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I was wondering how other people approach the concept of a Cavalier's Order. The books seem to infer that they are at least somewhat organized, but there's never anything written about orders' headquarters or leaders. Are the orders just oaths a knight takes internally, where like-minded knights happen to take the same oaths? Some would lean towards that but some particular ones - like Blue Rose, The Green and The Scales - would also make sense as actual, international organizations. I'm designing a Cavalier and was planning to make his entry into the Order a significant part of his backstory, so I was curious how others have handled the idea.
That's an excellent question. I think the issue is that cavaliers and the "orders" concept are RPG-line open content. Usually (though not always!), descriptions of organizations (leaders, locations, HQs, etc.) would be done in the Campaign Setting line in the context of Golarion, which is not usually OGL. At least that's my understanding.
So this leads to the conclusion that it will be up to you and your GM to decide how to manifest organizations within any particular campaign. In the campaign in which I run a cavalier, the GM and I have worked together to create some NPCs and the Order is a real "thing", but others may do it differently...
Currently, the Cavalier/Samurai Orders don't entirely make sense. For instance, Order of the Lion and Order of the Star pledge you to your sovereign or your faith, respectively, but you have just one of each for all sovereigns and all faith, while it is pretty obvious that quite a lot of sovereigns are going to be scheming against each other or even at each other's throats, and likewise for a lot of religions; in either case, this would likewise force members of the corresponding Order to be at each other's throats and/or be seen as likely double agents by those to whom they were pledged. So I'd really like to see a Cavalier/Samurai Orders Unchained even more than tweaking the classes themselves.
I was wondering how other people approach the concept of a Cavalier's Order. The books seem to infer that they are at least somewhat organized, but there's never anything written about orders' headquarters or leaders.
That's because Paizo minimizes the inclusion of setting-specific details in the RPG line of rulebooks. It's up to the GM to incorporate the orders into the setting, based on the nation/society.
For Golarion, large organizations like the Knights of Ozem, the Hellknights, etc. probably incorporate multiple cavalier orders. Also, many nations probably have national cavalier orders that align to their ethos ("The Chellish Order of the Cockatrice," "The Ustalav Order of the Sword," etc.); the same with faiths ("The Asmodean Order of the Star").
^That sounds like a good idea (except I'd be inclined to change the names up more), but I haven't heard of anyone actually doing this (including in PbPs that I followed, although admittedly I am currently woefully out of date on that).