The World of the Favourite

Observers throughout Europe were alternately alarmed and fascinated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as favourites, or minister-favourites, gained influence in the royal courts. This enlightening book provides many new insights into the role of these powerful individuals, how they came to usurp powers and duties normally exercised by monarchs, and why their royal masters ultimately chose to rule without them.

Elliott, Regius Professor Emeritus of modern history, Oxford, and Brockliss, a reader in modern history and fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, have assembled a series of essays that grew out of a colloquium on the influence of the "favourite" on European history, the favourite being an individual who has great access to and influence over the reigning sovereign. Favorites, an old phenomenon in Western history, include Sejanus, favourite of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, and Piers Gaveston, favourite of the English King Edward II. The favourite has not enjoyed a popular press. One has only to turn to the portrait of Cardinal Richelieu, favourite of the French King Louis XIII, depicted by Dumas and others, to observe the negative feelings that favourites engender in the popular imagination. Nevertheless, they influenced European history, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries, and deserve to be studied more systematically. These essays cover the origins and emergence of the favourite, their actions in political office, their representation in the arts, and, lastly, their decline as a governmental phenomenon. Recommended for academic libraries.ARobert James Andrews, Duluth P.L., MN
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