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. In the largest courts many thousands of individuals comprised the court, many officials or servants in the permanent employ of the ruler, and others attending in hope of political or financial gain, or merely for the society and entertainments offered. As well as being the centre of political life, courts were usually the drivers of fashion, and often where literary, musical and artistic trends first developed. Courts are found in all monarchical high cultures, although relatively little is known about Pre-Columbian court life, for example.

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". This position may have been first raised to semi-official status in the entourage of Alexander the Great, based on Persian conventions. 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 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.