This guide is mostly about Medieval Chess Rules – how those in Ye Olde days did battle on the board …
However, I’ve also tacked on a bit about Medieval themed Chess Sets; just a short mention, but I thought they looked quite good, with some excellent detailing of some of the pieces, so I felt they required an obligatory few words.
Chess Rules Of The Medieval Game
The Rules here are based on research by Edinburgh University Chess Club.
At the time of writing, I couldn’t find any mention of moves such as En Passant, Castling, or Pawn Promotion, so, to play it safe, the Rules on this page mainly concern the Basic Moves of the Chess pieces.
You’ll also find mention of Checkmate, a comparison between the modern game and the Medieval version when a King would Not be in Checkmate and an alternative winning move, known as Baremate, which was a feature of the Medieval game.
Where capturing is concerned, I’m assuming, unless restricted by range of movement, they’re the same as they are today.
Medieval Chess Rules
The first nine pages are all focused on the Rules of the Medieval game of chess – specifically, how the Pawns and Pieces moved …
Pawns could only move 1 square, at all times – there’s no first-move two square option, like in chess today.
Knights moved in the same L-shaped pattern as they do today.
Bishops could only move a maximum of two squares, but they could jump over obstacles!
Rooks could move across the full length of their Rank or File that they occupy, providing there was no obstruction, just like today’s Rooks.
Queens could only move one square in any diagonal direction, but they couldn’t move in a straight line along either the Ranks or Files.
Kings could move one square in any direction, just like they can today.
Because of the limitations of the Queens, in particular, Checkmate took more effort to achieve. This article shows an example of Checkmate and contrasts it with when it wasn’t.
Perhaps brought in to speed up games of chess, Baremate was a type of Checkmate victory when all the Pawns and Pieces of a player’s army had been captured, leaving the King without protection – or, Bare.
Basically, this article’s just a random collection of chess sets with a Medieval theme.