I suggest caution when going the epilogue-as-prologue route. (Effectively a How We Got Here.) Big reason is it destroys all suspense for that particular character. You'll know they reach the end and no matter how horrifying, tough or what have you you make the story the reader's gonna know they make it through regardless because hey by showing a epilogue perspective first, you spoiled it for them.
However some works can work with this kind of POV as a Framing Device. Have the person telling it be a different identity (or secretly the same person under an assumed name) than the protagonist of the story.
If a major character dies, you can always make the epiprologue their funeral. It might seem like it removes suspense, but the sense of the looming inevitable actually really adds to it. Especially if the plot doesn't focus around their death, in which case it's a bait and switch.
As an example of structuring: Funeral; flashback of whole story so far, leading up to the death; final act where the main plot is resolved.
It adds gravitas to your character's death, it creates suspense for your final act, since you've proven a willingness to kill such a central character (and if you make the prologue their funeral, the character will be elevated to the role of central, no matter how much you use them), and it serves to provide a nice tension as they a) get to know someone they know will die b) expect the whole work to lead up to that death.
To make my point via analogy: Playing through FFVII a second time. You know Aeries will die. It makes the time you spend getting to know her so much more poignant the second time around. And the revenge all the sweeter.
I'm rewriting (again) my first chapter, and I've been thinking that instead of jumping into the story (which seems to me to be a bit sudden), I'd try writing a kind of Epilogue-as-Prologue thing, with sections of it written from the viewpoints of the main characters as they are at the end of the story.
For the characters I've created and for the canon characters that are heavily focused on, I think it will fit them (it's an Inuyasha fanfiction).
What do you think of the idea, though, removing any specific characters from the equation?