So I rewatched the cold open, and I actually think there is a small chance Marienna is alive, or at least was alive at the time Kattigan lost her - but this doesn't change the richness of his story around grief.
When Kattigan's staring into the fire, having heard her name for the first time in 5 years earlier that day, his first response to Teor is "thinking about a hunt I gave up on a long time ago". A hunt. You don't hunt for someone who's dead - you hunt for someone who's missing. Certainly it could have been a revenge hunt to find people responsible for her death (he'd be in good company with this campaign's PCs) but he's so specific that "she's gone"/"she was taken from me and there's nothing I can do about it". Maybe she was kidnapped? Maybe he returned home one day and she was gone and he was never able to find trace? Maybe she was away for her own purposes and never returned? Anyway, there could be a loose thread there where gone may not mean dead.
There is also the detail that he gave up on his hunt, and this makes me think that while Marienna could be alive, that if there was a child, that child is definitely not. I don't think Kattigan would have stopped looking for his child if one existed, or would not have stopped by now. Maybe he and Marienna lost a child and it was the beginning of whatever separated them. Maybe they did die and he lost them both at the same time. We'll have to wait for "another day, another campfire" to find out more, and tbh it's fascinating that Kattigan was willing to say he won't be fully closed off about it. Which brings me to my next point:
Whatever the circumstances of Marienna being lost/dead, and same for the hypothetical child, he considers their loss to be final. His story one of grief, either way. That he's been so repressed about it so far, and yet when Teor simply asks about what happened Kattigan is willing to say "not now, but sometime"... Kattigan must have been absolutely starving for connection about it, about her. He hasn't heard her name in 5 years. No one has ever asked about her. No one has ever asked. Kattigan has been utterly alone in his grief in this period of his life, post-Marienna. Because no one around him knew or thought to ask, he has been able to fully just compartmentalize it and dissociate from it, even as it inhabits him like an illness.
The thing about death is that there's the actual death, and then there's the death of living memory. If no one in Kattigan's current life knew Marienna or was around, he could not process her loss with others through their shared knowledge and experience. A person's life reflected prismatic among everyone who knew them creates a comforting ambient light long after they're gone. Kattigan has been alone with all of it in his head, both Marienna and her loss, all while the world keeps happening (it is the worst feeling when the world doesn't stop and grieve with you). Who knows - maybe there even was a community who knew her, and Kattigan left it.
Anyway, Tyranny and Teor have cracked the seal on something huge with Kattigan's grief. It could be interesting if Marienna is alive, but it remains interesting if she is not or any combination of timing and nuance within that. Grief is grief. It's such a rich narrative Robbie has built around it already and I am so fucking seated to see what unfolds.
