The sudden death of David Ervine this week - far too early for a still youthful, vivid personality, but well after his star had dimmed - removes another of the players who helped blaze the path for the Belfast Agreement and what followed. There is a sad appropriateness about the final departure of the last prominent "loyalist fringe" figure.
David Ervine was a great man for the wonky rhetoric. He hated the suggestion that loyalist paramilitaries might have had their moment in politics, but he would have admitted that the timing of his last exit could be called the opposite of glad confident morning.
It has been a trek. There is a litany of names once central, now long gone from the Northern stage. Several have died: Tony Blair's first secretary of state, Mo Mowlam; IRA veteran Joe Cahill; now Mr Ervine. The late Mary Holland, almost as much player as commentator, wrote (in this space) with grace, insight and authority derived in part from matchless knowledge of the principal figures, but in the main from a yearning to see an end to violence and a lessening of bitterness. Others have been shuffled off by the remorseless rhythms of political life. The Women's Coalition had a brief hour of prominence, like the loyalist fringe contributing more to the Good Friday negotiations than their size warranted.
These are the last few months at the centre of events for Mr Blair, who bounced into the North all of 10 years ago to seize hold of events handled so tentatively by John Major, his predecessor as prime minister.
It is almost as difficult to predict the shape of things to come post-Blair, in terms of British government involvement, as the shape of the DUP post-Paisley. But there will be no replicating the intensity of the Blair involvement, the commitment of a new prime minister with a majority far in excess of anything his successors are likely to win.
The youthful Mr Blair embarked on a shiny new project full of danger. The shine disappeared long ago.
The danger, depending on your point of view, is now damage woven deep into the fabric of the state, or is all but dissipated.
Mr Major had none of Mr Blair's advantages. Forced to evaluate the potential of a peace settlement while IRA violence continued, himself the target of a mortar attack on Downing Street which missed him by yards and with a dwindling majority and fractured party, he nonetheless made some determined moves. It also emerged that while he and his Northern secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, were rubbishing the very idea of contact with republicans, government representatives had been secretly meeting Martin McGuinness and others.
Sir Patrick usually seemed made for his moment on stage, but the senior lawyer's assurance and command of language dissolved in the face of exposure.
When it came out that "no contact" meant repeated contact, a press conference in Stormont Castle witnessed a man in shock, pale and stumbling, unable to face down the journalist who broke the story, Eamonn Mallie.
The unhappy performance ended abruptly, his forgotten spectacles glinting on a table as the Northern secretary rushed off.
When Mr Blair goes, the only remaining main players from the original cast will be the Sinn Féin leaders. Unless we count Ian Paisley. After the first careless rapture of denunciation, the DUP leader cut an isolated and increasingly discontented figure, as deniable back-channels became ceremonious and prolonged negotiations reported by the world's press. The man at the centre of events, David Trimble, more often looked stressed than jubilant, but he clearly relished the deference he was accorded as head of the largest unionist party, by the prime minister and successive taoisigh though not, of course, by some of his own colleagues.
The man whose efforts had urged Irish, British and American governments to see the potential for a settlement and who helped Gerry Adams across the barrier of distrust and distaste, John Hume, went into negotiations exhausted. He emerged spent, his dominance of nationalism eroded. SDLP deputy leader Séamus Mallon carried much of the burden.
Mr Trimble, Mr Hume and Mr Mallon look on now from the sidelines. There was a scene at night outside Stormont as the Belfast Agreement was being finalised when it appeared that the sideline was the final Paisley destination.
He arrived to shout about treachery in the darkness as Mr Trimble prepared to sign up, and was heckled by loyalist paramilitaries turned enthusiasts for talks. "Dinosaur", they shouted. David Ervine came out to quieten his own followers and ask them to allow an old man to speak.
The peace process has many ironies, few greater than that Ian Paisley is more vocal and more powerful than ever while, to the regret of many, the voice of David Ervine has been stilled.