Colonel John Herncastle Character Analysis

Rachel Verinder’s sinister and selfish uncle, who robs the Moonstone from the palace of Seringapatnam during his time in the British Army, as recounted in the novel’s prologue, and brings it back to England, where it seems to curse him for the rest of his life: his family and friends shun him and he receives a number of death threats, even though he never publicly reveals that he still has the Diamond. At the end of his “solitary, vicious, underground life,” he gifts the Moonstone to Rachel in what he claims is an act of charity and forgiveness but the Verinders quickly identify as a final attempt at vengeance. (Indeed, he makes this gift upon his death on the sole condition that Julia is still living; otherwise, he planned to have the stone cut up into smaller ones and sold.) He shares the nickname “the Honourable John” with the British East India Company, which ruled and plundered India until 1857—Collins uses this name to make Herncastle’s behavior an allegory for the British Empire’s systematic bloodthirstiness, immorality, and greed in India.