At weekends, he would visit his family, his wife and two children kept safe in Belgrade.
They would play board games, the conversation deliberately avoiding politics. But his 23-year-old daughter, Ana, had fallen in love with a young doctor and human rights activist.
The doctor gave her an ultimatum: renounce your father or never see me again.
Torn between dreams of love and bonds of family, Ana took her father's favourite gun from its display case. Moments later, she pulled the trigger.
Mladić struggled to come to terms with her suicide, preferring wild conspiracy theories which blamed the tragedy on everyone but himself.
Finally, in 1995, Nato lost patience.
It launched fighter attacks and cruise missile strikes on Mladić's positions around Sarajevo, most of them with devastating effect.
The siege was broken but his murderous campaign to cleanse the country was far from over.
That summer, tens of thousands of Bosniak civilians were gathered in Srebrenica: a small mountain town in eastern Bosnia.
They were under the protection of the United Nations, which had declared it a "safe area".
Bosnian Serb troops bombarded them with heavy shells and rockets. Five days later, Mladić strutted into town surrounded by TV camera crews.