u/vivalasvegas2004

I was reading an account of the assasination attempts against Emperor Alexander II of Russia, and one of them occurred in 1879 when the Emperor was walking, seemingly unaccompanied, to the Square of the Guards Staff when a radical attacked him with a revolver. The radical fired 5 times and the Emperor was forced to run in a zig zag fashion to evade the bullets. No guard seemed to have been on hand to intercede.

A similar attempt against the Empress Sisi of Austria was successful. She was walking with a single friend in Switzerland and was attacked and murdered by a madman in 1898.

Did monarchs just walk around the streets unaccompanied? Was this always true or did it emerge in the 19th century?

Rewatching the sixth season I realised that Tony and Carmela have the same fundamental revelation, both on trips they go on without each other, both after a moment that nearly destroys their lives (Tony getting shot), but that this realisation affects them in very different ways.

Carmela has this realisation on her trip to Paris with Ro. The realisation develops slowly over the course of the trip. Sitting with Ro at a bistro, she exclaims "Nobody f*cking knows us here Ro, can you believe that?". When she sees a Medieval necklace, she remarks "you realise some woman just like us wore this. She was probably married, had children...". Carmela sees the necklace as symbolic of how little anyone leaves behind, a woman just like her lived a like much like hers and is completely forgotten apart from a trinket in a museum, and Carmela's jewelry won't even end up in a museum.

Carmela's realisation is a type of sonder. Her bubble is burst, she realises that in a different city, her whole existence doesn't exist. No one knows or cares who she is, where she came from or where she is going. Everyone is leading lives with their own worries and concerns, none of which involve her.

The culmination of this is when Carmela and Ro visit the Gallo-Roman baths, Carmela feels the stones and thinks about all the people that have touched them, and all the lives they lived, just like hers, but have been completely forgotten. All of them were just washed away, along with all their worries;

"We worry so much. Sometimes it feels like that's all we do. But in the end, it just gets washed away, all of it just gets washed away..."

Tony's epiphany comes on his trip to Vegas. He has just killed Chris, and gone to Vegas and slept with his former girlfriend. Although he is increasingly reckless, we still see him wrestling with the guilt of having killed Chris, expressed with constant unnecessary justifications of Chris' death and irritation with any expression of grief over Chris' death. But all of this changes on the trip to Vegas. He gambles, drinks, and cheats, like he always does, but somethings changed, he doesn't care. When he takes those shrooms and stands over the Grand Canyon screaming "I GET IT!", he realises that none of it matters, he doesn't need to care or feel guilty about anything he does. He has freed himself from his own morality and any remaining conscience has disappeared.

But even though they've come to the same realisation; none of it really matters, it impacts them in very different ways. Tony is overjoyed, Carmela is left crying.

The epiphany is liberating for Tony, he sees it as freedom from his moral conscience, freedom from his guilt, shame and pain, because none of it matters. He can kill Chris, gamble, drink, do drugs, cheat on his wife, steal and rob, and none of it matters, it will all get washed away. There are no consequences and he doesn't have to care. His default is pain, and the epiphany takes his pain away. It does what therapy never could. But the same epiphany is depressing for Carmela, it makes her realise that her existence, everyone's existence, is meaningless, all the worries and insecurities that she has built her life around don't matter outside her little Jersey bubble, and won't even matter there once she's gone.