It is widely believed that one of the main reasons senior DUP figures backed the Brexit side in the 2016 referendum was because they firmly believed it would be certain to lose.
The thinking was that they could happily engage in some familiar but fairly harmless anti-EU rhetoric, and in the process ingratiate themselves with like-minded Conservative elements at Westminster, without suffering any form of political damage.
However, the narrow and only slightly against the odds success for the Leave campaign, involving deeply questionable financial links to the DUP along the way, set in motion a chain of events which has led to a nightmare scenario for Arlene Foster's party.
It is worth recalling just how commanding a position Mrs Foster enjoyed at Stormont little more than two years ago after she had succeeded Peter Robinson as First Minister and DUP leader
The Assembly election of May 2016 saw the DUP gain almost 40,000 votes more than its closest rival in Sinn Féin, leaving it with a ten-seat cushion and a number of mainstream commentators predicting that Mrs Foster, then aged 45, could be in power for the next two decades.
What was probably more significant at the time than her mathematical advantage was the sense that nationalism generally had lost its way, was achieving little of any consequence in the Assembly and had allowed constitutional questions to fade quietly into the background.
Brexit changed everything almost overnight and pushed the border, which an entire generation had scarcely discussed seriously, back to the top of the political agenda not just in Ireland but internationally, with 26 other EU states decisively lining up behind the stance of the Dublin government.
Huge anger over the attempt to remove Northern Ireland from the EU against the clearly expressed views of a majority of its voters, as well as the toxic consequences of the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal and the dismissive approach of the DUP towards Irish language and other rights-based issues, galvanised nationalists.
The devolved structures were suspended before Mrs Foster had completed even one year in office and the 2017 Assembly poll resulted in a virtual dead heat between the DUP and Sinn Féin, with the former's advantage cut to barely 1,000 votes and a single seat, and unionism's wider historic Stormont majority swept away.
Theresa May's ill conceived UK general election later that summer threw the DUP a lifeline by temporarily handing it the balance of power at Westminster, but overplaying its hand through a predictably truculent attitude towards the negotiations with the EU cost it deadly.
The DUP is faced with a proposed EU deal which effectively draws a line along the Irish Sea, it has already alienated Mrs May and it is acutely aware that pushing for her removal opens the door to Downing Street for Jeremy Corbyn who has never made any secret of his support for a united Ireland.
It is dealing with unprecedented criticism at home from the business and farming sectors, with further developments due today, and it knows that any return to Stormont depends on an unlikely series of key concessions to a resurgent nationalism.
The party now has the opportunity to reflect closely on its Brexit policies and consider, as the old saying goes, the need to be careful for what you wish.
