• Eiri@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    I’d never questioned it before now, but … How come the towers move? Who had that idea?

    The jesters moving diagonally because they’re whimsical I guess but the towers are quite odd.

      • Eiri@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        Sorry. Did a direct translation of the French name without thinking.

            • apolo399@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              I’ll add Spanish! “Alfil”, taken from arabic “(al-)fil”, taken from persian “pil”, meaning “the elephant”, since at some point in the past the piece was, evidently, an elephant.

            • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              I would have figured Germany would have been the one that changed whatever it was before to bishops in the medieval times on account of how important bishops were for the king/emperor’s military.

        • lime!@feddit.nu
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          1 month ago

          well in my language they’re “runners” so i guess i should have thought a bit harder there…

    • Samsy@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Okay since nobody did a serious answer, here we go:

      tl;dr: its a translation/interpretation error.

      The first documented forms of chess are all “war machines” of their time the tower was a Charioteer.

      When chess hits Europe someone translated charioteer with tower. Idk why, maybe because the used figures looked like a tower.

      And a charioteer move on a battlefield would be a storming through everything in one direction.