About
Professor James Moriarty is the archenemy of Sherlock Holmes, a fictional detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Moriarty is a criminal mastermind whom Holmes describes as the "Napoleon of crime." Doyle lifted the phrase from a real Scotland Yard inspector who was referring to Adam Worth, one of the real life models of Moriarty. The character of Moriarty as Holmes's greatest enemy was introduced primarily as a narrative device to enable Conan Doyle to kill off Sherlock Holmes, and only featured directly in two of the Sherlock Holmes stories. However, in more recent derivative work he is often given a greater prominence and treated as Holmes's primary antagonist.
Moriarty is a confident man, assuring Holmes that if he meddles in his plans, he risks inevitable destruction. He has full respect for Holmes's intellect and says that it has been an intellectual treat to grapple with him but is also completely willing to kill Holmes should he oppose him any further, showing a ruthless side. He has a fiery temper, furiously elbowing aside people in the train station when Holmes escapes him. Moriarty also has a vengeful streak, pursuing Holmes to Switzerland to kill him for destabilising his organisation. Despite the vast crime ring over which he presides, Moriarty is fiercely independent. When his men fail to kill Holmes, he pursues him personally and without aid of an assistant whereas Holmes takes Watson with him wherever he goes. The only individual who appears to have Moriarty's complete confidence is his henchman Colonel Moran.
Holmes described Moriarty as follows:
He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the binomial theorem which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it, he won the mathematical chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him. But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumours gathered round him in the University town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and come down to London. He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organiser of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city...
—Holmes, "The Final Problem"
**I am portraying the Moriarty from the BBC show "Sherock"
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Been much to much then?