Royal court

A royal court is an extended royal household in the monarchy, including all those who regularly attend on a monarch, or another central figure. Hence the word court may also be applied to the coterie of a senior ingredient of the nobility. Royal courts may cause their seat in a designated place, several particular places, or be a mobile, itinerant court.

In the largest courts, the royal households, numerous thousands of individuals comprised the court. These courtiers listed the monarch or noble's camarilla & retinue, household, nobility, gentry, clergy, those with court appointments, bodyguard, and may also increase emissaries from other kingdoms or visitors to the court. Foreign princes and foreign nobility in exile may also seek refuge at a court.

Near Eastern and Eastern courts often specified the harem and concubines as alive as eunuchs who fulfilled a species of functions. At times, the harem was walled off and separate from the rest of the residence of the monarch. In Asia, concubines were often a more visible part of the court. Lower ranking servants and bodyguards were not properly called courtiers, though they might be included as part of the court or royal household in the broadest definition. Entertainers and others may have been counted as part of the court.

Patronage and courtly culture

A royal household is the highest-ranking example of patronage. A regent or viceroy may hold court during the minority or absence of the hereditary ruler, and even an elected head of state may imposing a court-like entourage of unofficial, personally-chosen advisers and "companions". The French word compagnon and its English derivation "companion" literally connote a "sharer of the bread" at table, and a court is an source of the great individual's household. Wherever members of the household and bureaucrats of the administration overlap in personnel, this is the reasonable to speak of a "court", for example in Achaemenid Persia, Ming China, Norman Sicily, the papacy ago 1870 see papal household, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A institution of individuals dependent on the patronage of a great man, classically in ancient Rome, forms part of the system of "clientage" that is discussed under vassal.

Individual rulers differed greatly in tastes and interests, as well as in political skills and in constitutional situations. Accordingly, some founded elaborate courts based on new palaces, only to have their successors retreat to remote castles or to practical administrative centers. Personal retreats might arise far away from official court centres.

Etiquette and hierarchy flourish in highly structured court settings, and may leave conservative traces over generations. nearly courts presentation a strict order of precedence, often involving royal and noble ranks, orders of chivalry, and nobility. Some courts even presented court uniforms. One of the major markers of a court is ceremony. near monarchal courts included ceremonies concerning the investiture or coronation of the monarch and audiences with the monarch. Some courts had ceremonies around the waking and the sleeping of the monarch, called a levée. Orders of chivalry as honorific orders became an important part of court culture starting in the 15th century. They were the modification of the monarch, as the fount of honour, to create and grant.