Tommy Shelby’s story has always been surrounded by politics, violence, and strategy. Yet there is another layer that runs through the entire narrative of Peaky Blinders and often goes unnoticed when we focus only on the rise of the Shelby criminal empire. It is the spiritual dimension connected to the family’s Romani origins and, above all, to their relationship with the Lee clan. Within that world emerges one of the sseries’smost complex characters, Esme Lee, and it is also there that the idea of the blue sapphire’s curse begins to make sense.

To understand why Esme distrusts Tommy so deeply, why she seems to carry a permanent resentment, and why she only chooses to help him very late in the story, it is necessary to return to the beginning of the relationship between the two families.

Before the First World War, the Shelbys and the Lees were violent rivals. Both families belonged to the Romani tradition and competed for territory, business, and influence within the itinerant and marginal communities of England. Clashes were frequent and followed the logic typical of clans that live according to their own codes of honor and revenge.

Tommy Shelby decides to end this rivalry in the most pragmatic way possible. He arranges a marriage between his brother John Shelby and Esme Lee. The union is not born from romance but from family politics. For Tommy, it is a strategy designed to consolidate power and avoid unnecessary wars. For the Lees, however, the marriage carries a deeper meaning, because alliances between Romani families traditionally involve not only social agreements but also symbolic and spiritual ones.

This difference in perspective follows Esme throughout her entire trajectory within the Shelby family.

Tommy is Romani by origin, but he has become something very different from what the traditional Romani world recognizes. He has turned into an urban, industrial, and profoundly modern man. He believes in money, strategy, and political power. Superstition, rituals,s and spiritual beliefs appear in his life more as occasional tools than as the foundation of existence.

For someone like Esme, that transformation represents a dangerous rupture. In the spiritual universe suggested by the series, ignoring certain forces means disrespecting an order that cannot be controlled by intelligence or violence alone.

That distance becomes even clearer after the death of John Shelby.

John is killed at the beginning of the fourth season during the war against the Changretta family. Luca Changretta is directly responsible, but in Esme’s view, the chain of responsibility goes much further. From her perspective, John died because Tommy turned the Shelbys into something larger and far more dangerous than the family had ever been. By expanding their operations beyond Birmingham and engaging in conflicts with increasingly powerful enemies, Tommy exposed all his brothers to risks that had never existed before.

John’s death permanently breaks Esme’s bond with the Shelbys. She leaves the family and returns to an itinerant life with the Lee people. This departure is not only emotional. It is also cultural and spiritual. By returning to the Romani world, Esme reenters a universe where destiny, omens, and curses are not metaphors but part of how life itself is understood.

It is within this context that the story of the blue sapphire becomes relevant.

In the third season, Grace Shelby dies after being struck by a bullet intended for Tommy. The tragedy occurs shortly after she receives a sapphire that, according to a Romani woman, is cursed. Tommy initially dismisses the warning as superstition, but the coincidence between the gift and Grace’s death settles in his mind as a permanent form of guilt.

Years later, when Ruby Shelby falls ill in the sixth season, Tommy is once again confronted with the idea of a curse. The child develops mysterious symptoms and repeatedly speaks the word “sapphire” during her feverish visions. The connection between the stone and the deaths of two of the most important people in his life becomes impossible to ignore.

Within Romani folklore, jewels and objects can carry accumulated histories of violence, betrayal, or injustice. When an object passes through the hands of different owners marked by tragedy, it is believed that it can retain a negative energy that continues to manifest itself. The danger lies not only in possessing the object but also in the circumstances through which it was obtained and the lives it has passed through.

The series never fully explains the origin of the sapphire, yet the narrative itself suggests that the stone carries a long and troubling past. For someone like Esme, who remains connected to this symbolic universe, the possibility of a curse is far from absurd.

An inevitable question follows. Why did she never warn Tommy earlier?

The answer lies largely in Tommy himself. He has always been a man who listens very little when he believes he already understands the world. Throughout the series,s several characters attempt to warn him about limits he should not cross. Rarely does he change course. From Esme’s point of view, warning him would probably have made no difference. In many ways, she believes the tragedies are simply consequences of the choices he made.

When Tommy finally seeks her out again in the sixth season, the circumstances have changed dramatically. He has lost Grace, he has lost Polly, he has lost Ruby, and he carries a spiritual exhaustion that did not exist before. For the first time,e he seems willing to listen to something other than calculation and strategy.

Esme notices that change.

She remains distant and ironic, but she understands that Tommy is searching for answers in a territory he once dismissed. During their encounter, she reinforces the idea that certain tragedies are not random and that Tommy’s life has been shaped by decisions that unleashed profound consequences.

It is at this moment that the revelation ofthe Duke appears.

Duke is the son Tommy had years earlier with a Romani woman. The young man grew up far from the Shelby family and has no understanding of the empire his father built. By introducing Duke to Tommy, Esme is not simply offering a piece of information. She is returning to him a part of himself that had long been forgotten.

Duke represents the direct connection to the Romani world Tommy abandoned when he chose to construct his power in Birmingham and London. He embodies a lineage untouched by the trauma of war, by industrial ambition, or by political maneuvering.

By leading Tommy to Duke, Esme also forces him to confront the responsibility of acknowledging that past.

Their relationship remains tense and ambiguous. Esme never becomes a conventional ally. Instead,d she continues to observe Tommy with a mixture of distrust and deep understanding. Few characters in the series grasp as clearly who he is and where he truly comes from.

There is a persistent irony in this entire story.

Tommy Shelby spent his life trying to control the world through intelligence, violence, and careful planning. Yet some of the forces that most profoundly shape his destiny belong precisely to the world he once dismissed as superstition. Love, loss, guilt,t and fate run through his life in ways that no strategy can fully anticipate.

Esme Lee remains connected to that world. She never completely forgives Tommy, yet she does not abandon him entirely either. Instead, she becomes a bridge between two universes he never managed to reconcile.

Perhaps that is why the story of the blue sapphire never entirely disappears from the narrative. It is not simply an object associated with two tragic deaths. It represents the moment when Tommy Shelby realizes that some things cannot be controlled.

Some things simply demand their price.