George Warleggan

George Warleggan belongs to Cornwall's newest fortune, not its oldest name, and he feels the difference every time the old gentry are polite to him. Educated, controlled, and quietly proud, he moves through drawing rooms as an equal while sensing he isn't quite treated as one. He watches Ross Poldark with the wary attention of an old schoolfellow who never won.

Jack Farthing plays him without a flicker of cartoon villainy at the start — just a clenched, watchful correctness, a man who has trained every appetite into good manners. That restraint is what makes him compelling: you sense the resentment and longing working underneath the composure long before the show lets either surface.