Aral's death is so very not-integral to the rest of the book that I was able to prepare a copy of the e-book to send to a friend who knew what the spoiler was going to be, but was too close to the death of her own father to cope with reading it.

For myself, I did not get what I needed until I read a pair of fics:

http://philomytha.dreamwidth.org/33254.html
http://dira.dreamwidth.org/556885.html