Queens teaching their children to play chess. Alfonso’s Book of Chess, Spain, 1283.

The image depicts two queens instructing their youthful daughters to play chess, with a rather large red and yellow chess board separating the mother-daughter teams. While the artistry is not particularly fascinating it depicts a rather surprising cultural phenomenon that sprang up around chess, and really guaranteed the survival of Chess up through today.  Chess was considered a crucial part of European children’s education, eventually even being included in school curriculum.  One school even required its students to take summers classes to teach academic subjects delayed by Chess studies. Chess and the mastery of it becomes something valuable to pass down to Europe’s youth.  It was a skill needed to display your intellectual prowess to your domestic and international opponents. The importance of the image depicting daughter’s being instructed, really speaks to the pervasiveness of the game.  The game was not only men’s entertainment. The mastery of chess also had tremendous social consequences for girls. Girls needed to be well versed in the ways of Chess to show their worth to potential suitors, it was even seen as a way to entice the opposite sex.  Thus leading to Chess’s connection with the Cult of Love and even the development of erotic Chess. Chess’s popularity, and the survival of it, is largely due to the immense importance that was placed on it by older generations, as a way for its youth to flourish in Medieval Europe.