Empress (chess)

The empress is a fairy chess piece that can move like 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.

It was first used in Turkish Great Chess, a large medieval variant of chess, where it was called the war machine (dabbabah; not to be confused with the piece more commonly referred to as the dabbaba today, which is the (2,0) leaper).

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.

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.

The empress and queen were simply the knight and bishop with the power of a rook added to both.