and Dublin city councils revoked freedom awards conferred on her earlier.

Unfazed, she appealed for solidarity from her countrymen.

"Just as no one can fully understand the situation of our country the way we do, no one can desire peace and development for our country more than us," she said in October, while announcing a new body headed by her to coordinate humanitarian, resettlement and redevelopment work in Rakhine state.

"That is why we need to tackle these problems based on the strength of our unity."