Theempress is afairy chess piece that can move like arook or aknight. 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[a] and is frequently called achancellor,marshal, or aknook.
Chess moves in this article useC as notation for the empress.
The empress can move as a rook or a knight.
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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. It was first used in Turkish Great Chess, a large medieval variant of chess, where it was called thewar machine (dabbabah; not to be confused with the piece more commonly referred to as the dabbaba today, which is the(2,0) leaper). It was introduced in the West withCarrera's chess from 1617, where it was called achampion[b], and has been used in many chess variants since then.
The namechancellor was introduced by Ben Foster in his largevariantChancellor Chess (chess on a 9×9 board, with a chancellor on the opposite side of the king as the queen), and the namemarshal was introduced by L. Tressan in his large variant The Sultan's Game.José Raúl Capablanca used both in his large variantCapablanca Chess: he originally called this piece themarshal, but later changed it to chancellor, which was his original name for thearchbishop. 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 tomare (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 withC (e.g. the cannon inxiangqi, thecamel inTamerlane Chess, the champion inOmega Chess, and the cardinal orprincess), and using the name marshal for the rook+knight compound would reduce this difficulty.
The nameempress is the most widely used name amongproblemists. By analogy with thequeen, 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 nameempress was used for the rook+knight compound, and the bishop+knight compound was called theprincess. However, the word empress suggests a piece stronger than thequeen, while this piece is at best equal to and perhaps weaker than the queen, especially in theendgame.
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Ralph Betza (inventor ofchess with different armies, in which the empress was used in one of the armies) rated the empress as about ninepoints, equivalent to a queen, as the knight and bishop were about equal and the empress and queen were simply the knight and bishop with the power of a rook added to both. He noted that the queen may be slightly stronger than the empress in the endgame, but that the empress, on the other hand, has a greater ability to giveperpetual checks and salvage adraw in an otherwise lost game. Unlike the queen, which can move in 8 different directions, the empress can move in 12.
In the endgame of king andamazon (queen+knight compound) versus king and empress, the amazon usually wins, but in a few positions, the weaker side may force a draw by setting up afortress. These fortresses force the side with the amazon to give perpetual check, as otherwise the side with the empress can force a simplification or give its own perpetual check. King and empress versus king is a forced win for the side with the empress;checkmate can be forced within 11 moves. In comparison, the queen requires 10 moves, and the rook requires 16.
The drawing positions in thequeen versus pawn endgame do not exist in the empress versus pawn endgame.
Capablanca chess starting position. Chancellors are on d1 and d8; archbishops are on g1 and g8. |
Almost chess starting position. Chancellors replace queens. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Many chess variants use a rook+knight compound, but due to its powerful ability, it is uncommon for variants to use more than one per colour on a normal 8×8 board. Seirawan chess uses one such piece (called anelephant) per colour.Capablanca chess uses one chancellor per colour on a 10×8 board.
Almost chess replaces queens with chancellors; these pieces are approximately equal in value.
Both white and black symbols for the empress were added to version 12 of theUnicode standard in March 2019, in theChess Symbols block:
🩏 U+1FA4F WHITE CHESS KNIGHT-ROOK
🩒 U+1FA52 BLACK CHESS KNIGHT-ROOK
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