ABSTRACT
The conclusion reflects on how monuments to military defeat operate as instruments of state-building rather than mourning. Tracing Gloria Victis from post-1871 France to Denmark, Peru, South Africa, Serbia, and the United States, it shows how defeat was ritualized as civic duty, sacrifice, and national destiny. Together, the case studies reveal the international cult of the Lost Cause as a form of civil religion that stabilized fractured national identities and legitimized political authority. The sculpture's viral adaptability enabled its ideological reuse across divergent contexts, transforming loss into symbolic capital. The chapter concludes by tracing the persistence of noble defeat into the twenty-first century, where its logic reappears in nationalist and right-wing populist rhetoric across Eastern Europe and the United States.
