A
royal or
noble court, as an instrument of
government broader than a
court of justice, comprises an extended
household centred on a patron whose rule may govern
law or be governed by it. 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", a position first raised to semi-official status in the entourage of
Alexander the Great, based on
Persian conventions (Fox 1973).
The English and French word "companion" 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 Curia) 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.
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 centres. Personal retreats might arise far away from official court centres.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, a true court culture can be recognized in the entourage of the Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great and in the court of Charlemagne. In the Roman East, a brilliant court continued to surround the Byzantine emperors.
