Noble court

The court of a monarch, or at some periods an important nobleman, is a term for the extended household and all those who regularly attended on the ruler or central figure. It can also refer to the physical residence of the monarch where the court resides or a series of complexes. In the largest courts, the royal households, many thousands of individuals comprised the court. These courtiers included the monarch or noble's camarilla and retinue, household, nobility, those with court appointments, bodyguard, and may also include 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 included the harem and concubines as well as eunuchs who fulfilled a variety 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 may 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.

A royal household is the highest ranking example of this. A regent or viceroy may hold court during the minority or absence of a hereditary ruler, and even an elected head of state may develop a court-like entourage of unofficial, personally-chosen advisors and "companions". The French word compagnon, and its English derivation "companion", literally connotes a "sharer of the bread" at table, and indeed the court is an extension of the great individual's household; wherever members of the household and bureaucrats of the administration overlap in personnel, it is sensible to speak of a "court", whether in Achaemenid Persia, Ming China, Norman Sicily, the Papacy before 1870 (see Papal Household) or the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A group 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.

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