Chess and the Queen

[Kendodd]

It puzzles me a little.

The Queen is the most powerful piece on the board, while the King is really weak just seems to be hiding in the castle while his wife fights his battles for him. Yet chess is a really old game and from a much less enlightened time (I thought).

Anyone explain this for me?

The queen was originally a male piece.

But it was changed to female quite early on though, wasn't it?

I don't know a lot about it. I think it has been created from several different versions. There are powerful historical and mythological female characters, so it is not that odd.

Wasn't the queen piece originally something else, the vizier or prime minister or something like that in the Middle East? I wonder whether in England it changed during Elizabethan times, to reflect her status. But what is it called in other languages?

In chinese chess, the pieces on either side of the king/emperor are named viziers.

Quite a good article here Origins of Chess that covers the whole evolution of the game and pieces.

It's almost a pity that the game has stopped evolving as it would be interesting to see what the next stages would look like - would they reflect the change in women's status or the change of careers generally? Would we have pieces like "The Lawyer" (Stabs in the back), "The Singer" (Kills from afar) - who knows!!

Really interesting, thank you - not something if ever thought about.

I didn't know the names had changed.

It would be 'old woman', 'serpent' and 'Pope with a jet pack'

I wonder if anyone has ever written about it before, maybe there's an academic paper on it somewhere?

But the queen didn't used to be so powerful - it changed in the early 16th c in England and people talked about the 'Mad Queen rules'.

How interesting. Thinking of Bloody Mary?

Before her

Oh yes, she was more mid-16th Century. And Elizabeth of York was pretty inoffensive AFAIK, so where can the notion have come from?

I just googled and some people are suggesting Isabella of Spain. It didn't start in England.

Most likely that's it. (Spain, but Isabella's daughter and not Isabella herself.) If you want a genuinely mad queen in the early 1500s, the candidate is Joanna the Mad, or Juana la Loca, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_of_Castile

"Joanna married Philip the Handsome, who was crowned King of Castile in 1506, initiating the rule of the Habsburgs in Spain. After Philip's death that same year, Joanna became mentally ill and was confined to a nunnery for the rest of her life."

I'm sure she'd have been well known in England, especially as she was the sister of Catherine of Aragon.

And as always, the missed address:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_of_Castile

Hmm, I didn't know the Queen was based on a real person. How did they get away with letting her be the most powerful piece on the board I wonder.

I wouldn't put it quite as strongly as that - as I understand it, it's more that there was already a queen by the 15th c then at some point someone came up with the idea of giving her more powers which may or may not have been a reference to a RL powerful queen, and people liked the effect on the game so it spread. But I'm no expert - I just googled a bit because I'm writing a historical novel with some chess scenes and all the stuff about the Mad Queen rules came up.

I assumed they just called it Mad Queen because it seemed so crazy to them to have a queen who was more powerful than the king!

A novel, Tunip? Hoorah!