Nursie

Nursie is Queen Elizabeth's doddering old childhood nurse, forever pottering about the palace half-deaf and wholly oblivious to the scheming around her. She dotes on the Queen as if she were still a small child, offers nonsensical comfort, and drifts through court intrigue without registering any of it.

Patsy Byrne plays her as a warm, wittering non-sequitur machine, and the joke never wears thin because the writing keeps finding new absurd corners of her simplicity to explore. She's the still, silly centre against which the court's cruelty and cunning look even more ridiculous by contrast.