This chapter investigates a distinctive dimension of the recent growth in memoir-writing by concentrating upon the publications of some of those victims/ survivors who were intimately affected by the violence of the Troubles. Perhaps counter-intuitively, some victims, despite the fact that they have suffered intensely as a result of the conflict (whether in terms of physical injury and/or psychological trauma, or bereavement), have been less concerned than some other categories of memoirists with shaping the wider political and historical narrative of conflict. We can hypothesise that very often victims’ memoirs reflect a personal desire to come to terms with a traumatic past event and to gain public recognition of the suffering endured, but the scope of such an endeavour is usually relatively circumscribed. Unlike those (ex-)protagonists who were intimately involved in the political and violent conflict, it might be speculated that at least some of these victims/survivors can look back at the past through a less ideological prism, without the same filter of organisational commitment and loyalty felt by political representatives or paramilitary actors. Many such victims’ memoirs are based more closely on the individual experience of conflict, and its legacies; these ‘humanising’ stories of the costs of violent conflict may have resonance with wider society, in part because these individuals are perceived as very ordinary and as reluctant protagonists thrust into the spotlight, in contrast to political leaders, and even paramilitary figures (who whilst operating in clandestinity, nonetheless often traded upon their notoriety). If it is possible, though unusual, for republicans or loyalists to engage in genuinely self-critical remembrance of their part in the conflict, nonetheless the act of self-writing by these authors often tempts them onto the path of ‘vindication, exculpation and the byways of personal interest’. For victims/survivors, especially those around whom can be formed a consensus regarding their status as ‘innocent’, this may be less problematic. Marie Breen Smyth has recognised the paradoxical potential power of the stereotypical victim, viewed as ‘innocent, passive, suffering, bereft, powerless, helpless, dependent, absolved from responsibility, needy and morally entitled to help.’ She goes on to cite L. M. Thomas’ idea of the victim as a ‘moral beacon’, an individual for whom ‘great suffering carries in its wake deep moral knowledge.’