Just to be clear, I’m not entirely sure if this ever actually has existed historically or not. As such, if it has ever been implemented, I’d be curious as to when or where; if it hasn’t, I’d be curious as to your thoughts on its plausibility. So that said, this is what I’m thinking:
To start, we have an empire (or *kingdom*, or what have you), with naturally enough, an Emperor, Regional Governors, Local Administrators, and various other Officials and Very Important Men running things; and these men, as a class, practice a form of polygamy (either de jure, where they have many wives, or de facto, where they have a number of concubines or what have you). Additionally, there are also brothels, owned and administered by a single *authority* across the empire, where males of some means can also go; said authority also has monopoly on a number of other professions.
But - as you can probably guess from the title - these professions are not filled ad hoc by the households, or even from slave markets (at least, not as such). They are all the work of the same centralized, hierchichal institution - which recruits girls, spends years educating them (or “educating” them), and them designating them to a profession or household based upon an internal, “meritocratic” criteria. (Whether women in said order can monogamously marry non-“elite” men, that I leave open.)
Has such an organization ever existed? And if not, could it have? And yes to either, what kind of impact does it have on how the relevant *empire* is run? (To the last question - I would imagine that said organization would wield massive political influence, arguably putting itself in a position to become the “real” government.)
What do you guys think?
EDIT NOTE: I've made a clarifying addition to the title, thanks to a very good catch by
@Skallagrim; obviously, we're not taking things into account like telepathy or the like, but the organization in question can certainly be a religious (or quasi-religious) institution.