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Birth of the Chess Queen: A History
Reviewed by Rick Kennedy

by Marilyn Yalom

HarperCollins, 2004

Hardcover, 272 pages

ISBN 0060090642

Years ago, I worked through an impressive collection of Akiba Rubinstein’s chess games, and facetiously decided I could summarize the Polish grandmaster’s winning style this way: a) open with 1.d4; b) reach a Rook and Pawn endgame; and c) win the endgame. In like manner, I can summarize Yalom’s Birth of the Chess Queen: a) the game of chess we play today has evolved from an earlier game with different rules and pieces; b) over time, the eleventh through fifteenth centuries, the Vizier, or advisor to the King, was replaced in Europe by the Queen, which then further morphed from the weakest piece on the board to the strongest one; and c) the transformation of the chess Queen paralleled the rise of various powerful real-life queens.

I recommend Rubinstein to all chess players; Yalom, to a select few.

Yalom, a feminist scholar at the Institute for Women and Gender, at Stanford University, has written other histories – A History of the Wife and A History of the Breast. She has written Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women’s Memory and Maternity, Morality, and the Literature of Madness. In her current book she presents the results of years of searching through early texts for mentions of chess, as well as her insights from studying (and sometimes interpreting) various pieces from the earliest of chess sets. Birth of the Chess Queen tells stories of many women, named and unnamed, who fit into the history of chess, and, in particular, the evolution of the queen.

For many readers, the first part of the tale will be familiar.

Though historians still debate the exact origins of chess, most agree that it emerged in India no later than the sixth century. In Sanskrit, the game was called chaturanga, meaning “four members,” which referred to the four parts of the Indian army: chariots, elephants, cavalry and infantry. This fourfold division, plus the king and his general, provided the basic pieces of the game, first in India and then throughout the world.

As people and armies moved in conquest across lands, the game of chess followed. As people adapted and adopted the ways of new cultures, so did chess.

The Persians took from the Indians the essentials of the game – the six different figures, the board with sixty-four squares – and rebaptized the pieces with Persian names. This new nomenclature was to have enduring significance far beyond the East, for shah, the Persian word for “king,” ultimately served as the name of the game in several European languages by way of the Latin scacchus: scacchi in Italian, Schach in German, échecs in French, and chess in English, among others.

Even in this “known” history, Yalom can deliver a surprise:

The Persian term shah mat, used in this episode, eventually came down to us as “check mate,” which literally means “the king was dumbfounded” or “exhausted,” though it is often translated as “the king died.”

(Ok, all readers who knew that “check mate” could mean that “the king was dumbfounded,” raise your hands. Go to the head of the class.)

As the Muslims expanded their empire, in the seventh through eleventh centuries, again, chess traveled with them.

Arabic became the dominant language in many of these conquered lands, and some of the chess pieces took on Arabic names (al-fil for elephant, baidak for pawn, and firzan, fri or ferz for the general or vizier) while others retained their Persian labels (shah for king, rukh for rook, asp for horse).

The stage is set for the entrance of Her Majesty:

We have seen how the chess queen appeared around the year 1000 as a European replacement for the Arabic vizier, taking over his slow, one-step-at-a-time diagonal gait. Despite slight regional differences, this is the pace she maintained throughout the Middle Ages.

Almost as dramatic as the modern-day pawn being promoted, upon reaching the 8th rank, and changing into a modern-day queen, (although not as instantaneously), over the years the old style queen grew in power and mobility. Why? Here we have the crux of Yalom’s thesis:

Yet, from the twelfth century onward, she seems to have acquired special value, far beyond her limited mobility on the board…The heightened authority invested in queenship during the course of the Middle Ages spilled over to the little queen on the board and paved the way for her to become the game’s mightiest piece...It should not surprise us that the queen’s official transformation into the strongest piece on the board coincided with the reign of Isabella of Castile (1451-1504).

From the quotes I have presented, you can see that Birth of the Chess Queen is an accessible work, not the stereotyped dusty and impenetrable “academic” tome. This style stands Yalom in good stead, and can make her book enjoyable reading for those interested in her slice of early chess days. At times, though, especially when telling the tales of royalty, the author takes on almost a breathless quality in her writing (one unsympathetic reviewer compared it to People magazine). One example, of many:

In 1137, the young, elegant princess married Louis VII, when they were fifteen and sixteen years old, respectively. She left the sunny court of Aquitaine for the murky skies of Paris. There her lively mind, nourished on lyrical poetry, came in contact with the more earnest theological debates favored by her monkish husband. There is no doubt that Louis, deeply in love with his stunning young wife, was initially more influenced by her than she by him. She did her best to recreate in Paris the brilliant court life that had flourished in Aquitaine, replete with troubadours, storytellers, jugglers, and entertainment of every sort, including games of chance and chess…

Also, because history does not record much – and, much less so, of the lives of women – Yalom is left presenting some of the stories she finds, however shaky, as if to get them on the record, lest they be lost again.

Mathilda’s marriage to Ezzo, the count of Palatine, is associated with a chess anecdote that is too good to be left in silence, even if its veracity is questionable. As the story goes, Mathilda was married to Ezzo, the count Palatine, after her youthful brother, Otto III, acting as her guardian, lost her to the elderly count over a chess match. It is impossible to determine whether this tale is true, but Otto III is known to have been a quixotic personality, so the decision to marry off his sister in this fashion is not entirely out of keeping with his character. We do not know the date of the event or even the age of the bride…

The book appears to target a general reading audience, many of whom will no doubt toss
aside my concerns about style and dig right in.. Chess players with an interest in sociology or anthropology – or sociologists or anthropologists with an interest in chess – might not only enjoy Birth of the Chess Queen’s story of the queen’s transformation, they might also better be able to integrate the book’s chapters on chess and “the cult of the Virgin Mary,” and chess and “the cult of love,” into Yalom’s main argument; something I had difficulty doing.

Then, again, what would you expect from a reviewer who, had he had all the time that Yalom had to spend at the John White Chess Collection at the Cleveland Public Library, and the Royal Library in The Hague on top of it – probably would have spent the hours researching the Jerome Gambit…

You can view sample pages from this book.

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