To be fair, part of Ivan's problem is that he made himself someone who cannot and will not ever be happy

Arguably some of the things we have done to him are ways in which we've repaired the damage to the extent possible! ...by making him miserable in the meantime, but really that's his own fault.

(I'll give him the horrible edge case, though. That really was a horrible thing to do.)

I am now contemplating the AU where Padma lived through the Pretendership. I'm not sure Ivan finds this any better than the AU where Selda killed Serg but it is at least less completely bafflingly creepy.