Gentlemen, the Queen

Those who play chess are often reminded, happily or unhappily, of the Queen's might. Twice the strength of the next-ranking piece, the Queen has great mobility in moving in any straight direction, any chosen distance. Such a powerful scope makes her, of all the chessmen, the most welcomed ally and the most dreaded antagonist.

A cursory reflection on the psychology of this Amazonian state of affairs brings two questions readily to mind. First, what is a woman doing in an otherwise all-male combat, and, secondly, once present how is it that she is stronger by far than any of the men? From the standpoint of prevailing relationships between men and women in our phallocentric civilization, the structure of chess offers a startling turnabout.

Historical scholars of the game have little enough to contribute to our questions. It is known from the few facts available that the figure of the Queen in chess is entirely a European innovation introduced in the late llth or early 12th century. Until that time chess, of Indo-Persian origin in the seventh century A.D., consisted wholly of male figures organized into rival armies and equipped as infantry, cavalry, and charioteers. Each army fought to capture the opposing king at whose side stood an advisor destined in later years to undergo a change in gender. In this form the game was brought to Europe by the invading Moors, around 1000 A.D. The first chess manuscripts describing the Queen as replacing the king's advisor date from the 12th century. Why the king's minister was discarded in favor of the king's wife and who advocated this substitution is unknown.

One speculation regarding this modification has lingered in chess histories, though Murray (4), the leading English authority, dubs it a “pretty guess.” Before the French Academy in 1719 Freret proposed the Queen's entry as resulting from a linguistic confusion between fierge (French for the Arabian firs, advisor) and vierge, French for maiden. Psychoanalytic contributions are li