 How do grounding and essence interact? On the relevant notion of essence, essence isn’t a purely modal matter—while all essential truths about some item (truths that characterize what it is to be that item) are necessary, not all necessary truths about some item are essential truths about it (Fine 1994). For example, anything that is identical to Beijing is a city, and this is a candidate essential truth about Beijing. But, while it’s necessary that Beijing exists only if {Beijing} exists, this isn’t a candidate essential truth about the city (though it’s a candidate essential truth about {Beijing}). Intuitively, you can know everything there is to know about what it is to be Beijing and not thereby know anything about sets.