Edmund Blackadder, Esq.

Butler to the Prince Regent, Edmund Blackadder is the one sane, sharp mind adrift in a household of idiots. He wants advancement, comfort, and to be surrounded by fewer fools, though fate keeps denying him all three. He schemes constantly, flatters when useful, and seethes with contempt the rest of the time.

Atkinson plays the straight man as the funniest role in the room, all clipped disdain and murderous asides delivered with a butler's composure. The writing hands him the wit; he supplies the exasperation underneath it, the sense of a clever man perpetually surrounded by catastrophic stupidity and powerless to escape it.