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The Piececlopedia: The Rook-Knight Compound

Empress, Marshall, Chancellor

Historical remarks

This piece has a long history and has been called by many names. Some of the earliest names for this piece are Champion and Dabbaba, but these two names are currently the accepted names for two other pieces. The Champion is a piece in the commericial variant Omega Chess, and the Dabbaba names the historical piece it was more commonly used for. The three most widely used names for this piece are Empress, Chancellor, and Marshall.

Empress is the standard name for the piece among fairy problemists. This name is used as the favored name in both Dickin's Guide to Fairy Chess and The Oxford Companion to Chess. The rationale behind this name is an analogy with the Queen. This piece, the Queen, and the Bishop/Knight compound are the three main compounds of the three simple pieces in Chess, the Rook, Bishop, and Knight. The idea is that, like the Queen, all three of these compounds should be named after female royalty. Since the Rook is stronger than the Bishop, this piece was considered the stronger of the two compounds besides the Queen. So it got the name Empress, while the name Princess went to the Bishop/Knight compound. One difficulty with the name Empress is that it suggests that the piece is more powerful than the Queen, whereas it seems likely that the Queen is the more powerful of these two pieces. In fact, because of the suggestion that an Empress should be more powerful than a Queen, John William Brown gave the name of Empress to the Knight-Queen combination usually known as an Amazon.

The name Marshall, or Marshal, dates back to 1840, when L. Tressan used it in The Sultan's Game. The name Chancellor dates back to 1887, when Ben Foster used it in Chancellor Chess. In the 20th century, Jose Capablanca made use of both names. He first used the name Marshall, then later changed to using the name Chancellor. Both names have also been used in well-known commercial variants. Christian Freeling used the name Marshall in Grand Chess, and Ed Trice used the name Chancellor in Gothic Chess.

Although both names have enjoyed popularity during the last century, there seem to be a few reasons for favoring the name Marshall. First, the name Marshall has more consistently been used for this piece, whereas the name Chancellor has more frequently been used for other pieces. Capablanca used it for the Knight-Bishop compound, and Sidney LeVasseur has used it for another piece in a commercial variant called Kings Court. Second, the letter C is commonly used for other popular pieces, such as the Camel, the Cannon, and the Champion, not to mention the Cardinal, the variant piece that is most frequently paired with this piece. Given the popularity of this piece, it would confuse things to use the letter C for this piece too. Etymologically, the name Marshall fits a piece with Knight moves better than Chancellor does. Marshall literally means horse-servant, being related to the English word mare, meaning a female horse. One especially relevant definition of Marshall is cavalry commander. In contrast, the name Chancellor has nothing to do with horses. It comes from a Latin word literally meaning doorkeeper, and it generally refers to a head of state or to a college president. It also has some ecclesiastical definitions, which Capablanca may have had in mind when he gave the name to the piece he also called the Archbishop. Finally, for whatever it's worth, Marshall is the older name.

This table gives an overview of the history of this piece.

Year	Game	Name of Piece	Creator of Game
14th century?	Shatranj Al-Kabir (Great Chess)	Unknown
1617	Carrera's Chess	Champion	Pietro Carrera
1747	The Duke of Rutland's Chess	Concubine	John, third Duke of Rutland
<= 18th century	Turkish Great Chess	Dabbaba (War Machine)	Unknown
1840	The Sultan's Game	Marshall	L. Tressan
1874	Bird's Chess	Guard	Henry Bird
1887	Chancellor Chess	Chancellor	Ben Foster
1920's	Capablanca Chess	Marshall / Chancellor	J. R. Capablanca
<= 1943	Wolf Chess	Wolf	Dr. Arno von Wilpert(?)
1950-1975?	Cagliostro's Chess	Chancellor	Savio Cagliostro
1978	Tutti-Frutti Chess	Empress	Ralph Betza and Philip Cohen
1980	Renniassance Chess	Nobleman	Eric V. Greenwood
1984	Grand Chess	Marshall	Christian Freeling
1996	The Remarkable Rookies (CDA)	Chancellor	Ralph Betza
1997	New Chancellor Chess	Chancellor	David Paulowich
1997	Paulowich's Chancellor Chess	Chancellor	David Paulowich
1997	Cobra Chess	War Machine	Derick Peterson
1997	Grand Hexachess	War Machine	Derick Peterson
1998	Euchess	Marshall	Carlos Cetina
<= 1998	Chess 2000	Knight/rook	Gerhard Josten
1998	Eric's Great Chess	War Engine	Eric Greenwood
1998	Pre-Grand Chess	Marshal	Eric Greenwood
1998	Cavalier Chess	Marshall	Fergus Duniho
1999	Unicorn Chess	Chancellor	David Paulowich
1999	Haynie's Great Chess	Marshall or Chancellor	Billy Haynie
1999	Pick-the-Team Chess	Chancellor	Hans Bodlaender
1999	Hexmate	Duke	Michael A. Rouse
1999	Grand Cavalier Chess	Marshall	Fergus Duniho
1999	Bedlam	Marshall	Fergus Duniho
1999	Metamorphin' Fusion Chess	Marshall	Fergus Duniho
1999	Fusion Chessgi	Marshall	Fergus Duniho
1999	Fusion Chess	Marshall	Fergus Duniho
1999	Metamorph Chess	Marshall	Fergus Duniho
2000	Giant Chess	Chancellor	Köksal Karakus
2000	Perfect Chess	Chancellor	Köksal Karakus
2000	Terror Chess	Marshall	Brian Wong
2000	Turkish Chess	Chancellor	Köksal Karakus
2000	Trihex	Marshall	Marek 14
2000	The Knightliest Black Hole	Duke	João Pedro Neto
2000	Drop Chess	Cardinal	Key McKinnis
2000	Fantasy Grand Chess	Marshall	Peter Hatch
2000	Blackhole Chess	Marshall	David Short
2001	Gigachess	Marshall	Jean-Louis Cazaux
2001	Four Towers	Marshall	Jim Aiken
2002	Abecedarian Big Chess (ABChess)	Marshal	Glenn Overby
2002	Full Double Chess	Chancellor	Sergey Sirotkin

Movement rules

The Marshall may move like a orthodox chess rook, or like a orthodox chess knight.

Movement diagram

The blue circles indicate the leaping moves of a knight, while the green circles indicate the rook move.

diagram of chancellor move

Alternate Images

Click on an image to view the full piece set it belongs to.

This is an item in the Piececlopedia: an overview of different (fairy) chess pieces.

Written by Fergus Duniho and David Howe.
The Meta-Chess move map was reprinted from Meta-Chess, copyright 1997, by permission of John William Brown.
Movement diagram and piece icon created from Zillions of Games.

WWW page created: February 12, 1999.

For author and/or inventor information on this item see: this item's information page.
Created on: February 12, 1999. Last modified on: January 23, 2003.

The Piececlopedia: The Rook-Knight Compound

Historical remarks

Movement rules

Movement diagram

Alternate Images

Comments