I can find no record of King Charles III playing chess, though there is evidence that his antecedent and namesake, King Charles I,owned an amber chess board. There is, however, a chess connection with our new monarch, crowned today in Westminster Abbey. It is, though, of a more personal nature.
Not only did I cross undergraduate years with our future King, I arrived at Trinity College , Cambridge, on the same day in 1967 as did he, shepherded by his mother, HM The Queen. Furthermore, in my third year, I shared a landing with him in Great Court. I thus saw him almost every day, to and from our communal bathroom, for a year or more.
I remember on one occasion finding a huge tray of freshly cooked sausage rolls outside my rooms, sonaturally I devoured a couple. When I returned for a second raid, the appetising delicacieswere being guarded by a special squad officer, so I realised that they must have been destined for my illustrious neighbour across the landing.
For the record, my old rooms in Trinity Great Court had once been occupied by Lord Byron. I often heard what could only have been the ghost of his pet bear, rattling its chains at night.
Some years later, a curious attempt took place to subvert historical veracity. When HRH married Diana in 1981,some toadying hack published a biography of him,which rewrote history and placed Hywell Jones, President of the Trinity Union, on the same landing as HRH. Thiswas a complete distortion of the truth, as the officialCollege records will indisputably confirm.
There are many stories of English kings playing chess, from King Canute (son of the Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard) to William the Conqueror, John, Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I. Whether these are apocryphal, or Gods own truth, is difficult to ascertain. Attribution of regal chessboard prowess to English royalty is on slightly safer ground with an illustration from 1283, allegedly ofEnglands King Edward Iplaying chess at the Court of Castile with Princess Eleanor of Castile, whom he had married in 1254. This is from the games book (see below) of Eleanors brother, King Alfonso X of Castile, Leon and Galicia, known as El Sabio, or The Wise (12211284). The identification was made by Spanish International Chess Master, Ricardo Calvo, who edited a modern version of King Alfonsos compendium of chess and other game compositions.
It is tempting to think, on the wilder shores of speculation, that the position depicted (number 87) in the Alfonso Manuscript was actually one played by Edward in person. Here is that position.
The solution given is 1. Rxc3 Kd1 2. Kf2 Kd2 3. Rfd3 mate, but there is in fact a dual one, by means of 1. Rxc3 Kd1 2. Rf2 Ke1 3. Rc1 mate.
More likely, if less romantic, is that the position in front of King Edward in the illustration, is a stock puzzle from one of the ancient Arabic chess texts. Hope springs eternal.
Alfonso, the brother of Queen Eleanor, was most certainly a king who did take a serious interest in chess. Like the World Conqueror, Tamburlaine, Alfonso also favoured a form of enlarged or Great Chess, known as Grant Chess in the Castilian dialect. This variant is also mentioned in the important manuscript of board games, chess, dice and backgammon, produced at the court of that enlightened monarch. This so-called Libro de Los Juegos contains an extensive collection of writings on chess, with over 100 chess problems and chess variants, and among those variants we find a type of Great Chess which incorporates a piece called a rhinoceros. It was, by the standards of early chess, with its restricted powers of Queen and Bishop, a powerful unit, combining the moves of the knight plus a diagonal element.
Both of these game templates have survived and would have been available to Alfonso and his contemporaries, who clearly made good use of them, even to the point that modern board games enthusiasts can still access the rules online and play Great Chess, complete with rhinos, crocodiles, camels and giraffes, just as it was enjoyed in the royal courts of Alfonso and Tamburlaine over six centuries ago.
(Editors note: this week the chess world also has a new king: Ding Liren won his match against Ian Nepomniachtchi to become the new World Champion in succession to Magnus Carlsen, who has renounced the title. Ding, 30, won the rapidplay tiebreaker 9.5-8.5, to take the match after the classical games were tied 7-7. He is the first Chinese grandmaster to take the mens title, although there have been several Chinese Womens World Chess Champions.)
Raymond Keenes latest book Fifty Shades of Ray: Chess in the year of the Coronavirus, containing some of his best pieces from TheArticle, is now available from Blackwells . His 206th book, Chess in the Year of the King, with a foreword by The Article contributor Patrick Heren, and written in collaboration with former Reuters chess correspondent, Adam Black, is in preparation. It will be published later this year.
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Coronation chess: Charles III, Edward I and Alfonso the Wise - TheArticle