Blackadder

In the Middle Ages, Prince Edmund the Black Viper is constantly plotting and trying to take the crown away from his father and brother.

The action takes place in England at the end of the War of the Roses, and we soon learn that the story we know is a Tudor fabrication. In fact, Henry VII did not win the Battle of Bosworth; he lost, and though Richard III died in the battle, his nephew King Richard IV (who, of course, was not strangled when he was still a boy in the Tower of London) ruled for several years. The story is told of Richard IV’s youngest son, Prince Edmund, a sniveling coward who calls himself “The Black Viper.” With the help of his gruff servant and foolish Lord Percy, Edmund plans his ascent to greatness.

The Black Viper is a medieval British sitcom that aired in 1983 and ran for 6 episodes, in which Rowan Atkinson plays Prince Edmund the Black Viper, the unattractive, cunning, cowardly, despised and unloved son of Richard, Duke of York, who becomes a prince when he accidentally kills his uncle, King Richard III, and three witches tell him that he is destined to become king, and with the help of his minions the idiotic Lord Percy and the clever servant Baldrick, Edmund intends to fulfill his destiny and plans to seize the throne.

King Richard IV is a mad monarch who ruled England during a really dark part of the Middle Ages. He has two sons: one, Harry, his eldest son and the Prince of Wales. Although he is greatly respected by the court and overly loved by his father, Harry is also quite mad … and two, Edmund, Duke of Edinburgh, who is hated by his family and hated by the court. Despite this, the slimy, brash, stupid and sarcastic Edmund, dressed in a costume under the pseudonym “The Black Viper,” intends to inherit the throne with the help of two helpers: Percy, the only aristocrat foolish enough to respect him, and Baldrick, a street peasant with spirited “cunning plans.”