Queen Me

 In chess “Queening”, or the mechanic that allows one of the weakest units in the game to become the strongest by traversing the entire length of the board, has been around since the dawn of chess in the sixth century.  The first documented case of this rule was in Chatrang, the Persian version of chess in the 600s (adapted from the original Indian version, Chaturanga) (Yalom 6). A baidak (pawn) could traverse to the other side of the board and become a firzan (vizier). There was no limit on how many viziers you could have on the board at one time, however they were severely underpowered compared to their modern day equivalent, the queen (viziers could only move diagonally one space at a time) (Yalom 17). This rule seeped into Muslim culture and soon became an analogy for climbing the social ladder, as that did happen in Baghdad for particularly skilled chess players (Yalom 8-9).

The first major change to happen to “Queening” was right before the dawn of the first new millennium when the game of chess had started to spread into Europe and into the Holy Roman Empire. In the 990s a Swiss monk documented the new European rules of chess in a poem titled “Versus on Chess”.  The most major change documented was the renaming of the pieces. The elephant had evolved into the count (eventually to be renamed bishop in the modern rules), and the vizier into the infamous queen (Yalom 17). Although the characteristics of piece movements had basically stayed the same, the cultural impact of renaming the second-in-command unit to “the queen” impacted the rule on Queening. To uphold Christian practices of prohibiting polygamy, the rule was changed so a pawn could only promote to queen if the original queen had already been captured.

In both iterations of this game, aptly named “pawns” are represented as dime-a-dozen, weak units with the potential to become useful if used correctly. However, in the lesser known Chinese offspring of chess called Xiàngqí that started from the same roots as European chess, pawns are treated quite differently (Baird).  The playing field and pieces are strikingly similar to its European counterpart (sans a unique additional unit type called “the cannon”).  Pawns playing style however is changed slightly reflecting the contrasting Asian views on lower ranking foot soldiers.  A pawn may move only forward one space at a time until if crosses the midway point on the board (called the “river”). After that, they additionally may move either one space right or left. However, they do not promote when they reach the end of the board and are instead stuck only moving right or left across the last row (Baird). This additional movement gives them more power as a unit, but it loses the race element that the European game of attempted Queening.

Surprisingly, the game of chess hasn’t changed much compared to its original roots nearly 1500 years ago.  Although the rules have been modified somewhat for a more balanced game, modern day chess still uses the same pieces and board setup that it did one thousand years ago.

Works Cited

Baird, Daniel. Chinese Chess. 6 January 2005. 7 September 2009 <http://www.mandarintools.com/chinesechess.html>.

Yalom, Marilyn. Birth of the Chess Queen. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.