Lord Edmund Blackadder

Edmund Blackadder is minor nobility with grand ambitions and no scruples about how he gets there. Surrounded by idiots, sycophants and superiors he privately despises, he schemes, flatters and manipulates his way toward status and survival, all while treating everyone around him with weary, cutting contempt they rarely notice.

Rowan Atkinson plays him as the only sane, sharp mind in a world of fools, and the gap between Edmund's withering asides and everyone else's obliviousness is where the comedy lives. The writing trusts him to be genuinely clever, which lets Atkinson's timing and disdain do the heavy lifting.