Tatyana

Tatyana serves as one of Catherine's ladies-in-waiting at the Russian court, a fixture of palace life who has clearly seen everything and been impressed by none of it. She meets the new empress's wide-eyed idealism with flat, weary honesty about how things actually work here, offering little comfort and no illusions.

Florence Keith-Roach plays her with a deadpan so dry it becomes its own kind of comedy, delivering horrifying court realities in the same bored tone as gossip. Against the show's absurdist violence and romantic delusion, Tatyana is the voice of unblinking realism, and that contrast is where a lot of the funniest, bleakest lines land.