How did the labels king and queen get switched in the game of chess?
Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at
7:44 pm
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In chess the most powerful fighting piece is the ‘queen’ while the ‘king’ runs and hides. This is obviously backwards from reality. Was it political satire? Mediaeval feminism? A freudianism linked to the inadequacies of chess players? A failed renaissance marketing ploy to interest women in the game? What is the story here?
Actually, both above are correct.
Chess originated in India in 5th or 6th century and spread to Persia, Asia, and then Europe with slightly different versions in each area. Originally there wasn’t a queen. It was a Minister. The King could move one space in any direction and the Minister could only move one space diagonally.
In the 12th or 13th century the European version changed the Minister to the Queen, and the horse to the knight, the war elephant or camel to the bishop, and the foot soldier to the pawn.
Around 1500 was when the Queen of England made changes still in use today. It was called "Queen’s Chess" or "Mad Queen’s Chess." The Queen became the most powerful piece.
I provided two sources in case you don’t trust Wikipedia, but they both state the same.
The story a chess-playing friend once told me purported that Queen Elizabeth I increased the power of the queen chess piece to be more in keeping with the political power she herself wielded. At the time, this was called "mad queen chess."
As a daughter of Henry VIII, I can well imagine her being that arrogant.
The game Chess is not at all medieval. It is believed to come from a very old game in India around the 5th century. The word chess has mutated (as well as the game after the 10th century) , having been translated through many languages. The original name of the game was shah, which in Persian meant king. And the roles of the king and queen haven’t been switched, since the king is the ruler, and if the ruler is dead the war was pretty much lost, and in my opinion, they decided the queen to be the powerful fighting piece, because they couldn’t make a single piece to represent the king’s advisors, the council, the noblemen and clergy…