Retiring characters vs death?

Basically, she would never die on-site because she would go inactive/leave the territories before she died of old age.  For example, Vienna was a character who I played ages ago who went inactive.  I never brought her back and just assumed she continued living offsite and had kids - one of whom I eventually made (as a 2 year old adult) and brought into the game.

Edit: we don’t really delete characters all that often! I don’t see why not if they have 0 posts, but you can also update the account’s name/profile/etc and just change them to a different character too. If you really want it deleted, though, you can always request that in maintenance