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thelastgoodoneName: August Moriarty (also known as "Michael" and "Felix" at various points, nicknamed "Augie" by his ex-fiancée)
Age: 23 as of The Last of August
Profession: grad student at Oxford (ca. 2012-2014), mathematics tutor to Charlotte Holmes (2014), analyst at Greystone (2015?-2017?)
Appearance: Tall white guy with an ill-advised blond fauxhawk. Is described in the past as having floppy, "Disney prince" hair and preferring tweed jackets, but abandons these for a "starving artist" look (t-shirt, ripped jeans, steel-toed boots) by the time James Watson meets him in The Last of August.
August is a nice person, with a tendency to want to see the best in others. Which is a shame, because the people in his life generally aren't and don't.
In A Study in Charlotte, we learn that August is the younger brother of Lucien Moriarty, a political fixer, and Hadrian and Phillipa, con men and art thieves. His father, a professor at an unknown university, is also potentially involved in crime somehow, although his parents' involvement with their children's activities are unknown. He was hired to be Charlotte's tutor shortly after her older brother Milo moved to Berlin. Charlotte's crush on him, combined with her family's pretty toxic attitudes towards love, drug use, and Moriartys, meant that this ended pretty disastrously for everyone. At the time, he was engaged to a medical student named Bryony Davis, who may or may not have been driven mad with grief over his apparent death and who may or may not have been plotting to marry into the Moriarty family the whole time. He also has bad taste in perfume, researched fractals in Antarctica, and is widely (and falsely) believed to be dead.
In The Last of August, we learn that August's parents are Nadine (a spy) and Rory (the aforementioned academic). He was originally hired by Leander Holmes to tutor his niece Charlotte as an attempt to give the Holmes family some good publicity following a nearly-averted scandal involving dubious financial and political dealings. August mentions that Hadrian is a cocaine addict, which may explain why Charlottte was able to manipulate him. He has spent the last few years living at the headquarters of Greystone, a computing and mercenary firm founded by Milo. August and Charlotte mention several times that Milo doesn't trust him and "still has a target on his back" in the event that August is actually working for/with his siblings. As it turns out, August goes back and forth between deciding that the Moriartys and Holmeses are on the same level when it comes to crime and manipulative family dynamics and still wanting to fix things. He has vague plans to redo his doctorate in Hong Kong under the name "Felix," but is apparently accidentally shot dead by Milo during a confrontation with Charlotte's mother Emma and uncle Leander over her father Alistair's seedy financial dealings. He sends Watson one last email (supposedly on a delay) cautioning him to get away from the whole Holmes family mess while he can.
Theories:
1. Was this actually the last of August? For me, it depends on what kind of Holmes reference his initial fake death was. Was it supposed to be a sort of Holmes-at-Reichenbach with no other choices thing? Or was this VALL, with August as Birdy Edwards, who is ultimately killed despite his attempts to get away? The email at the end of TLoA reminds me of Holmes's letter to Watson at the end of FINA, but there's a note from a Moriarty at the end of VALL (and that doesn't end well). We also spent a lot more time in TLoA with August than with the supposed red herring painting The Last of August. (It's maybe worth noting that the French title of TLoA is The Last of the Moriartys , which is an interesting translation choice, as it dispenses with the idea that TLoA is only about the painting, but also could refer to August or any of his siblings.) It's also a bit of a stretch, but Cavallaro responded to the Tor review of TLoA noting that few people get that August is also an Irene Adler reference, and implied elsewhere on Twitter that A Case for Jamie might include a character using the name "Adler."
There's also the fact that August seems to know more about Milo's motivation than he lets on. And we've got a whole lot of Holmeses around when he's shot, and no one thinks to check the body...
2. Is there more to the history of the Holmeses and Moriartys than we know (and more to the feud than revenge for Prof. James Moriarty's death and making their name infamous)? The original Prof. Moriarty's wife is named "Violet" according to Charlotte's family tree, despite the fact that he is Canonically unmarried as of VALL. We don't know who the mother of Sherlock Holmes's son is. It would make this whole thing one even bigger, messier family drama, but what if Violet Moriarty was Henry Holmes's mother? A few Sherlockians have commented that Violets seem to show up in the Canon fairly often. We don't know much about Quentin Moriarty, Sr, but it's possible he was bitter at his rumored half-siblings for getting away with fame and fortune and passed the story on to his descendants.
Age: 23 as of The Last of August
Profession: grad student at Oxford (ca. 2012-2014), mathematics tutor to Charlotte Holmes (2014), analyst at Greystone (2015?-2017?)
Appearance: Tall white guy with an ill-advised blond fauxhawk. Is described in the past as having floppy, "Disney prince" hair and preferring tweed jackets, but abandons these for a "starving artist" look (t-shirt, ripped jeans, steel-toed boots) by the time James Watson meets him in The Last of August.
August is a nice person, with a tendency to want to see the best in others. Which is a shame, because the people in his life generally aren't and don't.
In A Study in Charlotte, we learn that August is the younger brother of Lucien Moriarty, a political fixer, and Hadrian and Phillipa, con men and art thieves. His father, a professor at an unknown university, is also potentially involved in crime somehow, although his parents' involvement with their children's activities are unknown. He was hired to be Charlotte's tutor shortly after her older brother Milo moved to Berlin. Charlotte's crush on him, combined with her family's pretty toxic attitudes towards love, drug use, and Moriartys, meant that this ended pretty disastrously for everyone. At the time, he was engaged to a medical student named Bryony Davis, who may or may not have been driven mad with grief over his apparent death and who may or may not have been plotting to marry into the Moriarty family the whole time. He also has bad taste in perfume, researched fractals in Antarctica, and is widely (and falsely) believed to be dead.
In The Last of August, we learn that August's parents are Nadine (a spy) and Rory (the aforementioned academic). He was originally hired by Leander Holmes to tutor his niece Charlotte as an attempt to give the Holmes family some good publicity following a nearly-averted scandal involving dubious financial and political dealings. August mentions that Hadrian is a cocaine addict, which may explain why Charlottte was able to manipulate him. He has spent the last few years living at the headquarters of Greystone, a computing and mercenary firm founded by Milo. August and Charlotte mention several times that Milo doesn't trust him and "still has a target on his back" in the event that August is actually working for/with his siblings. As it turns out, August goes back and forth between deciding that the Moriartys and Holmeses are on the same level when it comes to crime and manipulative family dynamics and still wanting to fix things. He has vague plans to redo his doctorate in Hong Kong under the name "Felix," but is apparently accidentally shot dead by Milo during a confrontation with Charlotte's mother Emma and uncle Leander over her father Alistair's seedy financial dealings. He sends Watson one last email (supposedly on a delay) cautioning him to get away from the whole Holmes family mess while he can.
Theories:
1. Was this actually the last of August? For me, it depends on what kind of Holmes reference his initial fake death was. Was it supposed to be a sort of Holmes-at-Reichenbach with no other choices thing? Or was this VALL, with August as Birdy Edwards, who is ultimately killed despite his attempts to get away? The email at the end of TLoA reminds me of Holmes's letter to Watson at the end of FINA, but there's a note from a Moriarty at the end of VALL (and that doesn't end well). We also spent a lot more time in TLoA with August than with the supposed red herring painting The Last of August. (It's maybe worth noting that the French title of TLoA is The Last of the Moriartys , which is an interesting translation choice, as it dispenses with the idea that TLoA is only about the painting, but also could refer to August or any of his siblings.) It's also a bit of a stretch, but Cavallaro responded to the Tor review of TLoA noting that few people get that August is also an Irene Adler reference, and implied elsewhere on Twitter that A Case for Jamie might include a character using the name "Adler."
There's also the fact that August seems to know more about Milo's motivation than he lets on. And we've got a whole lot of Holmeses around when he's shot, and no one thinks to check the body...
2. Is there more to the history of the Holmeses and Moriartys than we know (and more to the feud than revenge for Prof. James Moriarty's death and making their name infamous)? The original Prof. Moriarty's wife is named "Violet" according to Charlotte's family tree, despite the fact that he is Canonically unmarried as of VALL. We don't know who the mother of Sherlock Holmes's son is. It would make this whole thing one even bigger, messier family drama, but what if Violet Moriarty was Henry Holmes's mother? A few Sherlockians have commented that Violets seem to show up in the Canon fairly often. We don't know much about Quentin Moriarty, Sr, but it's possible he was bitter at his rumored half-siblings for getting away with fame and fortune and passed the story on to his descendants.
