PBX

[kai]

Fürstenhof means royal court.

I'd quibble that, rather than royal, noble court is a better translation - as already stated, it was meant to refer to kraton.

With dozens of kraton all over the place (or rather hundreds all over the archipelago), their usually rather restricted area of control, varying levels of dependencies and changing alliances, visiting Europeans certainly noted some similarities with European nobility. However, compared to the situation at home combined with colonial aspirations, it would have been psychologically a bit tough to accept all these usually pretty confined entities as kingdoms. Thus, Europeans tended to settle for some more generic term or lower hierarchy within the nobility scale: Fürstenhof in German, vorstenhof in Nederlands, etc.

Regards,
Kai