Real life hangers on at Renaissance royal courts?

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

And someone (or someones) in the court is definitely going to be a spymaster if the noble has any sense at all.

Though one of the clichés is that their position may be called something entirely innocuous, a meaningless job with a tiny (official) stipend that hasn't been increased for 400 years, that just happens to mean they have an excuse for being around court and having private chats with the king.

[jason taylor]

Representatives of someone-or-other. Every guild, religion, tribe, title, etc within the kingdom with any clout would have a representative. It would not be a Parliament but it would be a little bit like one (there might or might not be an official Parliament alongside this). These special interest representatives might be considered like emissaries: indeed they were called ambassadors for a long time until the Renaissance where the word came to imply the representative of a sovereign.

Representatives of a Foreign Prince.

The Exotic Detective: kind of like Inspector Yashim, the Ottoman Eunech; Sano Ichiro, the Samurai Detective; or Judge Dee the Imperial Chinese detective.

Secret Police

Military Advisors

Administrators of public works (wells, canals, fortifications, grain elevators).

https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Standard_Royal_Court

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Representatives of a Foreign Prince.

Speaking of which, exiles are always fun - think, for example, of the British House of Stuart who were a persistent nuisance in the courts of France and Spain for generations, trying to scrounge (first) a living and (then) support to invade Britain and try to re-take the throne. Or the many, many, continental emigres that Napoleon drove into the London court as he conquered the various nations of Western Europe. Any court without at least one pretender of government in exile probably isn't up to much... for bonus points, have the court be host to two rival pretenders from the same nation.

Also, many of the aforementioned royal officials may very well be taking a salary but farming the job itself out to a deputy for a pittance (who is then expected to make up the difference by collecting bribes). The office holders themselves may know little or nothing about their alleged job.

For an added wrinkle, consider something like the English Tudor court, where a lot of powerful jobs are being taken away from the nobles and given to commoners (or at least gentry): men with no power base of their own and wholly dependant on Royal Patronage. This alters things at court a lot.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Speaking of which, exiles are always fun - think, for example, of the British House of Stuart who were a persistent nuisance in the courts of France and Spain for generations, trying to scrounge (first) a living and (then) support to invade Britain and try to re-take the throne. Or the many, many, continental emigres that Napoleon drove into the London court as he conquered the various nations of Western Europe. Any court without at least one pretender of government in exile probably isn't up to much... for bonus points, have the court be host to two rival pretenders from the same nation.

Also, many of the aforementioned royal officials may very well be taking a salary but farming the job itself out to a deputy for a pittance (who is then expected to make up the difference by collecting bribes). The office holders themselves may know little or nothing about their alleged job.

For an added wrinkle, consider something like the English Tudor court, where a lot of powerful jobs are being taken away from the nobles and given to commoners (or at least gentry): men with no power base of their own and wholly dependant on Royal Patronage. This alters things at court a lot.

You're right. I was thinking of normal diplomats. But that is a more interesting variation.

A recent instance of that was Haile Selassie residing at Bath.

[jason taylor]

[QUOTE=The Colonel;2370720

For an added wrinkle, consider something like the English Tudor court, where a lot of powerful jobs are being taken away from the nobles and given to commoners (or at least gentry): men with no power base of their own and wholly dependant on Royal Patronage. This alters things at court a lot.[/QUOTE]

This might also be a deliberate attempt to weaken the old school nobility. A Nobility-of-the-robe is not necessarily composed of eunechs but it can serve the same purpose.

[Black Leviathan]

It's difficult to say what a courtier is or how a court works. Even in the same nation different courts ran by different rules. But there were generally two different types of people in court.

Some attending had jobs. Chamberlains, viziers, Generals and other military leaders, religious leaders, scholars in useful fields like economics, agriculture, ship construction, many courts had a full-time attending doctor. They either helped nobility rule or just ran the show behind the throne in many cases.

And there were genuine courtiers. Courtiers that didn't have a recognized position in the court were there because it was impossible otherwise for nobility to have friends. They were selected because they were childhood friends of nobility, because they were good at arts that classed up the court, because they were well-educated and had smart things to say. A lot of courtiers were relatives of the reigning noble sent to court to learn how things are done. Overall these useless Courtiers were the exception more than the rule, but they made an impression on history.

[jason taylor]

Hostages were not as common as once had been in Europe (in Tokugawa Japan every Daimyo family had a hostage at court. But a fantasy Renaissance could still have them.

Artists and Philosophers under patronage would count as Entertainers.

Various princes kept a "Court Jew" which was basically a councilor who was Jewish. He does not have any other distinction other than Social Stigma (minority group).

Resident Ambassadors were just becoming the fashion and no one was sure what they did. Spying obviously though that function has by now been relegated to the military or naval attache to keep the Ambassador's hands clean. Standing up for their sovereign's honor was a lot of it, as well as just gathering good opinions locally, etc.

See Renaissance Diplomacy by Gerard Mattingly.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Resident Ambassadors were just becoming the fashion and no one was sure what they did. Spying obviously though that function has by now been relegated to the military or naval attache to keep the Ambassador's hands clean. Standing up for their sovereign's honor was a lot of it, as well as just gathering good opinions locally, etc.

Arranging royal, or at least noble, marriages - that was still a way of forging good relations and alliances, not to mention to lay foundations for claims on the crown, down the dynastic line.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Michele

Arranging royal, or at least noble, marriages - that was still a way of forging good relations and alliances, not to mention to lay foundations for claims on the crown, down the dynastic line.

It was. It could be a double-edged sword. It seems to me that history bears out that the custom was as much a fuel of conflict as a brake because it gave an in to making otherwise presumptuous claims. Nonetheless there are instances of it being skillfully used as by Emperor Maximilian.

Important deals however were for a long time mostly thought the business of Special Envoys.

What a resident ambassador could do is keep a continuous place in a capital so that each Envoy when he comes has the prep work done. Unfortunately a lot of them had the undisciplined habit of taking their records with them (which is why the Venetians made sure that records were in the secretary's keep).

Of course an ambassador would likely have stuff he did not want seen there. But if he must needs keep an account book of his graft he should do that separately.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

It was. It could be a double-edged sword. It seems to me that history bears out that the custom was as much a fuel of conflict as a brake because it gave an in to making otherwise presumptuous claims. Nonetheless there are instances of it being skillfully used as by Emperor Maximilian.

Right...

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Tu, felix Austria, nube!"