The court seemed to suffer during reigns where the ruler was weak and potential challengers were arising. When Philip V was ageing, depressed, and secluded, his wife Elizabeth Farnese was in charge and kept the heir, Ferdinand, and his wife Barbara of Braganza, firmly repressed so they could not challenge her authority. Louise Elisabeth, as an ambitious foreign princess, was also repressed and spied on, to prevent her from using her foreign contacts from challenging Elizabeth Farnese. Philip's successor, Ferdinand VI had no children to challenge him, and despite melancholy and hesitation, nevertheless kept a firm hold on the government (and his wife was fully supportive and not given to intrigue) while his successor Charles III, who was a far tougher proposition, was not in the country until his half-brother's death and in any case was not given to plots against the Spanish government. Later in his reign, his son Charles and daughter-in-law Maria Luisa intrigued for power, but Charles III was well able to contain these efforts and the court was pretty firmly under control. Maria Luisa dominated Charles IV's reign, but the trouble came when their son Ferdinand was old enough to seek power for himself, when the court became a hotbed of faction and intrigue, not helped by the intervention of Napoleon in Spanish affairs. The problem was basically when the (male) ruler had tacitly allowed his (female) ruler the power, either through lack of interest or ability to govern. As they were not perceived as a legitimate authority, the royal heirs sought what they saw as their rights to share in the government, and this resulted in all sorts of court plots and factions which the sovereign was not in an effective position to squash. In such an unstable court, as a courtier you could gamble on advancement by backing one or the other factions, a sort of high-risk, high-payoff tactic, whereas with a strong ruler in place, your only real option was public service attracting the notice of the sovereign which was a good deal slower, duller and potentially less lucrative. Ferdinand VII's first wife Maria Antonia n particular was caught in the deadly crossfire of court intrigue, not helped by the enmity of her mother Maria Carolina to her mother-in-law Maria Luisa.