Mutilated victory

Mutilated victory is when someone wins something, but they don't feel as happy or good about it as they should because they had to give up or lose something important in order to win. It's kind of like winning a race, but only because you tripped the person who was ahead of you. You might be happy that you won, but you might also feel guilty or sad because you didn't really win fairly.

For example, imagine you and your friend were playing a game and you really wanted to win. You also really wanted to use your special toy during the game, but your friend said you couldn't. So you decided to play the game without your toy, but you kept thinking about how much better you would be doing if you had it. Finally, you got so frustrated that you just took the toy and used it anyway. You won the game, but you didn't feel very good about it because you knew you cheated. That's a mutilated victory.