Peaky Blinders Family Tree — Shelby, Gray, Changretta and Solomons

The Peaky Blinders family tree, without the guesswork

Peaky Blinders is a show about a family that turns a back-street betting operation into a company, and then cannot agree on who owns it. Tommy Shelby wants legitimacy and political power. Arthur wants to be forgiven for what the war made him. John wants the next race and the next fight. Ada wants a life the family cannot touch. Polly wants the children to survive the money. Four brothers and a sister, one aunt, one firm, and a set of relationships that change meaning every season.

This archive treats the Shelby family tree as data, not decoration. Every parent, spouse, sibling, mentor and loyalty connection is a named pair in a file. The interactive networks draw those pairs; an image model is never asked to invent a line. The result is a family tree you can check, filter and argue with — which is the only kind of Peaky Blinders family tree that makes sense.

The families

The Peaky Blinders story is not one tree. It is four separate arguments that share a name and a letterhead. The Shelby core asks who runs the firm. The Gray line asks who inherits it. The Changretta vendetta asks what a son is worth. The Solomons network asks what a deal is worth. Each network has its own cast, its own centre and its own way of failing.

That division is the point. A single graph with twenty-four people becomes a hairball; four networks keep each argument legible and let you start from the question you actually have. Are you here for the brothers? Open the Shelby network. For Polly and Michael? Open the Gray line. For the war with Luca? Open the vendetta. For Alfie, Camden and the London firms? Open Solomons.

The Shelby firm

Tommy, Arthur, John, Ada and Finn were raised in Small Heath by Polly Gray, their aunt, while the men were at war. Polly kept the books, the secrets and the children together. Tommy came back with a plan. Arthur came back with a temper he cannot fully control. John came back with an appetite for risk. Ada came back with a politics that embarrasses the firm. Finn grew up inside a legend he did not help build.

This network has seventeen characters and thirty-three explicit edges. The gold sibling lines run between the five Shelby children. The mentor lines from Polly to each of them carry the family's real authority. The rose marriage lines connect Tommy to Grace and then Lizzie, and John to Esme. The loyalty lines reach the yard, the church and the gypsy camps: Charlie Strong, Johnny Dogs, Jeremiah and Isaiah. It is the network where every other network starts.

Polly and Michael Gray

Polly's son was taken from her when he was a child and returned as a polished American stranger with a wife, a watch chain and a plan for the company. Michael Gray is the heir Tommy never wanted: patient, educated, and quietly certain that the firm should be run like a corporation rather than a family. Gina, his wife, pushes him toward the top and treats the Shelbys as an obstacle to be acquired.

This network has eleven characters and twenty-seven explicit edges. The gold parent line between Polly and Michael is the emotional centre. The rose line between Michael and Gina is a marriage that doubles as a boardroom alliance. The mentor line from Tommy to Michael turns into a rivalry, and the loyalty lines to Arthur, John, Ada and Finn show how a cousin becomes a claimant. Polly's betrothal to Aberama Gold and her bond with his son Bonnie complete the picture.

The Changretta vendetta

John Shelby kills Angel Changretta. Angel's father, Vicente, tries to settle the debt with a business agreement. Angel's mother, Audrey, refuses the money and sends her surviving son, Luca, from Boston with a list of names. The vendetta is a family ledger written in blood. It takes John in the street before it is finished, and it turns the Shelby firm into a household under siege.

This network has eleven characters and twenty-six explicit edges. The gold parent lines run from Vicente and Audrey to Luca. The loyalty lines from Luca to John, Tommy, Arthur, Polly and Michael are the vendetta itself, each one a threat dressed as a courtesy. The alliance lines to Aberama and Bonnie show how the gypsy families are pulled into a war that is not theirs. The rose marriage line between John and Esme explains why her grief becomes a departure, not a reconciliation.

Alfie Solomons and Camden Town

Alfie Solomons runs the Camden distillery and a web of deals that reach from the London docks to American prohibition. He is Tommy's most useful ally and most dangerous enemy, often in the same conversation. Darby Sabini holds the racecourses and resents the Birmingham upstarts. Luca Changretta arrives with an offer that is really a test. Johnny Dogs moves the goods and the messages between them.

This network has ten characters and thirty-three explicit edges. The loyalty line between Alfie and Tommy is the spine: a partnership conducted as a series of betrayals that neither man can afford to end. The lines to Arthur, John, Polly and Michael show how deeply the Camden firm reaches into the Shelby company. The rivalry lines to Sabini and Luca show the London market as a set of overlapping debts. Ada and Johnny Dogs are the two people Alfie treats as something close to honest.

Seven profile cards

Seven character profile cards turn the main players into archival dossiers. Each card carries a portrait, age, identity, likes, dislikes, personality, two hexagonal radar charts for COMBAT and TACTICS, and a five-line introduction. The seven are Tommy, Polly, Michael, Luca, Vicente, Audrey and Alfie: the three centres of the family war and the two generations of the Changretta command.

The cards are made with the character-profile-card skill and are placed inside their family sections above, not in a separate gallery dump. That placement matters. A profile card is an argument about a person, and the argument only makes sense next to the network that contains them.

Five design sheets

Five character design sheets give the same treatment to costume and silhouette. Each sheet shows a full-body front view, side and back views, four expression heads, detail callouts for hat, boots, hands and signature item, and a row of colour swatches. The five are Tommy, Polly, Michael, Luca and Alfie.

The sheets are made with the character-design-sheet skill. They are reference documents, not posters: the point is that the same face, coat and flat cap can be reused across the networks, the cards and the family poster without drifting. Every sheet is placed inside its family section.

One family poster

The family poster is made with the character-relationship-poster skill. It shows seven named people exactly once: Tommy, Arthur, John, Ada, Polly, Michael and Luca. It draws exactly nine edges: Tommy to Arthur, John and Ada as siblings; Arthur to Ada as siblings; Polly to Michael as parent; Polly to Tommy and Michael to Tommy as mentor; and Luca to John and Tommy as vendetta.

The poster is a summary, not the source of truth. The source of truth is the data file behind the networks. The poster is generated from the same cast and the same pairs, so it cannot contradict the networks. That division of labour is the whole point: the networks hold the argument, the poster holds the image.

Why a network instead of a poster

A poster is a picture of a family tree. A network is the family tree itself. In the four interactive networks, every edge is a source-target pair with a relation type, so a line cannot drift to the wrong person. You can switch views: the whole family, the blood line, the marriages and children, the firm and the yard, or the vendetta. You can click a face and read the relations around it. You can use it on a phone. None of that is possible when an image model is asked to draw a family tree from prose.

The poster still matters, but it has a different job. It is the one-glance summary: seven faces, nine correct edges, a legend that separates bloodline, mentorship and vendetta. It is generated from the same cast and the same pairs as the networks, so it cannot contradict them. That is the division of labour: the networks hold the argument, the poster holds the image.

Frequently asked questions

Is this canon? The family relations follow the television series Peaky Blinders, created by Steven Knight for the BBC and Netflix. Every narrative note is marked show-only because the Shelby story has no novel canon. Historical places, the Wall Street Crash and figures such as Oswald Mosley appear as dramatised history, not as documentary record.

Why are there four networks? A single graph with every character becomes unreadable. Four networks keep each argument legible and let you start from the question you actually have: the firm, the inheritance, the vendetta or the London deal.

Who is the head of the family? Tommy Shelby is the head of Shelby Company Limited and the family's strategist, but Polly Gray is its moral centre and its bookkeeper. The networks show both kinds of authority: Tommy's plan and Polly's veto.

Is Michael Polly's son? Yes. Michael Gray is Polly's biological son, separated from her as a child and raised in America. He returns as an adult, becomes the company accountant, and eventually tries to take the firm from Tommy. The Gray network marks the parent line in gold and the rivalry in a separate loyalty line.

Why does John Shelby die? John kills Angel Changretta, and the Changretta family answers with a vendetta. Luca Changretta shoots John in the street in the opening episode of season four. The archive records it as a loyalty edge between Luca and John, marked as a vendetta rather than a family relation.

Are the historical figures real? Oswald Mosley and the Wall Street Crash are historical. The Shelbys, the Changrettas and their war are fictional characters inside a dramatised Birmingham. The archive labels every claim show-only and does not present the series as a documentary.

Can I read it on a phone? Yes. The networks are built to be dragged, zoomed and tapped. The hub and this page reflow to a single column, and the images are served as compressed WebP files.

Open the archive

Start with the hub, then open the Shelby network and click a face. If you want the inheritance argument, open the Gray line. If you want the war, open the Changretta vendetta. If you want the London deal, open Solomons. The poster is there when you need the whole family in one glance.

Every layer of this archive was built with four named skills: relationship-network for the four interactive graphs, character-relationship-poster for the family poster, character-profile-card for the seven dossiers, and character-design-sheet for the five turnaround sheets. The data, the drawings and the pages are separate on purpose, so each one can be checked against the others.

Built with relationship-network, character-relationship-poster, character-profile-card and character-design-sheet.