Ladies-in-waiting

A lady-in-waiting or Court Lady is a female personal assistant at a court, royal or feudal, attending on a royal woman or a high-ranking noblewoman. Historically, in Europe, a lady-in-waiting was often a noblewoman from a family in "good society", but who was of lower rank than the woman on whom she attended. Although she may or may not have received compensation for the service she rendered, a lady-in-waiting was considered more of a companion to her mistress than a servant.

In other parts of the world outside Europe, the lady-in-waiting, often referred to as palace woman, was often in practice a servant or a slave rather than a high ranking woman, but still had about the same tasks, functioning as companion and secretary to her mistress. In courts where polygamy was practiced, a court lady was formally available to the monarch for sexual services, and she could become his wife or concubine.

Lady-in-waiting or court lady is often a generic term for women whose relative rank, title, and official functions varied, although such distinctions were also often honorary. A royal woman may or may not be free to select her ladies, and, even when she has such freedom, her choices are usually heavily influenced by the sovereign, her parents, her husband, or the sovereign's ministers (for example, in the Bedchamber crisis).

The development of the office of lady-in-waiting in Europe is connected to that of the development of a royal court. During the Carolingian Empire in the 9th-century, Hincmar describe the royal household of Charles the Bald in the De Ordine Palatii from 882, in which he states that court officials took orders from the queen as well as the king. Already Merovingian queens are assumed to have had their personal servants, and in the 9th-century it is confirmed that Carolingian queens had an entourage of guards from the nobility as a sign of their dignity, and some officials are stated to belong to the queen rather than the king.

In the late 12th-century, the queens of France are confirmed to have had their own household, and noblewomen are mentioned as ladies-in-waiting. During the Middle Ages however, the household of a European queen consort was normally small and the actual employed ladies-in-waiting, rather than the wives of noblemen accompanying their husbands to court, was very small: in 1286, the queen of France had only five ladies-in-waiting in her employ, and it was not until 1316 that her household was separated from that of the royal children.

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