HMS Hood, prestige, and the risks of deterrent image

Should Hood's loss be treated as a warning against building deterrence around prestige and perceived superiority?

It is a warning that deterrent image can be punctured, but navies still need to project capability, and small wartime contingencies could have produced a very different memory of Hood.

HMS Hood's world cruise and reputation as the largest, most modern British capital ship helped project competence during the 1920s. Deterrence cannot work by advertising weakness, so a navy inevitably risks having its carefully built image tested in war. Small changes around Courageous, Glorious, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Bismarck, and Taranto might have left Hood refitted and remembered very differently. Deterrent reputation and later historical memory can pivot on contingent operational events.