The True Story Of The Jewel That Inspired The Cursed Diamond In ‘All The Light We Cannot See’

A little while ago I finished reading the Pulitzer Prize-Winning novel, All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr. The novel is set in World War II, and one of the protagonists of the book is a blind French girl named Marie-Laure, whose father has been tasked with protecting a precious - and rumoured to be cursed - diamond from German hands. 

Now, a precious cursed diamond is not something that typically makes me pause, but the name of a location mentioned in the diamond’s history as narrated in the story made me do a double-take - for the location mentioned in passing was Golconda, India. 

This immediately captured my attention, and I found myself wondering whether history records a famous diamond from that location. As it turns out, there are not one, but several legendary Golconda diamonds, and one in particular caught my eye - but before I dive into its story, I will first give you an overview of the cursed diamond described in All The Light We Cannot See, as well as the current theory as to which diamond inspired the author. We will then dive into my theory, following which you can decide which version you believe to be closer to the fictional diamond called the Sea of Flames. 

In the book, we are introduced to the Sea of Flames in the very first chapter, as Marie-Laure embarks on a children’s tour in a local museum in Paris, arranged by her father. The tour guide stops in front of a sombre locked vault, and when the children ask what it contains, he tells them the story of a blue stone that was once taken from a dry river bed in Borneo centuries ago by a prince because he thought it was pretty. 

But on his way back, the prince was attacked by men on horseback and stabbed through the heart. The attackers, however, did not take the stone, for it was clutched tightly in the prince’s fist and passed without notice. The prince managed to crawl home, where he finally collapsed. Everyone thought the prince was going to die, but in a miraculous twist, after ten days of lying in a stupor the prince sat up straight, with the stone in his hand. All who witnessed this claimed he shouldn’t have survived his wound, and whispers began to circulate that the stone had healing powers. 

The stone was discovered to be the largest raw diamond that anyone had ever encountered. It was given to a stone cutter, who fashioned it into a magnificent diamond, brilliant blue with a touch of red at its centre, the Sea of Flames. 

The prince wore the diamond in his crown, and when the sunlight hit it, he was bathed in such a brilliant glow that those who looked at him could not tell where the light ended and he began. As long as the prince had the stone with him, legend was that he wouldn’t die. 

However, bad luck endlessly plagued those around him, with his brother drowning, his second brother succumbing to a snakebite and his father dying of illness. Moreover, word began to spread that an army was gathering in the east. The prince consulted his advisors on the best course of action, but it was a priest who came with a warning: he had a dream in which he saw that the Goddess of Earth had made the diamond as a gift for her lover, the God of the Sea. When the prince took the stone she became enraged, cursing it so that its bearer would live forever but unending misfortune would rain upon those he loved. But if the keeper of the diamond threw it back into the sea, the curse would be lifted. 

The prince was not going to throw away his diamond, so instead he had the priest’s tongue cut off. But the army gathering in the east eventually invaded, killing everyone in their path. The prince disappeared, as did the diamond. 

A  couple of centuries later, a French diamond trader on a trip to the Golconda mines in India was shown a massive, blue, pear-cut diamond, which he then took to the Duke in Lorraine, who immediately fixed the diamond to his walking stick. Within a month, the Duchess died of disease, and two of the Duke’s favourite servants fell off the roof and broke their necks. The paranoid Duke immediately relinquished the diamond and sent it to the museum, instructing them to keep it locked up, not to be opened for 200 years. 

And that concludes the tale of the Sea of Flames. 

Now, I wasn’t able to find too many theories on which diamond might have inspired Doerr’s Sea of Flames, but I did come across the mention of an amethyst stolen from Delhi around the time of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, a jewel that seemingly cursed all those who possessed it after it was taken out of India.  

The cursed amethyst now resides in the Natural History Museum in London (of course), but it originally belonged to a temple in Kanpur, from where it was stolen by a Colonel W. Ferris during the chaos of the Sepoy Mutiny. However, shortly after stealing the diamond, the colonel lost everything he owned and his health deteriorated rapidly; the same fate plagued his son as well, who inherited the stone after his father’s death. 

The son quickly gave the accursed jewel to a friend, hoping that this would lift his own misfortunes. That friend committed suicide shortly after receiving the diamond, declaring in his will that the stone was to be returned to the son. 

By 1890, the stone found itself in the hands of a man of many talents, named Edward Heron-Allen. However, he too soon found himself plagued by a series of disasters upon receiving the stone. Initially he did not believe in the stone being cursed, and gave it to a friend of his, a singer - she soon found that her voice had disappeared and she never sang again. 

It was at this point that paranoia about the stone began to set in, and in a frantic attempt to be rid of the thing, Edward Heron-Allen threw the amethyst into a canal, only for it to resurface and be presented back to him by a dealer, who was entirely unaware of Heron-Allen’s previous possession of the jewel. 

Convinced that the stone was cursed, Heron-Allen had it locked in his bank vault, within seven additional locked boxes, not to be opened until after his death. 

In 1943, three years after Edward Heron-Allen died, his daughter unlocked the amethyst and gave it to the Natural History Museum, with a warning of its curse, urging that it be cast into the sea. However, the museum chose to keep it, and it went on display in 2007. Some believe the curse is yet to fade - curator Richard Savin, while transporting the amethyst from a symposium of the Heron-Allen society, encountered the most ferocious storm he had ever seen. When describing the event, he said, “We drove through the most amazing storm we’d ever witnessed. Lightning was flashing on both sides of the car, and my wife was shouting at me: throw that damn jewel away, you shouldn't have brought it!” 

Since then, any time Savin has attempted to attend a subsequent meeting he has fallen violently ill. 

The Cursed Amethyst of Kanpur definitely bears certain similarities to the Sea of Flames - it was stolen from India, it ended up in a museum, it is presumed to be cursed, and has connections to water (with it having been thrown in a canal in an attempt to get rid of it, and Heron-Allen’s daughter’s advice to ‘cast the stone into the sea’). 

But is this the strongest possible inspiration for the Sea of Flames? I don’t think so. In my research, I focused on Golconda, which was specifically mentioned in the book itself, and came across another jewel that bears several more similarities with the Sea of Flames - the jewel I speak of is the Hope Diamond. 

Accounts of the origin of the stone and its journey out of India are unclear, but one thing all accounts have in common is a man named Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, a French gem merchant. Some accounts say he stole the diamond from a temple, while others say he bought it from the Golconda mines; either way, the diamond left India in his hands. It was then bought from Tavernier by King Louis XIV, who had it recut in 1673. King Louis XIV died of gangrene, and all of his legitimate heirs - except one - died in childhood. 

The diamond eventually came into the hands of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette - and we all know what happened to them. 

Later, the diamond came into the hands of a Greek merchant named Simon Maoncharides, who later drove his car over a cliff and killed himself, his wife and his child. 

The last victim of the diamond’s rumoured curse was a woman named Evalyn Walsh Mclean, an heiress who bought the diamond. Misfortune began to rain down on her shortly after; her mother-in-law died, then her son died at the age of nine, her husband left her for another woman and later died in a mental hospital, and her daughter died of a drug overdose at the age of twenty-five. She herself died buried in debt. 

Evalyn’s remaining children sold the diamond to Harry Winston, who mailed it to the Smithsonian nine years later, where it remains to this day. 

To me, the Hope Diamond bears far more resemblance to the Sea of Flames than the amethyst; for one, it is actually a diamond, in addition to which, it has strong connections to France, being taken from the country by a French gem merchant, and subsequently possessed by multiple generations of French royals. It too, ended up in  a museum, and is believed to be cursed. But most importantly, the diamond’s origin directly coincides with a location mentioned in the book  - Golconda. And as for its colour, the Hope Diamond is a deep, brilliant blue. 

 

Works Cited 

Doerr, Anthony. All The Light We Cannot See. London: HarperCollins. 2014. Print. 

Gabby. “Anthony Doerr’s ‘Sea Of Flames’ May Be Fake, But The Cursed Delhi Sapphire Is Very Real” The Anthenaeum. May 5th, 2020. Web < https://thegreatathenaeum.wordpress.com/2020/05/05/anthony-doerrs-sea-of-flames-may-not-be-real-but-the-cursed-delhi-sapphire-is/ > as seen on June 6th, 2023.

Meier, Allison. “The Curse of the Stolen Amethyst” Atlas Obscura. October 2nd, 2013. Web. < https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cursed-amethyst-natural-history-museum > as seen on June 6th, 2023.

Conradt, Stacy. “10 Victims of the Hope Diamond Curse'' Mental Floss. October 24th, 2017. Web. < https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/19579/quick-10-10-victims-hope-diamond-curse > as seen on June 6th, 2023.

“History of the Hope Diamond” Smithsonian. Web. < https://www.si.edu/spotlight/hope-diamond/history#:~:text=The%20history%20of%20the%20stone,in%20shape%20and%20crudely%20cut. > as seen on June 6th, 2023.

“The Hope Diamond’s Mystery & Curse” Cape Town Diamond Museum. Web. < https://www.capetowndiamondmuseum.org/blog/2019/09/5988/#:~:text=1666%3A%20Jean%2DBaptiste%20Tavernier&text=Jean%2DBaptiste%20Tavernier%2C%20a%2017,in%20possession%20of%20the%20gem. > as seen on June 6th, 2023.

Rosenberg, Jennifer. “The Curse of the Hope Diamond” Thought Co. March 20th, 2020. Web. < https://www.thoughtco.com/the-curse-of-the-hope-diamond-1779329  > as seen on June 6th, 2023.