Novel: Fortune's Favourites

Overview
Colleen McCullough's Fortune's Favourites dramatizes the volatile years of the late Roman Republic when military genius, political ruthlessness, and sheer luck reshaped Rome's destiny. The novel follows the aftermath of civil war as Lucius Cornelius Sulla consolidates power, imposes his will on the Republic, and reshapes its institutions while new figures seize opportunities created by violence and uncertainty. The narrative bridges sweeping public events and intimate personal moments, presenting history as a contest of ambition, prudence, and fortune.

Plot and characters
Sulla emerges as the central force: a master strategist whose victories and terror campaigns leave Rome fragile and resentful. His return from the east, bloody purges, and reconstitution of the constitution provide the spine of the book, revealing both the mechanics of power and the human cost of revenge. Pompey the Great rises with astonishing speed, winning loyalty through military success and the charisma of a leader who commands troops and public adoration in equal measure.
Alongside these dominant figures, younger men such as Gaius Julius Caesar move through the story as observers and participants whose careers will be shaped by Sulla's decisions and Pompey's ascendancy. McCullough populates the narrative with senators, soldiers, clients, and conspirators whose alliances and betrayals form the texture of Roman political life. Personal relationships, marriages, patronage ties, and private enmities, are depicted as engines of historical change, often more decisive than formal institutions.

Themes and style
Fortune's Favourites explores the interplay between calculated skill and capricious luck. Success is shown as rarely purely meritocratic: timing, popular support, and the aftermath of violence all tilt the scales. Power's corrosive effects are rendered without moralizing sermon; McCullough allows readers to see how necessity, fear, and personal codes produce decisions that can both stabilize and unravel the Republic.
The prose balances panoramic battle and political scenes with meticulous attention to administrative detail and domestic life. Military maneuvers and senatorial debates are described with technical precision, but scenes of everyday interaction, meals, household politics, whispered counsel, give the novel warmth and psychological depth. McCullough's research is evident in the texture of Roman institutions, law, and ritual, yet characters retain full interior lives that make ancient events feel immediate and consequential.

Significance
As the third installment of the Masters of Rome series, Fortune's Favourites deepens the reader's understanding of how individual careers and choices accelerated Rome's transformation from Republic to autocracy. The book illuminates a pivotal era when traditional checks on power faltered and charismatic commanders could outmatch civic safeguards. By portraying Sulla, Pompey, and the young men who will follow them with complexity rather than caricature, McCullough shows how fortune favors some not simply by chance but by the ruthless exploitation of circumstances.
The novel leaves the reader with a sense of historical inevitability entwined with contingency: the structures of Rome are remade, but every change is the outcome of personal ambition and misjudgment as much as of grand design. Fortune's Favourites closes one chapter of Roman history while setting the stage for the rivalries and tragedies that will fulfill the century's tragic trajectory.