Tony stark loved how everyone underestimated him.
Because they were so damn easy to manipulate. They thought of him as two separate entities. Like he had a good side and a bad side (tony stark –bad, iron man-good) he had been forced to be two different people. The press loved creating rumours about tony stark, making him look as evil as Loki, but no one quite seemed to realise that tony, if he wanted to be, could quite literally be master of the earth- with Jarvis at his side( of course.)
Tony has created Jarvis, and javis was everywhere, and could be anything and everything. Jarvis was hooked into all the satellites round the world, every military base, every secret intelligence, every government agency, every nook and cranny of the World Wide Web, which he has thought about, way before sir Tim Bernes-lee. With Jarvis at his side- he could (if he wanted to) have the world at his knees with a press of a finger print scanner button.
Loki has probably known this of course, which is why Loki was the most interested in him, and had tried to possess him.
For once in his life, tony was glad he didn't have a heart.
Of all the people who had betrayed him, broken him, shaped him, to be who he was to day, by slashing and crushing his heart over and over again, tony, for the one time in his whole life was glad he was the way he was. On the other hand, it was those exact people whose fault it was to be that situation in the first place. If Howard hadn't abused him and raised him a war monger, and hadn't raised him to not understand the concept of 'nice' or 'socially liked' and hadn't made tonys guardian his best work buddy to keep tony on the same(wrong) track of war mongering and ignorance and emotionless and hadn't tried to kill tony, and just get his weapons and hadn't blackmailed tony to pay for Jarvis's funeral, by building a another weapon, and introduce tony to his first drink after the funeral, his only decent figure in all of his child hood, and hadn't betrayed tony, and hadn't kidnapped tony, forcing him to get the arc reactor, to open tonys eyes, to make iron man, to make shield interested, to join the avengers, to get Loki interested, to get the little confrontation to happen.
The press seemed to forget, the only reason tony was as twisted as he was, was not because he was arrogant, and 'textbook narcissist'-(thanks Romanoff) was because of Howard.
But Howard was more private, and more viewed as a hero and when he was around the press wasn't so violent and deceiving, so no one ever suspected Howard to be at fault. Because he was the war hero.
And the people, who hadn't known the proper Howard, kept looking for the 'Howard' in side of him?
So they want him to be violent and abusive and arrogant and flirtatious and cheating and hateful?
Got it. So they wanted the Howard?
They got it.