Empress (chess)

An empress is a fairy chess piece piece that can move like a rook or a knight. It cannot jump over other pieces when moving as a rook, but may do so when moving as a knight. The piece has acquired many names and is frequently called chancellor or marshall (or marshal); it may also be called simply the rook+knight compound. Chess moves in this article use C as notation for the empress.

The empress can move as a rook or a knight.

The empress is one of the most simply described fairy chess pieces and as such has a long history and has gone by many names. A generic name would be the rook+knight compound. The name chancellor was introduced by Ben Foster in his large variant Chancellor Chess (chess on a 9×9 board, with a chancellor on the opposite side of the king as the queen), and the name marshal was introduced by L. Tressan in his large variant The Sultan's Game. José Raúl Capablanca used both in his large variant Capablanca chess: he originally called this piece the marshal, but later changed it to chancellor. Coincidentally, chancellor was his original name for the archbishop. Both chancellor and marshal are popular names for the rook+knight compound, although a case could be made for marshal, as the word is related to mare (female horse) and thus fits better for a piece that can move like a knight than chancellor, which has no connection to horses. Also, there are many commonly used chess pieces that, like chancellor, begin with C (e.g. the cannon in xiangqi, the camel in Tamerlane Chess, the champion in Omega Chess, and the cardinal or princess), and using the name marshal for the rook+knight compound would reduce this difficulty.

The name empress is more widely used among problemists. By analogy with the queen, which is a rook+bishop compound, it was suggested that the three basic combinations of the three simple chess pieces (rook, knight, and bishop) should all be named after female royalty. Since the rook+knight compound seemed to be obviously stronger than the bishop+knight compound (as the rook is stronger than the bishop), the name empress was used for the rook+knight compound and the bishop+knight compound was called the princess. However, the bishop+knight compound can get (but not force) checkmate of a lone king by itself (with the king in a corner and the attacking archbishop two squares diagonally away), while the rook+knight compound cannot. Worse, the word empress suggests a piece stronger than the queen, while this piece is at best equal to and perhaps weaker than the queen, especially in the endgame.

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