If you visit the "home" page of this website, I wrote an article documenting the existance of "Pascal Data Objects" which allows Delphi and Free Pascal to use the latest versions of mysql using native library calls and supporting their newer features like prepared statements, triggers, column bindings, etc. It's written generically, but currently only MySQL 4.0, 4.1, and 5.0 are supported.
I use it commercially on both unix and windows, and mysql is fine for small projects. I'm not going to say it's the best "friend" of lazarus, but it's what I created because I wasn't happy with any of the available options and I'm thrilled with it.