What you wrote about nobody knowing exactly what their lives were like reminds me of an old saying about people die and become memories, memories become legends when everyone who knew you in real life dies, and legends become myths, meaning nobody knows the truth and there are many versions of the story forever on. That is actually one way in which traditional ferry tales originate, because true stories change little by little as they get told, until you end up with something that doesn't even resemble what actually happened.