Note: I need to make something simple as my brain is getting tired.
There is a parallel between the Courtiers who attended a king's court, and the Political Nation of the Internet Age.
There are about 300,000 people in the Political Nation currently according to Dinesh D'Souza, political pundit. I'm one of them. These are the people who shape the political discourse in the nation at large. Of course, in the rankage of people in this group, I'm about 280,000th in importance with Obama being #1 and Sarah Palin or Rush being #2.
The diffferences between the Courtiers and the Political Nation are that the Nation is two to three orders of magnitude larger than the Courtiers. Also, the Political Nation is spread out by the linking power of the Internet (although it is still heavily concentrated in Washington and NYC.)
Courtiers are known for 1)Hanging out in the King's Outside Courts. 2)Dressing Nice 3)Passing the time of boredom in the outer courts with conversation and games and flirting with each other. 4)While being mostly men, still giving place to steely willed older females and nicely dressed younger females. 5)Getting in duels with each other with rapiers 6)Factions and clever arguements 7)Taking bribes to advance some side. 8)Poisoning others.
For the political nation read 1)Hanging out on political forums on the Net 2)Um, okay, wearing Pajamas might not fit. 3)Games, chatting, and pron...that sounds like the Net. 4)Yup. The Net's rulers are mostly men, but pretty young girls have a definite edge. 5)Blogwars between certain bloggers. 6)well yeah. 7)If you were perchance a high level State Department official and you wanted to ensure a pleasant retirement you could do worse than chatting up the Saudi ambassador. 8) People do try to personally destroy each other on occasion.
There are a lot of things in this world that are simply the latest iteration of a previous phenomenon.
As to how to turn this into a world, ah, uh, I'll think about that.