In this note we discuss some recent and ongoing joint work with Thalia Jeffres concerning the existence of Kähler-Einstein metrics on compact Kähler manifolds which have a prescribed incomplete singularity along a smooth divisor $D$. We shall begin with a general discussion of the problem, and give a rough outline of the “classical” proof of existence in the smooth case, due to Yau and Aubin, where no singularities are prescribed. Following this is a discussion of the geometry of the conical or edge...