What Life Was Really Like In An Early European Royal Court

A man who was a member of the royal court of a queen like Elizabeth I or Catherine the Great was also held to high standards. They were expected to be intelligent, courteous, graceful, and well-dressed. A queen like Elizabeth I, who had been well-educated throughout her life, would expect her male courtiers to likewise be learned in areas such as literature, history, geography, mathematics, and languages. Male courtiers were also expected to pay tribute to the queen in the form of flattery, courtship, and gifts. 

Someone like Elizabeth I never expected any courtship from her courtiers to develop on a truly personal or romantic level — it was really all for show. Elizabeth didn't have any interest in actually marrying and being forced to share her power, but she enjoyed the fun of flirtation and courtship, and she certainly had her favorites at court. However, Elizabeth's enemy outsiders would sometimes get the wrong idea and assume an actual affair was going on rather than an innocent flirtation.

Now, in Catherine the Great's Russian court, the empress didn't exactly hide her romances, not even when she was married. According to Biography, once Catherine was widowed, she never married again but still enjoyed male attention. She enjoyed the company of interesting and good-looking men (though she was a "serial monogamist" and never had relationships with more than one man at a time), whom she was happy to reward with gifts, money, and property when they pleased her.