  Binary neutron star mergers are one of the ultimate events of massive binary
star evolution, and our understanding of their parent system is still in its
infancy. Upcoming gravitational wave detections, coupled with multi-wavelength
follow-up observations, will allow us to study an increasing number of these
events by characterising their neighbouring stellar populations and searching
for their progenitors. Stellar evolution simulations are essential to this work
but they are also based on numerous assumptions. Additionally, the models used
to study the host galaxies differ from those used to characterise the
progenitors and are typically based on single star populations. Here we
introduce a framework to perform an end-to-end analysis and deploy it to the
first binary neutron star merger - GW170817. With the Binary Population And
Spectral Synthesis (BPASS) codes we are able to retrieve the physical
properties of the host galaxy NGC 4993 as well as infer progenitor candidates.
In our simulations there is a >98% chance that GW170817 originated from a
stellar population with Z=0.010 born between 5 and 12.5 Gyrs ago. By carefully
weighing the stellar genealogies we find that GW170817 most likely came from a
binary system born with a 13-24 Msol primary and 10-12 Msol secondary which
underwent two or three common envelope events over their lifetime.
