The little known reason why chess queens used to move a lot less

Every young chess hopeful learns fast to make the best use of their queen, for she is the most powerful piece on the board. But it was not always thus. For centuries, the queen was one of the weakest pieces in the game.

Now, an extremely rare book has come up for sale that casts a light on the early evolution of one of the world’s most enduring games and the role of the queen.

Summa collationum, written by John of Wales, a 12th-century Franciscan theologian, is effectively an instruction manual for priests. But it also included one of the earliest known explanations for the rules of modern chess.

John, who was probably born in Wales and studied and taught at Oxford before moving to Paris, reproduced an apparently popular morality tale involving the rules of chess to explain to his readers good and bad behaviour.

The permitted moves for each piece were related to their behaviour in life, meaning that his descriptions were, in many cases, less than flattering.

The king is described as being able to move in any direction “because the king’s will is law”, and rooks represented justices and moved straight and rigid, a symbol of acting justly.

Bishops, however, were deemed to “move obliquely” because “nearly every bishop misuses his office for cupidity [avarice]”. Likewise, pawns, who represented poor men, moved diagonally when taking from others, proving that they only advanced in life when moving straight.

Perhaps the greatest scorn, however, was reserved for the queen. At John’s time of writing, the queen was a weak piece, only able to move one square at a time in a diagonal direction.

That “aslant” movement, the morality claimed, was because “women are so greedy that they will take nothing except by rapine [violent seizure] and injustice”.

Game's roots lie in India

The extent to which these were genuine rules of chess is unclear, because the writers of moralities tended to tailor stories to make a point. However, the weak status of the queen is well documented.

Chess is though to have originated in India as the game chaturanga. It eventually gained popularity in the Arab world and was brought to Europe through Moorish Spain.

During its early evolution into the game we now know, there was no queen at all, with the equivalent piece instead being the vizier, a high-ranking official or minister in Islamic governments.

While it made sense for the vizier to become the more European queen figure, it is not definitely known how or why the piece came to be the most powerful on the board, a change which took place during the Renaissance.

Marilyn Yalom, a French feminist historian who died in 2019, espoused the theory that the growing power of the queens on the chessboard reflected their growing importance on the political stage.

“While there were few women rulers before the 15th century whose names can be definitely linked to the game,” she wrote, “the reality of female rule was undoubtedly entwined with the emergence and evolution of the chess queen.”

While the theory has gained popularity, it is far from universally accepted, with critics pointing to a lack of clear evidence.

Already popular in 13th Century

John of Wales’s book, however, shows how popular the game would become. It was published in the mid-to-late 13th Century, just two to three centuries after chess first arrived in Europe.

Yet John writes of the game as if his audience would automatically know about it, showing how popular it had already become.

At the time, there was deep suspicion of chess in the church, which associated it with gambling, and the chess moralities are thought to have helped reduce that prejudice.

The book going under the hammer at Forum Auctions in London is a late 15th century first edition printing of the book from Germany.

It was printed when the press was still a brand-new technology. The original would have survived in the form of hundreds of manuscript copies made over the years.

The book is expected to sell for as much as £22,000, with Max Hasler, of Forum Auctions, saying that it expected keen interest from chess aficionados.

"It is a very rare work and only the third time one has appeared at auction in the last 100 years,” he said.