Captain Blackadder

Captain Blackadder

Captain Edmund Blackadder is the main fictional character in the fourth and final series of the popular BBC sitcom Blackadder, Blackadder Goes Forth. He was played by Rowan Atkinson.

Having spent the last three years in the trenches of the First World War, Captain Blackadder is an accomplished career soldier who holds the overly-enthusiastic and idealistic volunteers he commands in withering contempt. He also harbours little respect for his superiors, whose failure to grasp the concept of modern industrial warfare has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths for very little territorial gain; he once described the war as "a gargantuan effort by Field Marshal Haig to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin". Naturally, Blackadder spends most of his time trying to get out of the trenches before the insane General Melchett gives him the order to "climb out of the trenches and walk very slowly towards the enemy". Blackadder's attempts to escape are opposed by Melchett, who does not realise the futility of the war, and Melchett's assistant Captain Darling, who does. Darling and Blackadder have a natural animosity towards one another, since Darling is aware that Blackadder is attempting to avoid his duty, while Blackadder hates Darling for his comfortable position in a French chateau 35 miles behind the front. Darling would gladly see Blackadder killed by German machine guns, although the two bury the hatchet without saying a word when Darling is posted to the front line in the final episode (for the first time in the series they courteously greet each other as "Captain").

Captain Blackadder claims to have joined the army in 1888, when "if you saw someone in a skirt, you shot him and nicked his country". He joined the 19th/45th East African Rifles, when Britain was fighting colonial wars during the Scramble for Africa, a time when "the prerequisite for any battle was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns". He described the military as having been "little more than a travel agency for men with unusually high sex drives". He was hailed as the 'Hero of Mboto Gorge' in 1892, where he had faced "ten thousand Watutsi warriors armed to the teeth with kiwi fruit and dry guava halves". He even saved the life of Douglas Haig (later Field Marshal Douglas Haig) when he was nearly killed by a pygmy woman with a sharpened mango. At some point before the First World War, Captain Blackadder transferred to the local regiment of Cambridge (either the Cambridgeshire Regiment or the Suffolk Regiment). Upon the outbreak of war, Blackadder was quite shocked when 4,500,000 heavily-armed Germans "hoved into view".

Blackadder shares his trench with Private S. Baldrick, and Lieutenant George. Although well-intentioned, both fail to understand their predicament and demonstrate a high level of incompetence, hindering Blackadder's escape attempts and augmenting his sense of frustration.

Continuing the trend of the previous series, he is more intelligent and passive than previous Blackadders. He appears to have a good knowledge of history as he often refers to past events and people (although usually to insult others). His social status is unknown (his mocking of George for his aristocratic background suggests he may be upper-middle class).

He is the only Blackadder seen to have enjoyed romantic success (although all apparently managed to father children): Prince Edmund was found repulsive by women and forced into an arranged marriage with a child; Lord Blackadder was jilted by his fiancée, Kate (Bob) and ended up consorting with prostitutes, and Mr. E. Blackadder was tricked by Amy Hardwood but found genuinely attractive only by Mrs. Miggins, whom he despised and who eventually eloped with his cousin MacAdder. Captain Blackadder conducted an affair with Nurse Mary Fletcher-Brown (although he later justified this as counterespionage). Though his interest in her was not genuine, she later admitted attraction to him.

His tunic displays him having earned 4 medals, in order from left to right they are: The Queen's South Africa Medal, The King's South Africa Medal, The 1914-15 Star and the French Croix de Guerre which Lt. George St. Barleigh, MC also has.