Edmund Blackadder,
Esquire
It appears that
the Blackadder dynasty has fallen upon hard times, as the Blackadder of this period is not royalty or nobility, but the butler
to the Prince Regent, Prince
George. Blackadder seems to make a living from stealing and selling the Prince's valuables (including,
for some reason, socks). Indeed, George's wallet is often to be found in Blackadder's top pocket.
Throughout the centuries
since his ancestor Lord Blackadder, the Blackadders seem to have maintained their rapier-like wit, and their penchant for
theft, corruption, lies and insults. The Blackadder dynasty also seems to have maintained a close link with the Baldrick dynasty.
Baldrick, by this stage, has lost whatever cunning his ancestors once had, and reached a level of childlike stupidity that
is familiar to most viewers.
On the up side of
things, somewhere between the Elizabethan period and the Regency period, Blackadder does seem to have managed to shake off
Lord Percy's descendants. However, in his place stands the even stupider Prince George,
whom Blackadder now has to serve. The relationship between the two is a fine example of how figure heads often act as puppets
whose strings are pulled by those behind the scenes.
As butler to the
royal household, Blackadder's jobs include announcing, supervising the linen maids, opening and closing doors and cleaning
up the Prince's cock-ups. Most of his other duties appear to have been delegated to Baldrick. He also receives assistance
from Mrs. Miggins, who appears to do much of the baking for the palace.
This Blackadder
appears to have no real agenda other than helping the Prince make money so that he can steal it. As a result, he is often
required to guide George so that he appears respectable to society. This includes speech writing, election rigging, wooing
potential brides and advising the Prince on patronages. This often leads Blackadder into worse trouble, including having to
re-write the dictionary in one night, being robbed by the elusive "Shadow" and being captured by an evil revolutionary.
Blackadder actually
seems rather content to be middle class with "the toffs at the top, the plebs at the bottom, and me in the middle making a
fat pile of cash out of both of them". He dreams of being young and wild, then middle aged and rich and then he wants to be
old and annoy people by pretending to be deaf. Edmund was also an author. Under the pseudonym 'Gertrude Perkins' he wrote
"Edmund: A Butler's Tale", a giant rollercoaster of a novel in 400 sizzling chapters. A searing indictment of domestic servitude
in the eighteenth century with some hot gypsies thrown in. Samuel Johnson believed it to be the only book better than the
Dictionary, and it looked like Edmund was going to be rich, until Baldrick mistakenly threw the book on the fire.
In the final episode,
after a saga which involves Edmund and the Prince swapping coats and assuming each other's identity to protect the Prince
from the vengeance of the Duke of Wellington, George is shot dead by the Duke, who believes him to be a 'tiresome butler'
called Mr. Blackadder. Blackadder leaps on the opportunity to claim that he is Prince George,
and supposedly went on to become George IV of the United Kingdom.
Baldrick
The Baldrick of
Regency Britain works as a dogsbody to Mr. E. Blackadder esq., butler to Prince George.
He lives in a pipe in the upstairs water closet of the Palace.
The third Baldrick
is much more noticeably stupid and disgusting than those previous to him. Like his Elizabethan ancestor, he is known to eat
dung occasionally. He is also more childlike. There is not the slightest sign of 'cunning' in any of his plans, which include:
* escaping the guillotine by waiting until your head has been cut off, then 'springing into
action' and running 'around and around the farmyard, and out the farmyard gate', in the style of a chicken, and
* replacing the burnt first copy of the dictionary by taking the string, which has been salvaged,
and putting in some new pages (Blackadder clarifies that Baldrick is suggesting that he re-write the entire dictionary in
a single night).
Blackadder also
claims that Baldrick has never changed his trousers, and implores him never to do so, for they are, Blackadder claims, akin
to Pandora's Box.
Although he is now
on a closer social standing to Blackadder than before, he still receives the same level of abuse as his Elizabethan ancestor.
Edmund punches him; kicks him; breaks a milk-jug over his head; threatens to cut him up into strips and tell the prince that
he walked over a very sharp cattle grid in an extremely heavy hat; and promises five minutes of hellish tortures involving
a small pencil.
However, despite
his noticeable disabilities, this Baldrick has more success than any of the others. In an election rigged by Blackadder, he
is elected MP for Dunny-on-the-Wold, a rotten borough, although he was intended to be a puppet for Blackadder to manipulate.
He is later made a Lord by Prince George, and is, therefore, eligible to sit in
the House of Lords (although whether or not he ever does so is another matter, and as he is never again referred to by his
title after episode 1, it seems plausible that Blackadder persuaded the Prince to attaint Baldrick of his peerage). He also
succeeds where no Baldrick has succeeded before or since, in calling Blackadder a 'lazy, big nosed, rubber-faced bastard'.
Baldrick spends
the £400,000 he received as a Lord on an enormous turnip: "well, I had to haggle." Blackadder later destroys it by hitting
Baldrick with it.
Baldrick isn't given
any sort of first name until the third series, when he speculates that it might be "Sodoff", since his childhood friends would
say "Sod off, Baldrick!" A diplomatic Blackadder opts to record him as "S. Baldrick". The initial appears to have been adopted
by his descendants.
His heroes are the
highwayman 'The Shadow', and The Scarlet Pimpernel, both of whom were killed by Blackadder.
Amy Hardwood
Amy was chosen by
Mr. E. Blackadder to be the bride of his master, the Prince Regent, due to his belief that her father, an industrialist, was
extremely rich. However, upon the discovery that Mr. Hardwood wished his daughter to marry the Prince for his money, Blackadder
called it off.
Amy appeared to
be an extremely soppy and child-like person, somewhat like Queenie without the ruthlessness. Like Queenie she was proud of
her nose, believing it to be "so wee I sometimes think the pixies must have given it to me."
It transpired that
this was a front, and she was, in fact, the highly ruthless and practical (although squirrel-phobic) highwayman, the Shadow.
Blackadder learnt this after taking up highway robbery himself, and believed she was attracted to him. However, their plan
to rob the Prince of everything he had, then go to Barbados,
was modified by Amy, to involve killing Edmund and going to Barbados
on her own. With Baldrick's help, Blackadder turned the tables and the Shadow was hanged, without anyone learning of Blackadder's
involvement.
Mrs. Miggins
She owns a coffee
shop, Mr Blackadder is a regular visitor here and she in return regularly pops in to deliver buns to the royal kitchen. Mrs
Miggins' coffee shop tends to move with the times and is generally inhabited by whichever group are 'in' at that moment in
time, be it actors, poets etc. The customers tend to reflect the theme of the episode. In an episode revolving around the
French revolution, the shop briefly stops selling coffee (or brown grit in hot water, as Blackadder suspects it may really
be), and sells Chicken Pimpernel in a Scarlet sauce, Scarlet Chicken in a Pimpernel sauce or huge suspicious looking sausage
in a Scarlet Pimpernel sauce. The Shop is also a favourite visiting spot for celebrities such as famous actors Mossop and
Keanrick, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Samuel Johnson and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Mrs. Miggins displayed
a level of affection for Blackadder, although it was often returned with cold hearted abuse. In one episode she sobs "I'd
always hoped that you'd settle down and marry me, and that, together we might await the slither of tiny Adders" To this outpouring
of emotion, Blackadder responds "If we were the last three humans on earth, I'd be trying to start a family with Baldrick!".
In another scene where she jokingly calls Blackadder "only a little butler" Blackadder laughingly retorts "They do say, Mrs
M, that verbal insults hurt more than physical pain.... They are, of course, wrong, as you will soon discover when I stick
this toasting fork in your head." Prince George never visits the coffee shop during
the series, and only sees her when he is disguised as Blackadder in the palace's kitchen, where she makes insulting remarks
about his intelligence, or lack thereof.
Mrs Miggins left
the coffee shop in the final episode of series three to pursue a relationship with Blackadder's mad Scottish cousin McAdder.
She was impressed by his skill with his 'claymore' (which she later discovers is a type of sword) and his ability to make
her a set of wooden teeth. Though her fate is not known, McAdder claimed that she would have to battle his wife Morag in the
old highland way - bare breasted and each carrying an eight pound baby. However, McAdder added that he looked forward to burying
her in the Highland manner - cynics would suggest this indicates that Morag would probably slay Mrs Miggins during the fight,
while the more romantically inclined will prefer to believe McAdder referred to burying her after spending the rest of her
life with him.
Prince
George
the Prince of Wales
was portrayed as a young and loud buffoon who spent money extravagantly (especially on fancy trousers). The fact that Hugh
Laurie was young and thin, and the real Prince of Wales was, by this point, old and fat did not seem to bother writers Ben
Elton and Richard Curtis, who still referred to him as "a fat, flatulent git." In the series, Prince
George's butler was a certain Mr. E. Blackadder, assisted by his dogsbody, S. Baldrick.
George was created
as a replacement for Blackadder's annoying idiot of a sidekick Lord Percy Percy, who had accompanied Blackadder and Baldrick
in the first two series, after Tim McInnerny declined to appear in the role. If it is possible, George was even more stupid
than Percy. He did not understand the concept of acting and at the end of a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar demanded
that someone arrest the actor playing Brutus, having shouted "Look behind you, Mr Caesar!" in the murder scene. It also took
him a week to put on a pair of trousers by himself, and even then they were on his head.
While temperamental
and priggish at times, George is helpful and loyal. He knows he is no bright spark (describing himself as "as thick as a whale
omelette") but he is keen on self-improvement, and dreams of the day when people say "That George, why he's as clever as a
stick in a bucket of pig swill." He also has a penchant for Blackadder's witty rejoinders, saying "Why, only the other day
Prime Minister Pitt called me an idle scrounger. It wasn't until ages later that I thought how clever it could have been to
have said, 'Oh bugger off, you old fart!' I need to improve my mind, Blackadder."
According to the
show, George was shot dead around 1805 by the Duke of Wellington, who had mistaken him for the butler. The butler, Blackadder,
was subsequently mistaken for the prince by his mad father and presumably went on to live what history records as the rest
of Prince George's life.
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