Prigozhin appeared euphoric at the end of his mutiny but his move had ended in failure
From the moment Yevgeny Prigozhin's mutiny in Russia collapsed in June there was always a sense that a man who had lived so close to the edge for so long had overplayed his hand.
If he was on board his own private jet when it went down en route from Moscow to St Petersburg then it would mark a shocking and violent end to a very turbulent life.
For so many years Vladimir Putin was able to call on Prigozhin's services.
But the botched revolt involving thousands of Wagner mercenaries went beyond the pale.
President Putin condemned the rebellion as "treason" and it was soon very clear that Prigozhin's prolific role in Russia was over.
This was a man whose first years of adulthood were spent in a St Petersburg jail, but he thrived in the 1990s with catering businesses that brought him wealth and patronage from Mr Putin himself.
It was Prigozhin's mercenary ventures in Africa, Syria and Ukraine that made him a military figure but the dynamic changed when Russia unleashed war in Ukraine and the president's one-time chef found power as well as wealth.
After he became president, Mr Putin entertained global leaders such as France's Jacques Chirac in Prigozhin's restaurants. The up-and-coming caterer earned the sobriquet "Putin's chef".
If Prigozhin's mercenary business was later to give him military clout and money, his catering business would supply him with a constant stream of wealth right up to this year.
President Putin revealed shortly after the botched Wagner revolt that Prigozhin's private army had been fully funded with $1bn from the state over 12 months, while a further $1bn went to Prigozhin's Concord catering firm for feeding the military.
But that was just over one year, and reports suggest he had received more than $18bn in government contracts since 2014.
Kremlin propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov said big money had made Prigozhin go "off the rails" but it was his men's battlefield exploits that had gained him a sense of impunity.
"He thought he could challenge the defence ministry, the state itself and the president personally."
That all came to a head as Russia's military campaign in Ukraine faltered last year and Prigozhin's Wagner fighters spearheaded a bloody campaign to seize the eastern city.
A leaked video last year showed Wagner's Yevgeny Prigozhin visiting a Russian prison
Last September Prigozhin toured prisons around Russia offering inmates the chance to commute their sentences in exchange for service with Wagner.
Thousands died in the fight for Bakhmut, many of them inexperienced, badly armed former prisoners.
As the battle reached a climax, Prigozhin appeared in social media videos demanding ammunition, standing among bodies of dead mercenaries.
He reserved his loathing for President Putin's loyal defence minister Sergei Shoigu and the armed forces chief Valery Gerasimov.
"Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the... ammunition?... They came here as volunteers and die for you to fatten yourselves in your mahogany offices."
Prigozhin steered clear of directly criticising the president, always blaming his commanders instead.
But when the military chiefs announced plans to bring the Wagner forces and other "voluntary detachments" under the main command structure, Prigozhin appeared to snap.
As he prepared to launch his "march for justice", he called into question the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and accused the defence minister of responsibility for the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers.
The Kremlin denounced as "hysteria" suggestions that Prigozhin's revolt had dented Vladimir Putin's hold on power.
At the very least it was the beginning of the end of Prigozhin's extraordinary and long-lived Russian influence over the Putin leadership.
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