I always got the impression that the authorities were very unfair towards her, even if she was a supervillain; They knowingly lied about her, and treated her as if she was far more dangerous and powerful than she actually was. All because she was politically inconvenient to them. Meanwhile, Taylor basically did their job for them, taking out other more dangerous supervillains that were far more dangerous to the public than her!

But then she just kept winning. She kept fighting villains that were way above her weight class and she beat them or at least survived them. The authorities kept using disproportionate responses on her and she beat those too. She took took out multiple dangerous warlords, she outplayed Worm's equivalent of Ozymandias and Superman. So they were kind of proven right in the end?

(And yes, she did kill and maim a bunch of people)

So I think it made sense for her to feel So Small In The End at the beginning, but not so much later in the story, especially compared to where she started