Konoe Sakihisa


 * Konoe Sakihisa is the chief advisor of and effectively regent (kampaku) for the empress Himiko. He is a descendant of the Fujiwara clan. He is an extremely arrogant blue blooded individual who intends to restore the Yamato Gosho by working at Himiko's side. However, it can be inferred that he is quite manipulative, even towards his empress herself.

Appearance
He, like many nobles, dyes his teeth black. He is apparently more powerful than first impressions would have one believe, as Yoshiharu, who usually dodges any attack thrown at him from the front, couldn't dodge his kicks. He is muscular under his robes.

Personality
Yoshiharu describes him as a parasite, he views any without noble blood as inferior to the point where if they help him in any way it is just their duty to do so and has no reason to feel grateful to any extent. He is also blunt and rude to anyone he feels as being beneath himself, such as kicking Yoshiharu heavily and even attempting to drag Nobuna off her horse, the animal promptly kicked sand into his face.

He grows increasingly frustrated with Nobuna's rise in power and popularity and is behind many of the plots to hinder or kill her, usually with marginal success. Secretly he is most likely Nobuna's greatest enemy to date, but he never directly takes action against her and is more of a manipulator.

His repeated actions are later revealed to be based on misguided ideals. He believed that Nobuna intended to become Kami, and cites numerous reasons for this belief. He also believed genuinely that Nobuna would betray Himiko to achieve her goals. He was genuinely surprised when Nobuna ordered him to make Yoshiharu his son, however, by then he'd thoroughly convinced himself of these misguided preconceptions about her and as a result believed he had no choice but to go along with her plans. Not long after he was completely terrified to realize his own conspiracies have put Sakai on the verge of annihilation and accepted that he was forced to rely on Nobuna.

He vastly despises the Nanban and would never permit them in his country, however the irony of this is that he had never visited them himself and has absolutely no idea how powerful they are, he truly believes that he can just use force to kick them out of the country, despite more knowledgable people being well aware he'd lose

In the Anime he does actively take action against Nobuna, and eventually goes insane because of it and dies in the chaos of a fire he himself set up.

Background
Konoe is a descendant of the Fugiwara clan, and raised with all the privaleges of that bloodline. Eventually he became Kampaku, serving directly under Empress Himiko.

Kyoto Arc
He first appears after Yoshiharu accidentally falls on him in the Yamato Gosho, in response to which he promptly kicks Yoshiharu with a football. Yoshiharu neither resists nor fights back, as this would result in damaging Nobuna's standing.

He is the primary hindrance to the rise of Imagawa Yoshimoto as Shogun and hinders the Oda clan from placing her in that position simply because he disagrees with it.

Current Arc
Konoe's plans effectively seem to back Nobuna into a corner, with Sakai, her main shipping lane for gunpowder, being targetted by the Mori Clan's pirate allies and the impending uprising of the Nyankousou. While celebrating this with Tsuda Sougyu, Nobuna and Yoshiharu burst into the room, having overheard their conversation in its entirety, and out Konoe as a traitor. Konoe and Nobuna then end up in a prolonged argument, where he accuses her of trying to use the Regalia to become Kami, two of the three Regalia are already in her possession as stated proof. Despite Nobuna's claims against this accusation she is unable to convince Konoe otherwise, but she refuses to be provoked by him. Konoe, realising he's cornered, gives up and accepts death, but Nobuna instead gives him a number of terms. Her first term is that he will never conspire against her again, her second is that he'll prevent the uprising of the Nyankousou he himself started and thirdly he will accept Yoshiharu as his son, thus validating Yoshiharu as future Kampaku and making her marriage to him legal in terms of status. This shocks Konoe, Sougyu and Yoshiharu himself, but Konoe is forced to accept it because he believes Nobuna is a threat to Himiko and that she'll burn Sakai down if her terms aren't met. Konoe notes it'll take time to officially adopt Yoshiharu, but he will have to go through with it.

At the port, before going to deliver a message to the Nyankousou leader, Konoe recognises Takigawa Kazumasu and realises her resemblance to Himiko, which terrifies him. Not long after Konoe hears news that the pirates will burn Sakai by tomorrow, and realises that he is ultimately the one who caused it. Konoe and Sougyu both realise that their only hope now is quite literally to hope that Nobuna can solve the problem they started.

Trivia

 * While he is a villain in the Light Novels as well, the Anime vastly increases Konoe's role as an antagonist. In the Light Novels he does not take the stage and instead works to subtly sabotage or hinder Nobuna, however he is continually thwarted, sometimes humorously by Imagawa Yoshimoto, who doesn't even know she's thwarted him half the time. He does little but send messages to Nobuna's enemies and forge assassination plots, with varies success.
 * It is later revealed by Danjou what he's been up to in full, and also, apparently, Konoe himself is just a puppet being used by someone with even greater ambitions, someone whom even Danjou knows nothing about aside from the fact that he/she exists.