The story of Queen Isabella

Once upon a time, a long time ago, before even the days of King Henry the Eighth, there was a queen called Isabella. She was queen of a large part of what we call Spain and she very powerful.

In those days in Spain, there had been lots of battles to see who could rule biggest area and Queen Isabella, using her power, ruled a very large area which she called Castile which means castles after all the castles she had there.

Queen Isabella ruled Castile and King Ferdinand ruled a place next to it called Aragon which was also very big so they got married and called both kingdoms, Spain.

Even though she was very important in making Spain, people didn't think she was as important as King Ferdinand just because he was the king. Of course he was important because he was the king but the Queen was also important and very powerful controlling such a large area of Europe.

The game of chess had been brought to Spain by the Arab people from North Africa which is very near Spain. They played a bit like people do now but instead of a king and a queen they had a king and another man called a minister. Queen Isabella was angry about this and she said there should be a queen beside the king because queens were very powerful, even if the king may be considered most important. The king wasn't so sure about changing the rules of a game that everyone played already or about there being a woman in the game.

Meanwhile, there was a battle in a city called Baza to see who should own it. It had been going on for a long time so, to show how powerful and clever she was, Isabella went to the city to talk to the leaders of each side of the battle and persuaded them stop fighting and make it part of Spain.

After this, the king and all the people agreed that she should be included in the game of chess as she was definitely more powerful than the minister. She said that the king could still be the most important person in the game but even though the old minister could only move one square too, she said that, as she had moved very far to make Baza part of Spain, she should be made more powerful in the game too. This way people would know how powerful she was.

The king and his Royal poets agreed and now, the queen in chess can move in all directions as far as she likes where the king, whilst being the most important person, isn’t very powerful.

That is the true story of Queen Isabella and why she is in the game of chess.