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[iceball3]

A neat idea would be a new military-schedule order, in which one can assign individuals (or numbers) of dwarves from a squad to specific nobles, general nobility, nobility types, specific dwarves, of visitors (who are neither leaving, just arriving, or presently at a tavern).
Maybe with the update that includes arrests, we can define different levels of strictness and responses to acts for these on-duty dwarves as well.
Strictness levels:
-Stalk. Least strict category. Makes no effort to protect their target. Instead, merely does it's normal military duties while following them. This can entail fighting enemies of the state, on the way, but only because the dwarf's a soldier on the job.
-Stop only assassins. Will stop invaders, wild animals, assassins, or anyone going at the noble with lethal or worse. Drunken brawls and roughhousing mostly ignored unless the noble is very seriously wounded)
-Stop attacks. Intervenes with all of the above, but will also cut in to brawls that the noble hasn't practically won already, and roughhousing.
-Enforced manners. Highest strictness. All of the above, but guards will also intervene against those who attempt to socially fight the noble (accusations, epithets, arguments, etc). Spitting on the noble, shouting at the noble (depending on whether the noble has a trained consoler skill or not), and damaging the noble's property are all off limits.

Enforcement levels, on the other hand, indicate what these guards would do in response to a violation. Each violators of each category of soldier, noble, civilian, visitor, and hostile could have separate enforcement levels.

-Abscond. The main priority is getting the individual away from the act. Soldiers will order their mark to evacuate the area, and soldiers will attempt to prevent their target from following by persuasion, intimidation, and then submission. Either of the first two steps may be skipped by default for some targets (dumb targets will have persuasion skipped, fearless targets skipping intimidate, etc)
-Submission. Soldiers will immediately attempt to incapacitate those who violate their mark into yielding. A mix of efficient and quick problem ending, and summary corporal punishment. If the mark is crippled enough to be wrestled easily but still refuses to yield, an officer will slap some shackles on them if available.
-Kill. Give the target no quarter.
-Arrest. Like abscond, but the target must agree, submit, or succumb to attempts of arrest, and will be dragged off to jail if they survive the ordeal and do not rout the guards (resisting arrest is dangerous for those who do so).

[iceball3]

A good start as well is considering all the situations where this could be potentially useful, too.
For instance: if you have elven diplomats. However, due to some historical or political reason, popular opinion of elves among some of your population is absolute hatred. However, you as an overseer wish to maintain some diplomatic connections. You use the military schedule order to assign some portion of the guard to automatically activate when diplomats (in general or a specific civ) arrive, and they will task themselves with following those diplomats, preventing abuse and assassinations of them, or even arresting individuals who try to badmouth your diplomats (if you are really incentivized to protecting a higher standing).
Allowing these destructive events to threaten to diminish a unpopular political agreements will give players meaningful "feedback from within" in terms of their fortress with respects with the greater world at large, while also providing them the means of making it illegal to get in the way, causing dwarven unhappiness and vindictiveness while paving the way for the goal to be met.


I can imagine...

A cadre of dwarven bodyguards escorting an elven diplomat to a hall of nobility, rushing them through a crowd of angrily protesting dwarves with species-nationalist leanings, a detachment causing the crowd to scatter somewhat as they promptly disarm and deliver a beating to a dwarf who was trying to throw furniture at the unwelcome guest.
Once the elf makes it to the restricted-access alcove of the hall of nobility, they are threatened less as there are fewer dwarves here with idle hands and enraged minds than outside in the general-population burrow and the more protected and sanitized demeanor of noble dwarfs means that they are less likely to be openly accosted, even if arrested. The baron can now begin discussions with the shaken, but unscathed elf, and they do so, both knowing what his fate may have been, had the baron not seen to his care on arrival.

Being one situation I can think of.

[Splint]

I just wanna chime in and say how utterly delighted I was to see the first idea for a dwarven protest has no rocks or signs, but someone in an angry mob chucking a statue at a diplomat for no apparent reason.

[thvaz]

This would be very useful to stalk dwarves that you know are infected with werecurses, for example. It is a pain to have soldiers to follow them when they are walking all over the fortress.

[Su]

I don't care all that much about the specifics of how the soldiers guard, but being able to order them to follow units [and items!] would be very useful. no more [read: slightly less] caravan deaths as they leave, and artifact-stealing keas would have to find their trinkets elsewhere!