The World of the Favourite. Edited by J.H. Elliott and L.W.B. Brockliss. Yale. 320pp. £35 in UK
Although their heyday was in the 16th and 17th century, favourites continue to thrive today; in this country they are known as special advisers. Rudyard Kipling's familiar description of the harlot's prerogative - power without responsibility - may be applied to favourites. Furthermore, they exercise that power without recourse to public mandate, making certain that should they fall from grace - as they usually do - few onlookers will mourn their departure.
In this collection of academic essays examining the phenomenon, L.W.B. Brockliss offers a very convenient summary of the favourite; whether the Empress Theodora or Nancy Reagan, he suggests, these persons share "permanent access to the ruler, for as long as their favour lasts; they are the persistent voice in the ruler's ear that mixes often contentious advice with the honeyed words of affection".
The downfall of favourites has long been perceived as inevitable. Ever since Sejanus, the Roman Emperor Tiberius's chief administrator, was removed from his seemingly invincible position and publicly executed, favourites have remained vulnerable to sudden changes in their fortune, with few surviving long enough to enjoy old age. Even if they manage to hold on to power for more than a few years, they may still face ruin, as evidenced by the disgrace in old age of Henry VIII's servant, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. French Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin were among the very few favourites to hold on to their positions until death, although the latter was prematurely worn out by his efforts to do so. More typical is the story told here by J.F. Dubost of Concino Concini, the Florentine favourite of Queen Marie de Medici in Paris; having risen rapidly from minor servant almost to the equivalent of France's first minister, he was assassinated in April 1617 - a fate which less than a decade later also befell the 17th century's most famous favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.
Buckingham embodies many of the type's most abiding characteristics. His origins were relatively humble (thereby ensuring intense dislike from those who felt they had better claims to power than he) and his authority was assumed to be based on sexual allure. The traditional belief is that favourites, whether Edward II's Piers Gaveston in 14th-century England or Catherine the Great's Grigory Potemkin in 18th-century Russia, have been the power behind both the throne and the bedroom door. Where this quite clearly could not be the case, other powers have been imagined; J.H. Elliott records that in Madrid during the 1620s, a woman called Leonor Diaz claimed she had been selling magical potions to the Count-Duke of Oliv ares which he used to retain his hold over King Philip IV.
Unlike Buckingham (or Robert Carr, his predecessor in the affections of James I), Olivares was no great beauty, but he did display other aspects of the favourite's temperament, not least an ability to abase himself before his monarch when this was deemed expedient. Owing his position to the whim of someone either born or elected to rule, the favourite must tread carefully at all times because, as the career of Nicolas Fouquet makes clear, he is forever in danger of excessive self-aggrandisement and its consequences.
RAMPANTLY venal like so many others of his kind, Fouquet was the French surintendant de finances disgraced in 1661 just days after he had shown his new chateau at Vauxle-Vicomte to Louis XIV; inspired by what he had seen, the king built Versailles and never entertained another favourite except, of course, his secret second wife Madame de Maintenon. Indeed, for much of the period since the mid-17th century, mistresses have been alternative favourites, some of them, such as Lola Montez during her time in 19th-century Bavaria, wielding a dangerous amount of authority and threatening to unbalance the status quo.
That the favourite survives, albeit in more contemporary guise, has been witnessed during the present decade by the rise and fall in England of Peter Mandelson. For as long as he remained an invisible but powerful presence in the Labour party, discreetly directing the policies of Tony Blair, Mandelson's position was safe. But once he chose to ignore historical precedent and sought to have hitherto covert authority made manifest, he left himself open to attack. Even the cause of his disgrace - the purchase of a home in London clearly beyond his means - has the same financial basis as that which brought down Fouquet. The most important lesson to be drawn from this collection is that a favourite ought never to presume invincibility and should always feign humility; the most successful are the least known.
Robert O'Byrne is an Irish Times journalist