Interesting Implications of Chess

Chess is an interesting game that has been around for hundreds of years.  Unlike modern games with stylized artwork and backstory, chess feels very plain, with a few key identifiers in piece design on an otherwise plain board. It is all strategy and no luck via random chance, but complex enough to have nearly limitless possibilities. (There is no single approach to winning that can't be overcome with the correct response.)  In one sense it is a very straightforward game of strictly defined logic and planning, but it is actually thematically skinned.

The pieces all represent members of a royal court, with of course the king and queen in the most important roles, surrounded by bishops and knights to help them, and a bunch of little pawns arrayed before them.  The king is the most important piece, but he doesn't actually do much himself.  Keeping him alive is the point of the entire game, and you lose if he dies.  The queen is an important piece, that can move in unpredictable ways (relative to the other pieces which are more restricted) and run circle around the king and other pieces.  It is the most effective solution for trapping the opponents king, but if the queen is lost, the game goes on.  It is even possible to replace the queen, you just promote one of the pawns.  Which pawn?  Any one that can survive the gauntlet, and make it to the other side of the board.  Heck, you don't even need to lose your first queen before you can promote another piece to the position, resulting in having more than one queen simultaneously.  But not the king; you can't get a second king, and you can't promote a pawn to a king at all.  That is actually the only role they can't be promoted to.

Checkers appears to have been created purely as a rebellious response to these limitations, where any piece can become a king by reaching the end of the board, you can have multiple kings simultaneously, and they have the fewest movement restrictions.  But these characteristics do not reflect historical realities in the same ways that chess does.  Its interesting to think about the messages implicit in the game of chess: most people are just pawns, and if you work hard and with a little luck, you could be promoted to a bishop or knight, or even become a queen, but you will never be king.  And if you do become queen, watch out, some other pawn behind you might be striving for your new role as well.  That is actually a lot of cultural context and messaging overlaid on a game that otherwise seems very straightforward and logical.