It is obvious that women gaining
power over time had a great deal of affect on Chess which resulted in the
substitution of the Vizier by the Queen. But what caught my attention is the
idea that the presence of the Chess-Queen on the board legitimized the presence
of women in power. As accepted, the
chess board represented the king’s council, and the fact that a female piece was
on the board validated female’s authority and influence. Thus, focusing on how
the creation of the queen chess piece affect the females in society back then,
I conclude that the chess queen was created in order to remind women that once
upon a time a women came to power, with hope that for eternity women would have
the guts to stand up to men and defend their right to rein, rule, and
ultimately exist.
I find it funny that the author
chose to utilize a chronological timeline defined by geographical boundaries in
individual chapters. To lay out the idea, I would like to quote the book and to
focus on the choice of words and their placement with respect to the chronicles
of both history and the book. “Remarkably, two chess queens have survived from
the eleventh century. Both were carved in southern Italy, in the ivory workshops
of Salerno or Amalfi between 1080 and 1100.” Just before that we covered the
history of the queens Adelaide and Theophano, the wives of Otto the Great and
his son Otto II respectively, from the late 990s who ruled Germania and the
remainder of the Roman Empire. They were the two queens that defied the world
and commanded like men, Theophano went as far as calling herself “Imperator Augustus”
with all the masculinity of the word ‘emperor’ instead of ‘empress’ proving her
supremacy. On the other hand, right after the quote we visited Matilda of
Tuscany Constance of Hauteville, and many more women that came to rule in
Europe after the 1100s, and from my perspective the strength of the German
queens was embodied in the Italian chess pieces and reminded the later queens
of what heights they could reach and what fortitude they could hold. It was as
if the author intended the say ‘history will always remember the ruling women that
passed empowering the women to come!’
I skim though time and land on the
crossings between late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, we
discover the reactions to new powers obtained by the queen of chess and the misogynistic
backlash that not only the chess piece experienced but also women in general.
And once again we up against the indirect influence of a simple chess piece
onto society and how men in this instance decided to reach a new low with
insults casted upon women, as if condemning them in real life in revenge for
their undoubted and exquisite powerful representation on the chess board with
the most powerful and free character.
If I were to conclude by saying
that strong women were the ultimate reason to the existence of the chess queen,
than I would be allegedly disregarding the role that the chess piece played in
the preservation and justification of women having power in the first place. In
other words if it wasn’t for the chess queen, perhaps many known powerful
queens and female figures would have been too cowardly to stand up and get
noticed.
SAmer Ead
Bibliography:
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