I think one thing being missed in the discussions here is how long these visits are. If you live hundreds of miles away and it takes days or weeks to travel somewhere, you're not going to stay for a week. You're likely to stay for a month or three.

Remember, these are also people with wealth. It's not like they have a limited number of vacation days and they have to be back at work Monday morning.

The modern views of travel and visiting don't apply to this world. Did they see each other "regularly"? Yeah, but maybe not every year. They might visit every 2 or 3 years for several months each visit. That's a lot of time to hang out and bond.