*updated March 2026, anticipating the movie Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

This is a SPOILER warning for fans of Peaky Blinders who have not watched the original series but are about to see the film Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.

Due to his Romani heritage, Tommy Shelby is a superstitious man. He believes that the blue sapphire that “took” Grace Shelby’s life in the third season was also responsible for the death of his daughter, Ruby, in the sixth season.

Grace Shelby’s Death and the Beginning of the Curse

Anyone who followed the series knows that Tommy Shelby is a cruel man with very few weak spots. Unfortunately for him, one of them is his inability to protect the women he loves. He lost Greta Jurossi, his first great love; Polly Gray, his aunt and main confidante; Grace Burgess, the love of his life; and little Ruby Shelby, his daughter, in one of the saddest episodes of the entire series. That is why, when we meet him again in The Immortal Man, he is already a broken man.

Of all the women he lost, Tommy believes that Ruby and Grace paid with their lives because of the curse of the blue sapphire. The same stone about which the Russian duchess Tatiana Petrovna warned him too late, saying it had been cursed by a gypsy. “Nothing in this world would make me wear that necklace,” she laughed, only minutes before Grace was killed.

As we saw in the fourth season, after Grace’s death, consumed by guilt — after all, he was the one who asked his wife to wear the necklace — Tommy visited the gypsy Madame Bethany Boswell, who confirmed the worst. It really was the stone that brought tragedy into his life. Devastated, he leaves the sapphire with the gypsy and tries to rebuild his life alongside Lizzie Stark. Ten years later, however, fate surprises him again.

At the end of the first episode of the sixth season, our anti-hero discovers, in desperation, that his daughter is ill. In her feverish delirium, Ruby begins speaking Romanian and repeating a few words that torment him. Tommy quickly interprets this as a sign of a curse. At first, he believes it may be the curse his sister-in-law placed on him, which is why he goes looking for Esme. Her reappearance had already raised suspicions — we knew she would return, but not exactly how or why.

And it is not good.

Why Ruby Shelby Dies in Season Six

While Ruby remains in the hospital with Lizzie, Tommy goes after Esme in search of an explanation and a possible cure for his daughter’s illness.

He gets answers.

Esme reveals that the sapphire left with Bethany carried the curse to another family when the gypsy gave the necklace to her sister, Navadni Bardwell. She, in turn, placed the necklace around the neck of her own seven-year-old daughter. Immediately, the child began coughing and died that very night, suddenly. Consumed by grief and rage, the mother cast a curse back on Tommy: when he had a daughter, and she turned seven, he would suffer the same loss and the same pain she had endured.

Desperate, Tommy tries to bribe the girl’s mother, promising to build a monument in honor of the child, but it is useless. When he returns to the city, Lizzie is waiting for him with devastating news. Ruby died in the hospital, waiting to see her father one last time.

She never did.

The idea of jewels associated with tragedy is not unique to Peaky Blinders.

I would say that, just to be safe, it might be best to keep a distance from sapphire and diamond necklaces. In the 1997 film Titanic, the famous Heart of the Ocean — which is fictional — also disappears into the depths of the sea shortly after Rose wears it while posing for Jack’s drawing.

Did you notice how similar they look?

So?

Interestingly, cinema and popular culture have a long tradition of turning jewels into almost supernatural objects. In Titanic, the famous Heart of the Ocean is also a blue sapphire surrounded by diamonds, set in a necklace visually very similar to the one seen in Peaky Blinders. In James Cameron’s film, the jewel is fictional but inspired by the Hope Diamond, a real stone surrounded by stories of bad luck and tragedy throughout its history.

In the world of Titanic, the necklace belongs to the arrogant Cal Hockley and symbolizes wealth, possession, and destiny. Rose wears the jewel when she poses for the famous drawing Jack makes only hours before the ship sinks. After the disaster, the stone disappears for decades until, already elderly, Rose reveals that she kept the necklace all those years — only to quietly return it to the ocean at the end of the story.

In both cases, the blue sapphires function as something more than simple luxury objects. They carry a symbolic weight, almost mythical. In Titanic, the stone accompanies a love story that ends in tragedy and leaves a lasting memory. In Peaky Blinders, the sapphire becomes the supernatural explanation Tommy Shelby finds to cope with the guilt and the losses that haunt him.

Perhaps neither stone is truly cursed.

But after so many deaths, tragedies, and stories that end badly, it is easy to understand why certain characters — and perhaps even some viewers — might prefer to keep their distance from sapphire necklaces.

With the arrival of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, the story of the blue sapphire may take on new meaning. After so many losses — Grace, Polly, and Ruby — the question remains whether Tommy Shelby will finally escape the curse he believes he set in motion himself.