Courtiers

thumb|Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester was a courtier favoured by [[Elizabeth I.]] A courtier () is a person who attends the royal court of a monarch or other royalty. The earliest historical examples of courtiers were part of the retinues of rulers. Historically, the court was the centre of government as well as the official residence of the monarch, and the social and political life were often completely mixed together.

person with dwarfism employed by a court

thumb| Portrait of the Countess Palatine Francisca Christina of Sulzbach with her "Kammermohr" [[Ignatius Fortuna, by Johann Jakob Schmitz, Cologne 1772]] thumb|Sophie Amalie of Lüneburg, queen of Denmark, with her hand upon her Kammermohr, 17th-century. Kammermohr (or Hofmohr; pl. Kammermohren, lit. "chamber-black") was a German-language term since the 18th century for a court servant of black skin colour, which had by that time long been a common feature in European courts.