Are there any monarchies that still keep a "court"?

Time was, the social and political center of every monarchical country was the royal court, where the monarch’s household, the government and the nobility intersected. (See the French film for a portrayal of life at the court of Versailles.) Even when political power passed largely to parliaments and ministers, the court retained immense social importance (see [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Madness_of_King_George]*The Madness of King George.)* Being “presented at Court” was a major social milestone for a lady or gentleman.

Is this still true in any monarchy? I know all ambassadors to the UK are accredited as ambassadors “to the Court of St. James,” but that doesn’t mean they are actually presented at a “court” in the old sense, with courtiers – or does it?

Yes, actually it does. While everything they do afterwards will be with the Foreign Ministry, the first official act of a new ambassador to the U.K. is to be presented to the Queen at St. James’ Palace. From what I gather, it’s a rather informal meeting in terms of social etiquette, though of course the height of formality in the sense of being technically the proper thing. The Queen also has regular audiences (usually at Buckingham Palace or occasionally at Windsor Castle) for the bestowing of hono(u)rs on a wide assortment of people, from a medal to the fireman who rescued a child to awarding a full knighthood. It’s part of the ceremonial side of her duties as head of state – my guess is that it happens a couple times a month, based on what little I’ve seen about the events. Someone with access to the Court Circular or a special interest in monarchy (Guinastasia, I’m looking at you! ;)) might be able to say more.

It’s The Court of St. James’s, actually.

My ex-FIL was an ambassador to the Court of Saint James. He still has the invitation ‘Her Majesty the Queen commands me to invite you to…’ He said she seemed quite nice.

The reception, for a mess of new ambassadors what at Buckingham Palace. I understand Saint James is actually a ruin nowadays.

There will be Court officials present at major royal functions. Some of them, such as the the Lord Chamberlain (always a peer) and the Mistress of the Robes (always a duchess) represent the historical links between the Crown and the aristocracy. But I doubt that there’s still a Court in the sense that all the peers and government ministers spend their days hanging around the throne room waiting for HM to appear and drop some pearls of wisdom à la Queen Elizabeth I.

No. It’s still a working palace, it’s the official London residence of Princess Anne (among others), and I think the late Queen Mother used to live there.

The Queen Mother lived in Clarence House.

St James’s Palace was the official London residence of the Prince of Wales until the Queen Mum left him Clarence House in her will.

:smack:
Yes you’re right, though Clarence House is within the environs of St James’ Palace.

The Knights of the Garter could be considered members of a “court”, though of course they have no say in the actual running of the country. It’s the highest English honour bestowable by a monarch.

No European monarchy keeps a ‘court’ in the sense the OP uses it, although one could equally argue that all of them still have them in the sense that they all have formal households (admittedly of varying sizes and formality) and hold court ceremonies. But it’s the decline of the court as a social centre that the OP asks about that’s the interesting point anyway.

The basic shift is easy to pinpoint. What has changed is not that monarchs no longer entertain, as most monarchs still regularly hold receptions, dinners, garden parties etc., just indeed as most presidents do. No, the difference is that those attending those events have to be invited.

Now for the counterintuitive bit. The reason why the classic events associated with old-style courts, such as the levee or the drawing room, could in the past be seen as an important feature of the wider social life of particular capital cities, was that the guests chose to attend them. Even if this required going through a formal application process (and often it did not), it was those being ‘presented’, whether debutantes or anyone else, who took the initiative. Attendance was a statement by the guests, not an honour bestowed by the host. Its key attraction, that it was a semi-public event at which the fashionable could show off to the fashionable and the unfashionable, would have been lost if they had been more restrictive.

In the case of the British monarchy, this system survived into the twentieth century. Levees still had some social caché under Edward VII and, of course, the presentation of debutantes continued until 1958. In the case of some other courts, such as those of Berlin or Vienna, such relatively open events survived as long as the monarchies themselves.

Except that Clarence House is adjacent to and interconnects with St. James’s Palace. So whether they’re the same building can be argued either way. And although Prince Charles did indeed use part of St. James’s before he got Clarence House, most of the building is used as offices for parts of the Royal Household, such as the Lord Chamberlain’s Department and the Royal Collection.

Having been inside St. James’s Palace, I can say that it most certainly isn’t a ruin. It is true that much of it isn’t very grand (which is why it gets used as offices), but, even then, there’s an important exception - the sequence of state rooms along the Mall front climaxing with the Throne Room is, if anything, more impressive than the equivalent sequence in Buckingham Palace. But then that’s because it was specifically designed for holding levees.

Why and how was that custom ended?

In passing, it might be noted that the formal recognition of Nobel laureates, the ceremony awarding them their prizes, is conducted by the Kings of Norway and Sweden (one handles Peace, the other the scholarly discipline prizes). I have no clue whether those monarchs, or those of Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Spain, also hold any sort of ceremonial “court” events, but would be totally unsurprised to find that they do. The ceremonial recognition of persons popularly adjudged to deserve recognition is a duty of heads of state, performed by the US and French Presidents when appropriate; it would seem reasonable that the “figurehead” monarchs would do likewise. (And of course it’s worth noting that almost every “figurehead” monarch has certain restricted powers when acting for the nation as opposed to the [partisan] government. Haakon VII’s rallying of his people against the Nazis, Juan Carlos’s leading his people into democracy: these are real stances appropriate to heads of state which are not purely figurehead in nature.)

The last levee in Britain was in 1939 and the reason why they stopped then is the obvious one. The abolition of the presentation of debutantes in 1958 was a deliberate attempt at modernization and was presented as such at the time.

One might equally ask when and how US Presidents ceased to hold them, as some in the nineteenth century did hold what were called levees.

There is a more general point that could be made. Underlying the shift away from such events is the rise of the idea that a monarch makes contact with his or her subjects not by having the subjects come to see the monarch but by the monarch going out to see the subjects, in the form of the stereotypical local royal visit involving plaques being unveiled, ribbons cut and trees planted. Which has developed because transport became easier and because such visits are (thought to be) more newsworthy. And, although such visits doubtless become incredibly tedious for the royal visitor, one suspects they offer a bit more variety than an unrelieved round of palace receptions.

!!! Cite?