Mignons

Les Mignons was a term used by polemicists in the contentious atmosphere of the French Wars of Religion and taken up by the people of Paris, to designate the favourites of Henry III of France, from the time of his return from Poland to France in 1574 up to his assassination in 1589, an end to which perceptions of effeminate weakness may have contributed. The mignons were a group of a dozen or so reportedly frivolous and fashionable young men, mostly from the lower ranks of the French nobility, who were given gifts and high noble ranks by the King. Reports and rumors of the attributed heterodox sexuality of this group, and of the king himself, may have contributed to the popular resentment that some historians have found to be a factor in the subsequent disintegration of the late Valois monarchy.